The 3-pass approach mentioned in the Stanford page linked in a sibling comment is a good way to start. It's also worth knowing why you want to read a particular

The 3-pass approach mentioned in the Stanford page linked in a sibling comment is a good way to start. It's also worth knowing why you want to read a particular paper. They're usually written for communicating tersely with people "already-in-the-know" so you shouldn't expect to get much out of most papers you come across. Murat Demirbas a prof at SUNY Buffalo has described his method - http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-i-read-research-paper.html http://muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-i-read-research...