There does not seem to often be a discussion about how to read things, how to make highlights, how to sit in silence and digest something, how to read like an expert, and maybe the holy grail how to constructively critique something and give feedback, like in formal or informal peer review. Nonetheless, it seems a very pertinent topic these days where I see (accidental or not) misreadings of the literature. Historically, of course there have also been examples of (weaponised) misunderstandings of certain people’s work.
I want to talk about the nice(r) side and explain things for juniors especially, like students, but really do take “reading” here in the broadest sense, while also bearing in mind that for academics it means deep engagement such that one can produce feedback or even critique.
Anyway, not all the ways of reading I listed at the top are prerequisites to reading in a scholarly way, but I will go through some angles and perspectives on how to do this I have picked up, all the way until we get to formal peer review. Reviewing requires a certain kind of reading and decision to read that is built up over months and years and when performed well should succeed at the goal of improving our colleagues’ work.
First, the decision on what to read is primal, obviously. Simply put, there are cases where something just does in fact need to be read. But in that case you still need to able to say why. It’s good to be a little introspective here as “because my mentor said so” might indicate either that you are not taking this seriously (which would open up other questions) or that your mentor did not explain why well enough (a good one should be open to discussing this again) or something else. If the answer here to what to read is: because this paper offers something that you do not know about yet, you will have to bear that in mind below. I would argue this is always true, but of course there are cases of more novel points or fewer as some papers are review articles, for example, and you may indeed know a lot of the basics.
Second, is the way in which to read — how to get the most out of reading, what sort of mental state to be in. Scholarly reading is not just skimming, but certainly includes skimming: we will return to the zoomed in aspect in how to actually read below.
What I consider the biggest stumbling block at this stage, and it links back to accepting that the paper offers something truly new to you, is that as a reader you must trust the author. If you do not, grant it now for the sake of learning — critique involves not exactly less trust, but a different way of reading. In the case of engaging with literature outside your direct expertise or equivalently of an area that is not yet your main research area extreme humility needs to be at the core of your conceptualisation of what you are about to intellectually ingest. To really get the best out of the journal article, book chapter, and so on, you must commit especially to not jumping to conclusions. Any utterance can be reduced immediately to the absurd, especially if you want it to. The point here is to learn something from the author, however, not mock them or perform reductio ad absurdum (yet). The point is not to project your understanding of the world, but to understand what the author has to say. Try to take another person’s perspective.
And so you must understand that you are entering another world. Think of it a little like stepping into another person’s house. You cannot open random doors and expect the kitchen to be where yours is. By the same token of course, it can be the case the general configuration is like your own home, e.g. it’s possible the conclusions are all at the end, that there’s an abstract up top, that section headings are appropriately descriptive, etc. This concept of granting that the author has something to teach you is really so important and it is something that I see most often violated in cases where somebody has utterly failed to grasp a piece of writing. If you struggle to do this and only want to hate-read, take everything as if it is nonsense, then bear in mind this is unlikely to lead to a scholarly understanding of the other except in extremely unusual cases.
This bears repeating: if you decide to read something only to disagree, you will likely learn less than if you go in with a more charitable perspective.
Or to put it the other way round, if you only or mostly read repulsive and awful pieces that deserve to be hate-read, that definitionally sounds like a bad time and you should mix things up.
And importantly superficial disagreeing or misreading and critique are not the same thing — in fact you must deeply understand the other person’s writing to critique them.
Below I am leaving the section headings as placeholders. They are to come over the next few weeks.