Well... perseverance is the name of the game. The secret to reading papers in unfamiliar field is to not get discouraged just because you don't get it immediat

Well... perseverance is the name of the game. The secret to reading papers in unfamiliar field is to not get discouraged just because you don't get it immediately. Instead, I will research each concept I encounter that I don't understand well. Let's assume I want to understand something in a field I am not familiar with. It is important to understand that this typically means I have to get at least somewhat familiar with the field. I don't expect to read a paper and get it just from that single read! I will open the paper and first just read what I can from start to end without stopping to research anything. This gives me some idea what the paper is about and what are some of the concepts that are important and how they are used later. I call this scanning. I will go back to the start and slowly go researching EVERYTHING, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING that I don't understand. This is most of the work. I will keep the paper open and have something to mark where I currently am. I will research meaning of every symbol and every piece of notation, every concept being introduced, until I am confident I understand it. This may take multiple days to advance a single line as I will frequently spend time on tagents or just getting up to speed with the basics. Once I go through entire paper I will get back to start and now read it again. Now that I know the language of the paper I can focus on the matter at hand. I may do this few times until I am satisfied I got everything I could. Again, I want to stress it, don't expect to understand a paper in unfamiliar field on the first reading. It is completely unrealistic. Use materials, ask people to explain, research on the Internet, rinse and repeat.