Editor’s assistant here. Came in to grumble when I saw familiar worlds)
I don’t find papers by browsing. My bosses decide what we publish, so I simply read the manuscripts they do send my way. Geophysics… microbiology… I try to at least get some idea of what it’s about. It doesn’t have to be good or important! I just have to keep at it until the last doi. So, with this in mind:
Citations are often stuck in awkward places where I can’t really understand what they refer to. Several citations at the end of a long passage might all support the same thought. But which one?.. If I only read it because I have googled it up, I would cheerfully follow the links or not. But I would hardly stop to ask why they are grouped so. (True, I never learn the answer. But sometimes, when I point it out, the authors redistribute the citations differently.)
Tables and figures require thought, much more thought than one would think from reading an interesting article. It is surprisingly hard to marry the text and the “illustrations”. Some “illustrations” might be lacking. Some might be reprinted from other works, in which case putting them in context might require incorporating some of the context they used to have. This is very hard and often omitted.
Conclusions should not be results. Or a list of things people managed to do. But somehow, I am usually satisfied with conclusions in the wonderful articles which I have found on the internet!
All of it makes me think that the same must be true for the wonderful articles as well, I just read them in a different mode. Much less aggressive.
Interesting perspective especially your comments on citations. Agreed with the diagrams/figures/tables being some of the most interesting parts of the paper, but I also try to find the problem that motivated the authors (which is frequently embedded better in the introduction imo than the abstract).
Yes, in my experience abstracts are results-oriented, not problem-oriented. I do like introductions, too) they are often written so generally that I fail to identify the problem. But what a nice feeling of understanding) The break between the intro and the specific problem they attacked can be really jarring.
Overall, we read it for what it is, not for what it promised to be.
Editor’s assistant here. Came in to grumble when I saw familiar worlds)
I don’t find papers by browsing. My bosses decide what we publish, so I simply read the manuscripts they do send my way. Geophysics… microbiology… I try to at least get some idea of what it’s about. It doesn’t have to be good or important! I just have to keep at it until the last doi. So, with this in mind:
Citations are often stuck in awkward places where I can’t really understand what they refer to. Several citations at the end of a long passage might all support the same thought. But which one?.. If I only read it because I have googled it up, I would cheerfully follow the links or not. But I would hardly stop to ask why they are grouped so. (True, I never learn the answer. But sometimes, when I point it out, the authors redistribute the citations differently.)
Tables and figures require thought, much more thought than one would think from reading an interesting article. It is surprisingly hard to marry the text and the “illustrations”. Some “illustrations” might be lacking. Some might be reprinted from other works, in which case putting them in context might require incorporating some of the context they used to have. This is very hard and often omitted.
Conclusions should not be results. Or a list of things people managed to do. But somehow, I am usually satisfied with conclusions in the wonderful articles which I have found on the internet!
All of it makes me think that the same must be true for the wonderful articles as well, I just read them in a different mode. Much less aggressive.
Interesting perspective especially your comments on citations. Agreed with the diagrams/figures/tables being some of the most interesting parts of the paper, but I also try to find the problem that motivated the authors (which is frequently embedded better in the introduction imo than the abstract).
Yes, in my experience abstracts are results-oriented, not problem-oriented. I do like introductions, too) they are often written so generally that I fail to identify the problem. But what a nice feeling of understanding) The break between the intro and the specific problem they attacked can be really jarring.
Overall, we read it for what it is, not for what it promised to be.