This seems like really good advice for papers in data-driven and/or technical fields (modulo the caveat pointed out by waveman, which also seems worth taking into consideration), that is, papers in fields like e.g. physics, the aforementioned electrical engineering, psychology, economics, perhaps math, etc. My experience as a final-year undergraduate reading philosophy papers, though, is that I do get a lot out of reading the abstract, and out of not skipping the middle of the paper (since there isn’t really an analogue to the “methods” section in philosophy papers). I’m not sure if this is unique to philosophy or if there are other fields that are also exceptions; would be interested to hear people’s thoughts from other disciplines.
This is a good point—for example, I find history papers to be easily readable in order, and the abstracts are useful. My expectation is that this will work for any of the humanities, are more generally anything lacking a minimum threshold for methodological background.
I do frequently encounter difficulties with highly specialized terms: sociology is a common subject where that problem appears.
This seems like really good advice for papers in data-driven and/or technical fields (modulo the caveat pointed out by waveman, which also seems worth taking into consideration), that is, papers in fields like e.g. physics, the aforementioned electrical engineering, psychology, economics, perhaps math, etc. My experience as a final-year undergraduate reading philosophy papers, though, is that I do get a lot out of reading the abstract, and out of not skipping the middle of the paper (since there isn’t really an analogue to the “methods” section in philosophy papers). I’m not sure if this is unique to philosophy or if there are other fields that are also exceptions; would be interested to hear people’s thoughts from other disciplines.
This is a good point—for example, I find history papers to be easily readable in order, and the abstracts are useful. My expectation is that this will work for any of the humanities, are more generally anything lacking a minimum threshold for methodological background.
I do frequently encounter difficulties with highly specialized terms: sociology is a common subject where that problem appears.