research paper for reading

Loading metrics

Open Access

Ten simple rules for reading a scientific paper

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health, Department of Medicine, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

• Maureen A. Carey, 
• Kevin L. Steiner, 
• William A. Petri Jr

Published: July 30, 2020

• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008032
• Reader Comments

Citation: Carey MA, Steiner KL, Petri WA Jr (2020) Ten simple rules for reading a scientific paper. PLoS Comput Biol 16(7): e1008032. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008032

Editor: Scott Markel, Dassault Systemes BIOVIA, UNITED STATES

Copyright: © 2020 Carey et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Funding: MAC was supported by the PhRMA Foundation's Postdoctoral Fellowship in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics and the University of Virginia's Engineering-in-Medicine seed grant, and KLS was supported by the NIH T32 Global Biothreats Training Program at the University of Virginia (AI055432). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

“There is no problem that a library card can't solve” according to author Eleanor Brown [ 1 ]. This advice is sound, probably for both life and science, but even the best tool (like the library) is most effective when accompanied by instructions and a basic understanding of how and when to use it.

For many budding scientists, the first day in a new lab setting often involves a stack of papers, an email full of links to pertinent articles, or some promise of a richer understanding so long as one reads enough of the scientific literature. However, the purpose and approach to reading a scientific article is unlike that of reading a news story, novel, or even a textbook and can initially seem unapproachable. Having good habits for reading scientific literature is key to setting oneself up for success, identifying new research questions, and filling in the gaps in one’s current understanding; developing these good habits is the first crucial step.

Advice typically centers around two main tips: read actively and read often. However, active reading, or reading with an intent to understand, is both a learned skill and a level of effort. Although there is no one best way to do this, we present 10 simple rules, relevant to novices and seasoned scientists alike, to teach our strategy for active reading based on our experience as readers and as mentors of undergraduate and graduate researchers, medical students, fellows, and early career faculty. Rules 1–5 are big picture recommendations. Rules 6–8 relate to philosophy of reading. Rules 9–10 guide the “now what?” questions one should ask after reading and how to integrate what was learned into one’s own science.

Rule 1: Pick your reading goal

What you want to get out of an article should influence your approach to reading it. Table 1 includes a handful of example intentions and how you might prioritize different parts of the same article differently based on your goals as a reader.

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008032.t001

Rule 2: Understand the author’s goal

In written communication, the reader and the writer are equally important. Both influence the final outcome: in this case, your scientific understanding! After identifying your goal, think about the author’s goal for sharing this project. This will help you interpret the data and understand the author’s interpretation of the data. However, this requires some understanding of who the author(s) are (e.g., what are their scientific interests?), the scientific field in which they work (e.g., what techniques are available in this field?), and how this paper fits into the author’s research (e.g., is this work building on an author’s longstanding project or controversial idea?). This information may be hard to glean without experience and a history of reading. But don’t let this be a discouragement to starting the process; it is by the act of reading that this experience is gained!

A good step toward understanding the goal of the author(s) is to ask yourself: What kind of article is this? Journals publish different types of articles, including methods, review, commentary, resources, and research articles as well as other types that are specific to a particular journal or groups of journals. These article types have different formatting requirements and expectations for content. Knowing the article type will help guide your evaluation of the information presented. Is the article a methods paper, presenting a new technique? Is the article a review article, intended to summarize a field or problem? Is it a commentary, intended to take a stand on a controversy or give a big picture perspective on a problem? Is it a resource article, presenting a new tool or data set for others to use? Is it a research article, written to present new data and the authors’ interpretation of those data? The type of paper, and its intended purpose, will get you on your way to understanding the author’s goal.

Rule 3: Ask six questions

When reading, ask yourself: (1) What do the author(s) want to know (motivation)? (2) What did they do (approach/methods)? (3) Why was it done that way (context within the field)? (4) What do the results show (figures and data tables)? (5) How did the author(s) interpret the results (interpretation/discussion)? (6) What should be done next? (Regarding this last question, the author(s) may provide some suggestions in the discussion, but the key is to ask yourself what you think should come next.)

Each of these questions can and should be asked about the complete work as well as each table, figure, or experiment within the paper. Early on, it can take a long time to read one article front to back, and this can be intimidating. Break down your understanding of each section of the work with these questions to make the effort more manageable.

Rule 4: Unpack each figure and table

Scientists write original research papers primarily to present new data that may change or reinforce the collective knowledge of a field. Therefore, the most important parts of this type of scientific paper are the data. Some people like to scrutinize the figures and tables (including legends) before reading any of the “main text”: because all of the important information should be obtained through the data. Others prefer to read through the results section while sequentially examining the figures and tables as they are addressed in the text. There is no correct or incorrect approach: Try both to see what works best for you. The key is making sure that one understands the presented data and how it was obtained.

For each figure, work to understand each x- and y-axes, color scheme, statistical approach (if one was used), and why the particular plotting approach was used. For each table, identify what experimental groups and variables are presented. Identify what is shown and how the data were collected. This is typically summarized in the legend or caption but often requires digging deeper into the methods: Do not be afraid to refer back to the methods section frequently to ensure a full understanding of how the presented data were obtained. Again, ask the questions in Rule 3 for each figure or panel and conclude with articulating the “take home” message.

Rule 5: Understand the formatting intentions

Just like the overall intent of the article (discussed in Rule 2), the intent of each section within a research article can guide your interpretation. Some sections are intended to be written as objective descriptions of the data (i.e., the Results section), whereas other sections are intended to present the author’s interpretation of the data. Remember though that even “objective” sections are written by and, therefore, influenced by the authors interpretations. Check out Table 2 to understand the intent of each section of a research article. When reading a specific paper, you can also refer to the journal’s website to understand the formatting intentions. The “For Authors” section of a website will have some nitty gritty information that is less relevant for the reader (like word counts) but will also summarize what the journal editors expect in each section. This will help to familiarize you with the goal of each article section.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008032.t002

Rule 6: Be critical

Published papers are not truths etched in stone. Published papers in high impact journals are not truths etched in stone. Published papers by bigwigs in the field are not truths etched in stone. Published papers that seem to agree with your own hypothesis or data are not etched in stone. Published papers that seem to refute your hypothesis or data are not etched in stone.

Science is a never-ending work in progress, and it is essential that the reader pushes back against the author’s interpretation to test the strength of their conclusions. Everyone has their own perspective and may interpret the same data in different ways. Mistakes are sometimes published, but more often these apparent errors are due to other factors such as limitations of a methodology and other limits to generalizability (selection bias, unaddressed, or unappreciated confounders). When reading a paper, it is important to consider if these factors are pertinent.

Critical thinking is a tough skill to learn but ultimately boils down to evaluating data while minimizing biases. Ask yourself: Are there other, equally likely, explanations for what is observed? In addition to paying close attention to potential biases of the study or author(s), a reader should also be alert to one’s own preceding perspective (and biases). Take time to ask oneself: Do I find this paper compelling because it affirms something I already think (or wish) is true? Or am I discounting their findings because it differs from what I expect or from my own work?

The phenomenon of a self-fulfilling prophecy, or expectancy, is well studied in the psychology literature [ 2 ] and is why many studies are conducted in a “blinded” manner [ 3 ]. It refers to the idea that a person may assume something to be true and their resultant behavior aligns to make it true. In other words, as humans and scientists, we often find exactly what we are looking for. A scientist may only test their hypotheses and fail to evaluate alternative hypotheses; perhaps, a scientist may not be aware of alternative, less biased ways to test her or his hypothesis that are typically used in different fields. Individuals with different life, academic, and work experiences may think of several alternative hypotheses, all equally supported by the data.

Rule 7: Be kind

The author(s) are human too. So, whenever possible, give them the benefit of the doubt. An author may write a phrase differently than you would, forcing you to reread the sentence to understand it. Someone in your field may neglect to cite your paper because of a reference count limit. A figure panel may be misreferenced as Supplemental Fig 3E when it is obviously Supplemental Fig 4E. While these things may be frustrating, none are an indication that the quality of work is poor. Try to avoid letting these minor things influence your evaluation and interpretation of the work.

Similarly, if you intend to share your critique with others, be extra kind. An author (especially the lead author) may invest years of their time into a single paper. Hearing a kindly phrased critique can be difficult but constructive. Hearing a rude, brusque, or mean-spirited critique can be heartbreaking, especially for young scientists or those seeking to establish their place within a field and who may worry that they do not belong.

Rule 8: Be ready to go the extra mile

To truly understand a scientific work, you often will need to look up a term, dig into the supplemental materials, or read one or more of the cited references. This process takes time. Some advisors recommend reading an article three times: The first time, simply read without the pressure of understanding or critiquing the work. For the second time, aim to understand the paper. For the third read through, take notes.

Some people engage with a paper by printing it out and writing all over it. The reader might write question marks in the margins to mark parts (s)he wants to return to, circle unfamiliar terms (and then actually look them up!), highlight or underline important statements, and draw arrows linking figures and the corresponding interpretation in the discussion. Not everyone needs a paper copy to engage in the reading process but, whatever your version of “printing it out” is, do it.

Rule 9: Talk about it

Talking about an article in a journal club or more informal environment forces active reading and participation with the material. Studies show that teaching is one of the best ways to learn and that teachers learn the material even better as the teaching task becomes more complex [ 4 – 5 ]; anecdotally, such observations inspired the phrase “to teach is to learn twice.”

Beyond formal settings such as journal clubs, lab meetings, and academic classes, discuss papers with your peers, mentors, and colleagues in person or electronically. Twitter and other social media platforms have become excellent resources for discussing papers with other scientists, the public or your nonscientist friends, or even the paper’s author(s). Describing a paper can be done at multiple levels and your description can contain all of the scientific details, only the big picture summary, or perhaps the implications for the average person in your community. All of these descriptions will solidify your understanding, while highlighting gaps in your knowledge and informing those around you.

Rule 10: Build on it

One approach we like to use for communicating how we build on the scientific literature is by starting research presentations with an image depicting a wall of Lego bricks. Each brick is labeled with the reference for a paper, and the wall highlights the body of literature on which the work is built. We describe the work and conclusions of each paper represented by a labeled brick and discuss each brick and the wall as a whole. The top brick on the wall is left blank: We aspire to build on this work and label this brick with our own work. We then delve into our own research, discoveries, and the conclusions it inspires. We finish our presentations with the image of the Legos and summarize our presentation on that empty brick.

Whether you are reading an article to understand a new topic area or to move a research project forward, effective learning requires that you integrate knowledge from multiple sources (“click” those Lego bricks together) and build upwards. Leveraging published work will enable you to build a stronger and taller structure. The first row of bricks is more stable once a second row is assembled on top of it and so on and so forth. Moreover, the Lego construction will become taller and larger if you build upon the work of others, rather than using only your own bricks.

Build on the article you read by thinking about how it connects to ideas described in other papers and within own work, implementing a technique in your own research, or attempting to challenge or support the hypothesis of the author(s) with a more extensive literature review. Integrate the techniques and scientific conclusions learned from an article into your own research or perspective in the classroom or research lab. You may find that this process strengthens your understanding, leads you toward new and unexpected interests or research questions, or returns you back to the original article with new questions and critiques of the work. All of these experiences are part of the “active reading”: process and are signs of a successful reading experience.

In summary, practice these rules to learn how to read a scientific article, keeping in mind that this process will get easier (and faster) with experience. We are firm believers that an hour in the library will save a week at the bench; this diligent practice will ultimately make you both a more knowledgeable and productive scientist. As you develop the skills to read an article, try to also foster good reading and learning habits for yourself (recommendations here: [ 6 ] and [ 7 ], respectively) and in others. Good luck and happy reading!

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the mentors, teachers, and students who have shaped our thoughts on reading, learning, and what science is all about.

• 1. Brown E. The Weird Sisters. G. P. Putnam’s Sons; 2011.
• View Article
• Google Scholar
• PubMed/NCBI

How to Read a Research Paper – A Guide to Setting Research Goals, Finding Papers to Read, and More

If you work in a scientific field, you should try to build a deep and unbiased understanding of that field. This not only educates you in the best possible way but also helps you envision the opportunities in your space.

A research paper is often the culmination of a wide range of deep and authentic practices surrounding a topic. When writing a research paper, the author thinks critically about the problem, performs rigorous research, evaluates their processes and sources, organizes their thoughts, and then writes. These genuinely-executed practices make for a good research paper.

If you’re struggling to build a habit of reading papers (like I am) on a regular basis, I’ve tried to break down the whole process. I've talked to researchers in the field, read a bunch of papers and blogs from distinguished researchers, and jotted down some techniques that you can follow.

Let’s start off by understanding what a research paper is and what it is NOT!

What is a Research Paper?

A research paper is a dense and detailed manuscript that compiles a thorough understanding of a problem or topic. It offers a proposed solution and further research along with the conditions under which it was deduced and carried out, the efficacy of the solution and the research performed, and potential loopholes in the study.

A research paper is written not only to provide an exceptional learning opportunity but also to pave the way for further advancements in the field. These papers help other scholars germinate the thought seed that can either lead to a new world of ideas or an innovative method of solving a longstanding problem.

What Research Papers are NOT

There is a common notion that a research paper is a well-informed summary of a problem or topic written by means of other sources.

But you shouldn't mistake it for a book or an opinionated account of an individual’s interpretation of a particular topic.

Why Should You Read Research Papers?

What I find fascinating about reading a good research paper is that you can draw on a profound study of a topic and engage with the community on a new perspective to understand what can be achieved in and around that topic.

I work at the intersection of instructional design and data science. Learning is part of my day-to-day responsibilities. If the source of my education is flawed or inefficient, I’d fail at my job in the long term. This applies to many other jobs in Science with a special focus on research.

There are three important reasons to read a research paper:

• Knowledge —  Understanding the problem from the eyes of someone who has probably spent years solving it and has taken care of all the edge cases that you might not think of at the beginning.
• Exploration —  Whether you have a pinpointed agenda or not, there is a very high chance that you will stumble upon an edge case or a shortcoming that is worth following up. With persistent efforts over a considerable amount of time, you can learn to use that knowledge to make a living.
• Research and review —  One of the main reasons for writing a research paper is to further the development in the field. Researchers read papers to review them for conferences or to do a literature survey of a new field. For example, Yann LeCun’ s paper on integrating domain constraints into backpropagation set the foundation of modern computer vision back in 1989. After decades of research and development work, we have come so far that we're now perfecting problems like object detection and optimizing autonomous vehicles.

Not only that, with the help of the internet, you can extrapolate all of these reasons or benefits onto multiple business models. It can be an innovative state-of-the-art product, an efficient service model, a content creator, or a dream job where you are solving problems that matter to you.

Goals for Reading a Research Paper — What Should You Read About?

The first thing to do is to figure out your motivation for reading the paper. There are two main scenarios that might lead you to read a paper:

• Scenario 1 —  You have a well-defined agenda/goal and you are deeply invested in a particular field. For example, you’re an NLP practitioner and you want to learn how GPT-4 has given us a breakthrough in NLP. This is always a nice scenario to be in as it offers clarity.
• Scenario 2 —  You want to keep abreast of the developments in a host of areas, say how a new deep learning architecture has helped us solve a 50-year old biological problem of understanding protein structures. This is often the case for beginners or for people who consume their daily dose of news from research papers (yes, they exist!).

If you’re an inquisitive beginner with no starting point in mind, start with scenario 2. Shortlist a few topics you want to read about until you find an area that you find intriguing. This will eventually lead you to scenario 1.

ML Reproducibility Challenge

In addition to these generic goals, if you need an end goal for your habit-building exercise of reading research papers, you should check out the ML reproducibility challenge.

You’ll find top-class papers from world-class conferences that are worth diving deep into and reproducing the results.

They conduct this challenge twice a year and they have one coming up in Spring 2021. You should study the past three versions of the challenge, and I’ll write a detailed post on what to expect, how to prepare, and so on.

Now you must be wondering – how can you find the right paper to read?

How to Find the Right Paper to Read

In order to get some ideas around this, I reached out to my friend, Anurag Ghosh who is a researcher at Microsoft. Anurag has been working at the crossover of computer vision, machine learning, and systems engineering.

Here are a few of his tips for getting started:

• Always pick an area you're interested in.
• Read a few good books or detailed blog posts on that topic and start diving deep by reading the papers referenced in those resources.
• Look for seminal papers around that topic. These are papers that report a major breakthrough in the field and offer a new method perspective with a huge potential for subsequent research in that field. Check out papers from the morning paper or C VF - test of time award/Helmholtz prize (if you're interested in computer vision).
• Check out books like Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications by Richard Szeliski and look for the papers referenced there.
• Have and build a sense of community. Find people who share similar interests, and join groups/subreddits/discord channels where such activities are promoted.

In addition to these invaluable tips, there are a number of web applications that I’ve shortlisted that help me narrow my search for the right papers to read:

• r/MachineLearning  — there are many researchers, practitioners, and engineers who share their work along with the papers they've found useful in achieving those results.

• Arxiv Sanity Preserver  — built by Andrej Karpathy to accelerate research. It is a repository of 142,846 papers from computer science, machine learning, systems, AI, Stats, CV, and so on. It also offers a bunch of filters, powerful search functionality, and a discussion forum to make for a super useful research platform.

• Google Research  — the research teams at Google are working on problems that have an impact on our everyday lives. They share their publications for individuals and teams to learn from, contribute to, and expedite research. They also have a Google AI blog that you can check out.

How to Read a Research Paper

After you have stocked your to-read list, then comes the process of reading these papers. Remember that NOT every paper is useful to read and we need a mechanism that can help us quickly screen papers that are worth reading.

To tackle this challenge, you can use this Three-Pass Approach by S. Keshav . This approach proposes that you read the paper in three passes instead of starting from the beginning and diving in deep until the end.

The three pass approach

• The first pass —  is a quick scan to capture a high-level view of the paper. Read the title, abstract, and introduction carefully followed by the headings of the sections and subsections and lastly the conclusion. It should take you no more than 5–10 mins to figure out if you want to move to the second pass.
• The second pass —  is a more focused read without checking for the technical proofs. You take down all the crucial notes, underline the key points in the margins. Carefully study the figures, diagrams, and illustrations. Review the graphs, mark relevant unread references for further reading. This helps you understand the background of the paper.
• The third pass —  reaching this pass denotes that you’ve found a paper that you want to deeply understand or review. The key to the third pass is to reproduce the results of the paper. Check it for all the assumptions and jot down all the variations in your re-implementation and the original results. Make a note of all the ideas for future analysis. It should take 5–6 hours for beginners and 1–2 hours for experienced readers.

Tools and Software to Keep Track of Your Pipeline of Papers

If you’re sincere about reading research papers, your list of papers will soon grow into an overwhelming stack that is hard to keep track of. Fortunately, we have software that can help us set up a mechanism to manage our research.

Here are a bunch of them that you can use:

• Mendeley [not free]  — you can add papers directly to your library from your browser, import documents, generate references and citations, collaborate with fellow researchers, and access your library from anywhere. This is mostly used by experienced researchers.

• Zotero [free & open source] —  Along the same lines as Mendeley but free of cost. You can make use of all the features but with limited storage space.

• Notion —  this is great if you are just starting out and want to use something lightweight with the option to organize your papers, jot down notes, and manage everything in one workspace. It might not stand anywhere in comparison with the above tools but I personally feel comfortable using Notion and I have created this board to keep track of my progress for now that you can duplicate:

⚠️ Symptoms of Reading a Research Paper

Reading a research paper can turn out to be frustrating, challenging, and time-consuming especially when you’re a beginner. You might face the following common symptoms:

• You might start feeling dumb for not understanding a thing a paper says.
• Finding yourself pushing too hard to understand the math behind those proofs.
• Beating your head against the wall to wrap it around the number of acronyms used in the paper. Just kidding, you’ll have to look up those acronyms every now and then.
• Being stuck on one paragraph for more than an hour.

Here’s a complete list of emotions that you might undergo as explained by Adam Ruben in this article .

Key Takeaways

We should be all set to dive right in. Here’s a quick summary of what we have covered here:

• A research paper is an in-depth study that offers an detailed explanation of a topic or problem along with the research process, proofs, explained results, and ideas for future work.
• Read research papers to develop a deep understanding of a topic/problem. Then you can either review papers as part of being a researcher, explore the domain and the kind of problems to build a solution or startup around it, or you can simply read them to keep abreast of the developments in your domain of interest.
• If you’re a beginner, start with exploration to soon find your path to goal-oriented research.
• In order to find good papers to read, you can use websites like arxiv-sanity, google research, and subreddits like r/MachineLearning.
• Reading approach — Use the 3-pass method to find a paper.
• Keep track of your research, notes, developments by using tools like Zotero/Notion.
• This can get overwhelming in no time. Make sure you start off easy and increment your load progressively.

Remember: Art is not a single method or step done over a weekend but a process of accomplishing remarkable results over time.

You can also watch the video on this topic on my YouTube channel :

Feel free to respond to this blog or comment on the video if you have some tips, questions, or thoughts!

If this tutorial was helpful, you should check out my data science and machine learning courses on Wiplane Academy . They are comprehensive yet compact and helps you build a solid foundation of work to showcase.

Web and Data Science Consultant | Instructional Design

If you read this far, thank the author to show them you care. Say Thanks

Learn to code for free. freeCodeCamp's open source curriculum has helped more than 40,000 people get jobs as developers. Get started

Reference management. Clean and simple.

How to read a scientific paper: a step-by-step guide

Scientific paper format

How to read a scientific paper in 3 steps, step 1: identify your motivations for reading a scientific paper, step 2: use selective reading to gain a high-level understanding of the scientific paper, step 3: read straight through to achieve a deep understanding of a scientific paper, frequently asked questions about reading a scientific paper efficiently, related articles.

A scientific paper is a complex document. Scientific papers are divided into multiple sections and frequently contain jargon and long sentences that make reading difficult. The process of reading a scientific paper to obtain information can often feel overwhelming for an early career researcher.

But the good news is that you can acquire the skill of efficiently reading a scientific paper, and you can learn how to painlessly obtain the information you need.

In this guide, we show you how to read a scientific paper step-by-step. You will learn:

• The scientific paper format
• How to identify your reasons for reading a scientific paper
• How to skim a paper
• How to achieve a deep understanding of a paper.

Using these steps for reading a scientific paper will help you:

• Obtain information efficiently
• Retain knowledge more effectively
• Allocate sufficient time to your reading task.

The steps below are the result of research into how scientists read scientific papers and our own experiences as scientists.

Firstly, how is a scientific paper structured?

The main sections are Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. In the table below, we describe the purpose of each component of a scientific paper.

Because the structured format of a scientific paper makes it easy to find the information you need, a common technique for reading a scientific paper is to cherry-pick sections and jump around the paper.

In a YouTube video, Dr. Amina Yonis shows this nonlinear practice for reading a scientific paper. She justifies her technique by stating that “By reading research papers like this, you are enabling yourself to have a disciplined approach, and it prevents yourself from drowning in the details before you even get a bird’s-eye view”.

Selective reading is a skill that can help you read faster and engage with the material presented. In his article on active vs. passive reading of scientific papers, cell biologist Tung-Tien Sun defines active reading as "reading with questions in mind" , searching for the answers, and focusing on the parts of the paper that answer your questions.

Therefore, reading a scientific paper from start to finish isn't always necessary to understand it. How you read the paper depends on what you need to learn. For example, oceanographer Ken Hughes suggests that you may read a scientific paper to gain awareness of a theory or field, or you may read to actively solve a problem in your research.

To successfully read a scientific paper, we advise using three strategies:

• Identify your motivations for reading a scientific paper
• Use selective reading to gain a high-level understanding of the scientific paper
• Read straight through to achieve a deep understanding of a scientific paper .

All 3 steps require you to think critically and have questions in mind.

Before you sit down to read a scientific paper, ask yourself these three questions:

• Why do I need to read this paper?
• What information am I looking for?
• Where in the paper am I most likely to find the information I need?

Is it background reading or a literature review for a research project you are currently working on? Are you getting into a new field of research? Do you wish to compare your results with the ones presented in the paper? Are you following an author’s work, and need to keep up-to-date on their current research? Are you keeping tabs on emerging methods in your field?

All of these intentions require a different reading approach.

For example, if you're delving into a new field of research, you'll want to read the introduction to gather background information and seminal references. The discussion section will also be important to understand the broader context of the findings.

If you aim to extend the work presented in a paper, and this study will be the starting point for your work, it's crucial to read the paper deeply.

If your focus is on the study design and techniques used by the authors, you'll spend most of your time reading and understanding the methods section.

Sometimes you'll need to read a paper to discuss it in your own research. This may be to compare or contrast your work with the paper's content, or to stimulate a discussion on future applications of your work.

If you are following an author’s work, a quick skim might suffice to understand how the paper fits into their overall research program.

Tip: Knowing why you want to read the paper facilitates how you will read the paper. Depending on your needs, your approach may take the form of a surface-level reading or a deep and thorough reading.

Knowing your motivations will guide your navigation through the paper because you have already identified which sections are most likely to contain the information you need. Approaching reading a paper in this way saves you time and makes the task less daunting.

➡️ Learn more about how to write a literature review

Begin by gaining an overview of the paper by following these simple steps:

• Read the title. What type of paper is it? Is it a journal article, a review, a methods paper, or a commentary?
• Read the abstract . The abstract is a summary of the study. What is the study about? What question was addressed? What methods were used? What did the authors find, and what are the key findings? What do the authors think are the implications of the work? Reading the abstract immediately tells you whether you should invest the time to read the paper fully.
• Look at the headings and subheadings, which describe the sections and subsections of the paper. The headings and subheadings outline the story of the paper.
• Skim the introduction. An introduction has a clear structure. The first paragraph is background information on the topic. If you are new to the field, you will read this closely, whereas an expert in that field will skim this section. The second component defines the gap in knowledge that the paper aims to address. What is unknown, and what research is needed? What problem needs to be solved? Here, you should find the questions that will be addressed by the study, and the goal of the research. The final paragraph summarizes how the authors address their research question, for example, what hypothesis will be tested, and what predictions the authors make. As you read, make a note of key references. By the end of the introduction, you should understand the goal of the research.
• Go to the results section, and study the figures and tables. These are the data—the meat of the study. Try to comprehend the data before reading the captions. After studying the data, read the captions. Do not expect to understand everything immediately. Remember, this is the result of many years of work. Make a note of what you do not understand. In your second reading, you will read more deeply.
• Skim the discussion. There are three components. The first part of the discussion summarizes what the authors have found, and what they think the implications of the work are. The second part discusses some (usually not all!) limitations of the study, and the final part is a concluding statement.
• Glance at the methods. Get a brief overview of the techniques used in the study. Depending on your reading goals, you may spend a lot of time on this section in subsequent readings, or a cursory reading may be sufficient.
• Summarize what the paper is about—its key take-home message—in a sentence or two. Ask yourself if you have got the information you need.
• List any terminology you may need to look up before reading the paper again.
• Scan the reference list. Make a note of papers you may need to read for background information before delving further into the paper.

Congratulations, you have completed the first reading! You now have gained a high-level perspective of the study, which will be enough for many research purposes.

Now that you have an overview of the work and you have identified what information you want to obtain, you are ready to understand the paper on a deeper level. Deep understanding is achieved in the second and subsequent readings with note-taking and active reflection. Here is a step-by-step guide.

• Active engagement with the material
• Critical thinking
• Creative thinking
• Synthesis of information
• Consolidation of information into memory.

Highlighting sentences helps you quickly scan the paper and be reminded of the key points, which is helpful when you return to the paper later.

Notes may include ideas, connections to other work, questions, comments, and references to follow up on.

There are many ways for taking notes on a paper. You can:

• Print out the paper, and write your notes in the margins.
• Annotate the paper PDF from your desktop computer, or mobile device .
• Use personal knowledge management software, like Notion , Obsidian, or Evernote, for note-taking. Notes are easy to find in a structured database and can be linked to each other.
• Use reference management tools to take notes. Having your notes stored with the scientific papers you’ve read has the benefit of keeping all your ideas in one place. Some reference managers, like Paperpile, allow you to add notes to your papers, and highlight key sentences on PDFs .

Note-taking facilitates critical thinking and helps you evaluate the evidence that the authors present. Ask yourself questions like:

• What new contribution has the study made to the literature?
• How have the authors interpreted the results? (Remember, the authors have thought about their results more deeply than anybody else.)
• What do I think the results mean?
• Are the findings well-supported?
• What factors might have affected the results, and have the authors addressed them?
• Are there alternative explanations for the results?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the study?
• What are the broader implications of the study?
• What should be done next?

Note-taking also encourages creative thinking . Ask yourself questions like:

• What new ideas have arisen from reading the paper?
• How does it connect with your work?
• What connections to other papers can you make?
• Write a summary of the paper in your own words. This is your attempt to integrate the new knowledge you have gained with what you already know from other sources and to consolidate that information into memory. You may find that you have to go back and re-read some sections to confirm some of the details.
• Discuss the paper with others. You may find that even at this stage, there are still aspects of the paper that you are striving to understand. It is now a good time to reach out to others—peers in your program, your advisor, or even on social media. In their 10 simple rules for reading a scientific paper , Maureen Carey and coauthors suggest that participating in journal clubs, where you meet with peers to discuss interesting or important scientific papers, is a great way to clarify your understanding.
• A scientific paper can be read over many days. According to research presented in the book " Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning " by writer Peter Brown and psychology professors Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, "spaced practice" is more effective for retaining information than focusing on a single skill or subject until it is mastered. This involves breaking up learning into separate periods of training or studying. Applying this research to reading a scientific paper suggests that spacing out your reading by breaking the work into separate reading sessions can help you better commit the information in a paper to memory.

A dense journal article may need many readings to be understood fully. It is useful to remember that many scientific papers result from years of hard work, and the expectation of achieving a thorough understanding in one sitting must be modified accordingly. But, the process of reading a scientific paper will get easier and faster with experience.

The best way to read a scientific paper depends on your needs. Before reading the paper, identify your motivations for reading a scientific paper, and pinpoint the information you need. This will help you decide between skimming the paper and reading the paper more thoroughly.

Don’t read the paper from beginning to end. Instead, be aware of the scientific paper format. Take note of the information you need before starting to read the paper. Then skim the paper, jumping to the appropriate sections in the paper, to get the information you require.

It varies. Skimming a scientific paper may take anywhere between 15 minutes to one hour. Reading a scientific paper to obtain a deep understanding may take anywhere between 1 and 6 hours. It is not uncommon to have to read a dense paper in chunks over numerous days.

First, read the introduction to understand the main thesis and findings of the paper. Pay attention to the last paragraph of the introduction, where you can find a high-level summary of the methods and results. Next, skim the paper by jumping to the results and discussion. Then carefully read the paper from start to finish, taking notes as you read. You will need more than one reading to fully understand a dense research paper.

To read a scientific paper critically, be an active reader. Take notes, highlight important sentences, and write down questions as you read. Study the data. Take care to evaluate the evidence presented in the paper.

• USC Libraries
• Research Guides

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

• Reading Research Effectively
• Purpose of Guide
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Glossary of Research Terms
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• Research Process Video Series
• Executive Summary
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• The Research Problem/Question
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Content Alert Services
• Evaluating Sources
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• Tiertiary Sources
• Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Insiderness
• Using Non-Textual Elements
• Limitations of the Study
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism
• Footnotes or Endnotes?
• Further Readings
• Generative AI and Writing
• USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
• Bibliography

Reading a Scholarly Article or Research Paper

Identifying a research problem to investigate usually requires a preliminary search for and critical review of the literature in order to gain an understanding about how scholars have examined a topic. Scholars rarely structure research studies in a way that can be followed like a story; they are complex and detail-intensive and often written in a descriptive and conclusive narrative form. However, in the social and behavioral sciences, journal articles and stand-alone research reports are generally organized in a consistent format that makes it easier to compare and contrast studies and to interpret their contents.

General Reading Strategies

W hen you first read an article or research paper, focus on asking specific questions about each section. This strategy can help with overall comprehension and with understanding how the content relates [or does not relate] to the problem you want to investigate. As you review more and more studies, the process of understanding and critically evaluating the research will become easier because the content of what you review will begin to coalescence around common themes and patterns of analysis. Below are recommendations on how to read each section of a research paper effectively. Note that the sections to read are out of order from how you will find them organized in a journal article or research paper.

1.  Abstract

The abstract summarizes the background, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions of a scholarly article or research paper. Use the abstract to filter out sources that may have appeared useful when you began searching for information but, in reality, are not relevant. Questions to consider when reading the abstract are:

• Is this study related to my question or area of research?
• What is this study about and why is it being done ?
• What is the working hypothesis or underlying thesis?
• What is the primary finding of the study?
• Are there words or terminology that I can use to either narrow or broaden the parameters of my search for more information?

2.  Introduction

If, after reading the abstract, you believe the paper may be useful, focus on examining the research problem and identifying the questions the author is trying to address. This information is usually located within the first few paragraphs of the introduction or in the concluding paragraph. Look for information about how and in what way this relates to what you are investigating. In addition to the research problem, the introduction should provide the main argument and theoretical framework of the study and, in the last paragraphs of the introduction, describe what the author(s) intend to accomplish. Questions to consider when reading the introduction include:

• What is this study trying to prove or disprove?
• What is the author(s) trying to test or demonstrate?
• What do we already know about this topic and what gaps does this study try to fill or contribute a new understanding to the research problem?
• Why should I care about what is being investigated?
• Will this study tell me anything new related to the research problem I am investigating?

3.  Literature Review

The literature review describes and critically evaluates what is already known about a topic. Read the literature review to obtain a big picture perspective about how the topic has been studied and to begin the process of seeing where your potential study fits within the domain of prior research. Questions to consider when reading the literature review include:

• W hat other research has been conducted about this topic and what are the main themes that have emerged?
• What does prior research reveal about what is already known about the topic and what remains to be discovered?
• What have been the most important past findings about the research problem?
• How has prior research led the author(s) to conduct this particular study?
• Is there any prior research that is unique or groundbreaking?
• Are there any studies I could use as a model for designing and organizing my own study?

4.  Discussion/Conclusion

The discussion and conclusion are usually the last two sections of text in a scholarly article or research report. They reveal how the author(s) interpreted the findings of their research and presented recommendations or courses of action based on those findings. Often in the conclusion, the author(s) highlight recommendations for further research that can be used to develop your own study. Questions to consider when reading the discussion and conclusion sections include:

• What is the overall meaning of the study and why is this important? [i.e., how have the author(s) addressed the " So What? " question].
• What do you find to be the most important ways that the findings have been interpreted?
• What are the weaknesses in their argument?
• Do you believe conclusions about the significance of the study and its findings are valid?
• What limitations of the study do the author(s) describe and how might this help formulate my own research?
• Does the conclusion contain any recommendations for future research?

5.  Methods/Methodology

The methods section describes the materials, techniques, and procedures for gathering information used to examine the research problem. If what you have read so far closely supports your understanding of the topic, then move on to examining how the author(s) gathered information during the research process. Questions to consider when reading the methods section include:

• Did the study use qualitative [based on interviews, observations, content analysis], quantitative [based on statistical analysis], or a mixed-methods approach to examining the research problem?
• What was the type of information or data used?
• Could this method of analysis be repeated and can I adopt the same approach?
• Is enough information available to repeat the study or should new data be found to expand or improve understanding of the research problem?

6.  Results

After reading the above sections, you should have a clear understanding of the general findings of the study. Therefore, read the results section to identify how key findings were discussed in relation to the research problem. If any non-textual elements [e.g., graphs, charts, tables, etc.] are confusing, focus on the explanations about them in the text. Questions to consider when reading the results section include:

• W hat did the author(s) find and how did they find it?
• Does the author(s) highlight any findings as most significant?
• Are the results presented in a factual and unbiased way?
• Does the analysis of results in the discussion section agree with how the results are presented?
• Is all the data present and did the author(s) adequately address gaps?
• What conclusions do you formulate from this data and does it match with the author's conclusions?

7.  References

The references list the sources used by the author(s) to document what prior research and information was used when conducting the study. After reviewing the article or research paper, use the references to identify additional sources of information on the topic and to examine critically how these sources supported the overall research agenda. Questions to consider when reading the references include:

• Do the sources cited by the author(s) reflect a diversity of disciplinary viewpoints, i.e., are the sources all from a particular field of study or do the sources reflect multiple areas of study?
• Are there any unique or interesting sources that could be incorporated into my study?
• What other authors are respected in this field, i.e., who has multiple works cited or is cited most often by others?
• What other research should I review to clarify any remaining issues or that I need more information about?

NOTE :  A final strategy in reviewing research is to copy and paste the title of the source [journal article, book, research report] into Google Scholar . If it appears, look for a "cited by" followed by a hyperlinked number [e.g., Cited by 45]. This number indicates how many times the study has been subsequently cited in other, more recently published works. This strategy, known as citation tracking, can be an effective means of expanding your review of pertinent literature based on a study you have found useful and how scholars have cited it. The same strategies described above can be applied to reading articles you find in the list of cited by references.

Reading Tip

Specific Reading Strategies

Effectively reading scholarly research is an acquired skill that involves attention to detail and an ability to comprehend complex ideas, data, and theoretical concepts in a way that applies logically to the research problem you are investigating. Here are some specific reading strategies to consider.

As You are Reading

• Focus on information that is most relevant to the research problem; skim over the other parts.
• As noted above, read content out of order! This isn't a novel; you want to start with the spoiler to quickly assess the relevance of the study.
• Think critically about what you read and seek to build your own arguments; not everything may be entirely valid, examined effectively, or thoroughly investigated.
• Look up the definitions of unfamiliar words, concepts, or terminology. A good scholarly source is Credo Reference .

Taking notes as you read will save time when you go back to examine your sources. Here are some suggestions:

• Mark or highlight important text as you read [e.g., you can use the highlight text  feature in a PDF document]
• Take notes in the margins [e.g., Adobe Reader offers pop-up sticky notes].
• Highlight important quotations; consider using different colors to differentiate between quotes and other types of important text.
• Summarize key points about the study at the end of the paper. To save time, these can be in the form of a concise bulleted list of statements [e.g., intro has provides historical background; lit review has important sources; good conclusions].

Write down thoughts that come to mind that may help clarify your understanding of the research problem. Here are some examples of questions to ask yourself:

• Do I understand all of the terminology and key concepts?
• Do I understand the parts of this study most relevant to my topic?
• What specific problem does the research address and why is it important?
• Are there any issues or perspectives the author(s) did not consider?
• Do I have any reason to question the validity or reliability of this research?
• How do the findings relate to my research interests and to other works which I have read?

Adapted from text originally created by Holly Burt, Behavioral Sciences Librarian, USC Libraries, April 2018.

Another Reading Tip

When is it Important to Read the Entire Article or Research Paper

Laubepin argues, "Very few articles in a field are so important that every word needs to be read carefully." However, this implies that some studies are worth reading carefully. As painful and time-consuming as it may seem, there are valid reasons for reading a study in its entirety from beginning to end. Here are some examples:

• Studies Published Very Recently .  The author(s) of a recent, well written study will provide a survey of the most important or impactful prior research in the literature review section. This can establish an understanding of how scholars in the past addressed the research problem. In addition, the most recently published sources will highlight what is currently known and what gaps in understanding currently exist about a topic, usually in the form of the need for further research in the conclusion .
• Surveys of the Research Problem .  Some papers provide a comprehensive analytical overview of the research problem. Reading this type of study can help you understand underlying issues and discover why scholars have chosen to investigate the topic. This is particularly important if the study was published very recently because the author(s) should cite all or most of the key prior research on the topic. Note that, if it is a long-standing problem, there may be studies that specifically review the literature to identify gaps that remain. These studies often include the word review in their title [e.g., Hügel, Stephan, and Anna R. Davies. "Public Participation, Engagement, and Climate Change Adaptation: A Review of the Research Literature." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 11 (July-August 2020): https://doi.org/10.1002/ wcc.645].
• Highly Cited .  If you keep coming across the same citation to a study while you are reviewing the literature, this implies it was foundational in establishing an understanding of the research problem or the study had a significant impact within the literature [positive or negative]. Carefully reading a highly cited source can help you understand how the topic emerged and motivated scholars to further investigate the problem. It also could be a study you need to cite as foundational in your own paper to demonstrate to the reader that you understand the roots of the problem.
• Historical Overview .  Knowing the historical background of a research problem may not be the focus of your analysis. Nevertheless, carefully reading a study that provides a thorough description and analysis of the history behind an event, issue, or phenomenon can add important context to understanding the topic and what aspect of the problem you may want to examine further.
• Innovative Methodological Design .  Some studies are significant and worth reading in their entirety because the author(s) designed a unique or innovative approach to researching the problem. This may justify reading the entire study because it can motivate you to think creatively about pursuing an alternative or non-traditional approach to examining your topic of interest. These types of studies are generally easy to identify because they are often cited in others works because of their unique approach to studying the research problem.
• Cross-disciplinary Approach .  R eviewing studies produced outside of your discipline is an essential component of investigating research problems in the social and behavioral sciences. Consider reading a study that was conducted by author(s) based in a different discipline [e.g., an anthropologist studying political cultures; a study of hiring practices in companies published in a sociology journal]. This approach can generate a new understanding or a unique perspective about the topic . If you are not sure how to search for studies published in a discipline outside of your major or of the course you are taking, contact a librarian for assistance.

Laubepin, Frederique. How to Read (and Understand) a Social Science Journal Article . Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ISPSR), 2013; Shon, Phillip Chong Ho. How to Read Journal Articles in the Social Sciences: A Very Practical Guide for Students . 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015; Lockhart, Tara, and Mary Soliday. "The Critical Place of Reading in Writing Transfer (and Beyond): A Report of Student Experiences." Pedagogy 16 (2016): 23-37; Maguire, Moira, Ann Everitt Reynolds, and Brid Delahunt. "Reading to Be: The Role of Academic Reading in Emergent Academic and Professional Student Identities." Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice 17 (2020): 5-12.

• << Previous: 1. Choosing a Research Problem
• Next: Narrowing a Topic Idea >>
• Last Updated: Apr 1, 2024 9:56 AM
• URL: https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide

• Make an Appointment
• Study Connect
• Request Workshop

How to read and understand a scientific paper

How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists, london school of economics and political science, jennifer raff.

From vaccinations to climate change, getting science wrong has very real consequences. But journal articles, a primary way science is communicated in academia, are a different format to newspaper articles or blogs and require a level of skill and undoubtedly a greater amount of patience. Here  Jennifer Raff   has prepared a helpful guide for non-scientists on how to read a scientific paper. These steps and tips will be useful to anyone interested in the presentation of scientific findings and raise important points for scientists to consider with their own writing practice.

My post,  The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google  sparked a very lively discussion, with comments from several people trying to persuade me (and the other readers) that  their  paper disproved everything that I’d been saying. While I encourage you to go read the comments and contribute your own, here I want to focus on the much larger issue that this debate raised: what constitutes scientific authority?

It’s not just a fun academic problem. Getting the science wrong has very real consequences. For example, when a community doesn’t vaccinate children because they’re afraid of “toxins” and think that prayer (or diet, exercise, and “clean living”) is enough to prevent infection, outbreaks happen.

“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter

What constitutes enough proof? Obviously everyone has a different answer to that question. But to form a truly educated opinion on a scientific subject, you need to become familiar with current research in that field. And to do that, you have to read the “primary research literature” (often just called “the literature”). You might have tried to read scientific papers before and been frustrated by the dense, stilted writing and the unfamiliar jargon. I remember feeling this way!  Reading and understanding research papers is a skill which every single doctor and scientist has had to learn during graduate school.  You can learn it too, but like any skill it takes patience and practice.

I want to help people become more scientifically literate, so I wrote this guide for how a layperson can approach reading and understanding a scientific research paper. It’s appropriate for someone who has no background whatsoever in science or medicine, and based on the assumption that he or she is doing this for the purpose of getting a  basic  understanding of a paper and deciding whether or not it’s a reputable study.

The type of scientific paper I’m discussing here is referred to as a  primary research article . It’s a peer-reviewed report of new research on a specific question (or questions). Another useful type of publication is a  review article . Review articles are also peer-reviewed, and don’t present new information, but summarize multiple primary research articles, to give a sense of the consensus, debates, and unanswered questions within a field.  (I’m not going to say much more about them here, but be cautious about which review articles you read. Remember that they are only a snapshot of the research at the time they are published.  A review article on, say, genome-wide association studies from 2001 is not going to be very informative in 2013. So much research has been done in the intervening years that the field has changed considerably).

Before you begin: some general advice

Reading a scientific paper is a completely different process than reading an article about science in a blog or newspaper. Not only do you read the sections in a different order than they’re presented, but you also have to take notes, read it multiple times, and probably go look up other papers for some of the details. Reading a single paper may take you a very long time at first. Be patient with yourself. The process will go much faster as you gain experience.

Most primary research papers will be divided into the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions/Interpretations/Discussion. The order will depend on which journal it’s published in. Some journals have additional files (called Supplementary Online Information) which contain important details of the research, but are published online instead of in the article itself (make sure you don’t skip these files).

Before you begin reading, take note of the authors and their institutional affiliations. Some institutions (e.g. University of Texas) are well-respected; others (e.g.  the Discovery Institute ) may appear to be legitimate research institutions but are actually agenda-driven.  Tip:  g oogle  “Discovery Institute” to see why you don’t want to use it as a scientific authority on evolutionary theory.

Also take note of the journal in which it’s published. Reputable (biomedical) journals will be indexed by  Pubmed . [EDIT: Several people have reminded me that non-biomedical journals won’t be on Pubmed, and they’re absolutely correct! (thanks for catching that, I apologize for being sloppy here). Check out  Web of Science  for a more complete index of science journals. And please feel free to share other resources in the comments!]  Beware of  questionable journals .

As you read, write down  every single word  that you don’t understand. You’re going to have to look them all up (yes, every one. I know it’s a total pain. But you won’t understand the paper if you don’t understand the vocabulary. Scientific words have extremely precise meanings).

Step-by-step instructions for reading a primary research article

1. Begin by reading the introduction, not the abstract.

The abstract is that dense first paragraph at the very beginning of a paper. In fact, that’s often the only part of a paper that many non-scientists read when they’re trying to build a scientific argument. (This is a terrible practice—don’t do it.).  When I’m choosing papers to read, I decide what’s relevant to my interests based on a combination of the title and abstract. But when I’ve got a collection of papers assembled for deep reading, I always read the abstract last. I do this because abstracts contain a succinct summary of the entire paper, and I’m concerned about inadvertently becoming biased by the authors’ interpretation of the results.

2. Identify the BIG QUESTION.

Not “What is this paper about”, but “What problem is this entire field trying to solve?”

This helps you focus on why this research is being done.  Look closely for evidence of agenda-motivated research.

3. Summarize the background in five sentences or less.

Here are some questions to guide you:

What work has been done before in this field to answer the BIG QUESTION? What are the limitations of that work? What, according to the authors, needs to be done next?

The five sentences part is a little arbitrary, but it forces you to be concise and really think about the context of this research. You need to be able to explain why this research has been done in order to understand it.

4.   Identify the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)

What  exactly  are the authors trying to answer with their research? There may be multiple questions, or just one. Write them down.  If it’s the kind of research that tests one or more null hypotheses, identify it/them.

Not sure what a null hypothesis is? Go read this one  and try to identify the null hypotheses in it. Keep in mind that not every paper will test a null hypothesis.

5. Identify the approach

What are the authors going to do to answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)?

6. Now read the methods section. Draw a diagram for each experiment, showing exactly what the authors did.

I mean  literally  draw it. Include as much detail as you need to fully understand the work.  As an example, here is what I drew to sort out the methods for a paper I read today ( Battaglia et al. 2013: “The first peopling of South America: New evidence from Y-chromosome haplogroup Q” ). This is much less detail than you’d probably need, because it’s a paper in my specialty and I use these methods all the time.  But if you were reading this, and didn’t happen to know what “process data with reduced-median method using Network” means, you’d need to look that up.

Image credit: author

You don’t need to understand the methods in enough detail to replicate the experiment—that’s something reviewers have to do—but you’re not ready to move on to the results until you can explain the basics of the methods to someone else.

7.   Read the results section. Write one or more paragraphs to summarize the results for each experiment, each figure, and each table. Don’t yet try to decide what the results  mean , just write down what they  are.

You’ll find that, particularly in good papers, the majority of the results are summarized in the figures and tables. Pay careful attention to them!  You may also need to go to the Supplementary Online Information file to find some of the results.

 It is at this point where difficulties can arise if statistical tests are employed in the paper and you don’t have enough of a background to understand them. I can’t teach you stats in this post, but  here , and here   are some basic resources to help you.  I STRONGLY advise you to become familiar with them.

Things to pay attention to in the results section:

• Any time the words “significant” or “non-significant” are used. These have precise statistical meanings. Read more about this  here .
• If there are graphs, do they have  error bars  on them? For certain types of studies, a lack of confidence intervals is a major red flag.
• The sample size. Has the study been conducted on 10, or 10,000 people? (For some research purposes, a sample size of 10 is sufficient, but for most studies larger is better).

8. Do the results answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)? What do you think they mean?

Don’t move on until you have thought about this. It’s okay to change your mind in light of the authors’ interpretation—in fact you probably will if you’re still a beginner at this kind of analysis—but it’s a really good habit to start forming your own interpretations before you read those of others.

9. Read the conclusion/discussion/Interpretation section.

What do the authors think the results mean? Do you agree with them? Can you come up with any alternative way of interpreting them? Do the authors identify any weaknesses in their own study? Do you see any that the authors missed? (Don’t assume they’re infallible!) What do they propose to do as a next step? Do you agree with that?

10. Now, go back to the beginning and read the abstract.

Does it match what the authors said in the paper? Does it fit with your interpretation of the paper?

11. FINAL STEP:  (Don’t neglect doing this)  What do other researchers say about this paper?

Who are the (acknowledged or self-proclaimed) experts in this particular field? Do they have criticisms of the study that you haven’t thought of, or do they generally support it?

Here’s a place where I do recommend you use google! But do it last, so you are better prepared to think critically about what other people say.

(12. This step may be optional for you, depending on why you’re reading a particular paper. But for me, it’s critical! I go through the “Literature cited” section to see what other papers the authors cited. This allows me to better identify the important papers in a particular field, see if the authors cited my own papers (KIDDING!….mostly), and find sources of useful ideas or techniques.)

UPDATE: If you would like to see an example of how to read a science paper using this framework, you can find one  here .

I gratefully acknowledge Professors José Bonner and Bill Saxton for teaching me how to critically read and analyze scientific papers using this method. I’m honored to have the chance to pass along what they taught me.

I’ve written a shorter version of this guide for teachers to hand out to their classes. If you’d like a PDF, shoot me an email: jenniferraff (at) utexas (dot) edu. For further comments and additional questions on this guide, please see the Comments Section on  the original post .

This piece originally appeared on the  author’s personal blog  and is reposted with permission.

Featured image credit:  Scientists in a laboratory of the University of La Rioja  by  Urcomunicacion  (Wikimedia CC BY3.0)

Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the LSE Impact blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our  Comments Policy  if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.

Jennifer Raff (Indiana University—dual Ph.D. in genetics and bioanthropology) is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas, director and Principal Investigator of the KU Laboratory of Human Population Genomics, and assistant director of KU’s Laboratory of Biological Anthropology. She is also a research affiliate with the University of Texas anthropological genetics laboratory. She is keenly interested in public outreach and scientific literacy, writing about topics in science and pseudoscience for her blog ( violentmetaphors.com ), the Huffington Post, and for the  Social Evolution Forum .

• Learning Consultations
• Peer Tutoring
• Getting Started
• Peer Education Courses
• Become a Peer Educator
• ADHD/LD Support
• Workshops & Outreach
• Learning Strategies
• Manage Time
• All Resources
• For Faculty & Staff

On reading research papers

We’ll be reading a lot of research papers in this course, so over the semester you will naturally develop your own way to read a research paper. Use these guides to get started.

First, some basic points; then, concrete reading guides.

A research paper encapsulates enormous effort

A good research paper distills significant work by its authors. My group has worked for years on tens of thousands of lines of code and huge numbers of experiments, most of which got thrown away, to produce a single 12-page paper. A paper’s authors are trying to boil down everything they learned into something you can digest. A single sentence may represent a full year of misdirected effort.

Of course, there are many kinds of effort, and a great research paper may represent a flash of insight rather than toil. That insight still required real work, namely everything the researcher did to prepare themselves to receive it.

A research paper encapsulates a moment in history

Any research paper is a picture of its time. The paper was written in a context shaped by technology and society. What hardware was available? What kinds of research were exciting to the community at the time? What kinds of research were being funded? An open reading can teach you a lot about what people were thinking in the months and years before publication.

A research paper deserves critical attention

As of 2019, more than 7 million scientific papers are published per year . They are not all equally good; some are outright fraudulent. We will try to avoid the really bad ones, but you will still find that all research papers have weaknesses, and for some papers the weaknesses may overwhelm the strengths. Some papers fail on their own terms when read carefully; some will fail to interest you because of your own cast of mind. Nevertheless, you can and should learn something from each paper.

You owe a research paper nothing

When you read a paper, your goal is extractive : What can this paper teach you , now ? A paper is not a precious artwork demanding a respectful, hushed approach. Skim it, skip around in it, disagree with it, rip it apart—whatever it takes to learn what you can—and when you’ve learned what you can, drop it. Despite the effort and history that formed the paper, you owe the paper nothing.

I read best when I read with curiosity, openness, and skepticism. The skepticism keeps me curious: What’s really going on in these experiments? The openness keeps me interested: even if I’m not interested in the topic, maybe there’s some trick I could learn from; and maybe the paper will show me why I should care about the topic after all.

Concrete reading guides

These guides have concrete advice on the reading process. Keshav’s is especially well known in the systems community.

• S. Keshav’s “How to Read a Paper”
• Michael Mitzenmacher’s “How to Read a Research Paper”
• Jennifer Raff’s “How to Read and Understand a Scientific Article”

These guides are great. They also contradict. (Keshav says to read the abstract first; Raff says to never read the abstract until the end.) There’s no one right way to read a paper. The literatures in different sciences have different qualities (for example, unfortunately for you, computer systems papers tend to be verbose), and our minds are different. We also read for different goals. Reading a paper in order to review it requires more antagonism than reading a long-published, well-cited work. And particularly at the beginning of this course, when we are reading multiple historical papers per course meeting rather than one current paper, I expect you to spend less than “three to four hours” per paper!

Public reading groups

You may be interested in these public examples of reading research papers.

• Adrian Colyer’s “The Morning Paper” blog (on hiatus, but great archives)
• Papers We Love

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• PLoS Comput Biol
• v.16(7); 2020 Jul

Ten simple rules for reading a scientific paper

Maureen a. carey.

Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health, Department of Medicine, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, United States of America

Kevin L. Steiner

William a. petri, jr, introduction.

“There is no problem that a library card can't solve” according to author Eleanor Brown [ 1 ]. This advice is sound, probably for both life and science, but even the best tool (like the library) is most effective when accompanied by instructions and a basic understanding of how and when to use it.

For many budding scientists, the first day in a new lab setting often involves a stack of papers, an email full of links to pertinent articles, or some promise of a richer understanding so long as one reads enough of the scientific literature. However, the purpose and approach to reading a scientific article is unlike that of reading a news story, novel, or even a textbook and can initially seem unapproachable. Having good habits for reading scientific literature is key to setting oneself up for success, identifying new research questions, and filling in the gaps in one’s current understanding; developing these good habits is the first crucial step.

Advice typically centers around two main tips: read actively and read often. However, active reading, or reading with an intent to understand, is both a learned skill and a level of effort. Although there is no one best way to do this, we present 10 simple rules, relevant to novices and seasoned scientists alike, to teach our strategy for active reading based on our experience as readers and as mentors of undergraduate and graduate researchers, medical students, fellows, and early career faculty. Rules 1–5 are big picture recommendations. Rules 6–8 relate to philosophy of reading. Rules 9–10 guide the “now what?” questions one should ask after reading and how to integrate what was learned into one’s own science.

Rule 1: Pick your reading goal

What you want to get out of an article should influence your approach to reading it. Table 1 includes a handful of example intentions and how you might prioritize different parts of the same article differently based on your goals as a reader.

1 Yay! Welcome!

2 A journal club is when a group of scientists get together to discuss a paper. Usually one person leads the discussion and presents all of the data. The group discusses their own interpretations and the authors’ interpretation.

Rule 2: Understand the author’s goal

In written communication, the reader and the writer are equally important. Both influence the final outcome: in this case, your scientific understanding! After identifying your goal, think about the author’s goal for sharing this project. This will help you interpret the data and understand the author’s interpretation of the data. However, this requires some understanding of who the author(s) are (e.g., what are their scientific interests?), the scientific field in which they work (e.g., what techniques are available in this field?), and how this paper fits into the author’s research (e.g., is this work building on an author’s longstanding project or controversial idea?). This information may be hard to glean without experience and a history of reading. But don’t let this be a discouragement to starting the process; it is by the act of reading that this experience is gained!

A good step toward understanding the goal of the author(s) is to ask yourself: What kind of article is this? Journals publish different types of articles, including methods, review, commentary, resources, and research articles as well as other types that are specific to a particular journal or groups of journals. These article types have different formatting requirements and expectations for content. Knowing the article type will help guide your evaluation of the information presented. Is the article a methods paper, presenting a new technique? Is the article a review article, intended to summarize a field or problem? Is it a commentary, intended to take a stand on a controversy or give a big picture perspective on a problem? Is it a resource article, presenting a new tool or data set for others to use? Is it a research article, written to present new data and the authors’ interpretation of those data? The type of paper, and its intended purpose, will get you on your way to understanding the author’s goal.

Rule 3: Ask six questions

When reading, ask yourself: (1) What do the author(s) want to know (motivation)? (2) What did they do (approach/methods)? (3) Why was it done that way (context within the field)? (4) What do the results show (figures and data tables)? (5) How did the author(s) interpret the results (interpretation/discussion)? (6) What should be done next? (Regarding this last question, the author(s) may provide some suggestions in the discussion, but the key is to ask yourself what you think should come next.)

Each of these questions can and should be asked about the complete work as well as each table, figure, or experiment within the paper. Early on, it can take a long time to read one article front to back, and this can be intimidating. Break down your understanding of each section of the work with these questions to make the effort more manageable.

Rule 4: Unpack each figure and table

Scientists write original research papers primarily to present new data that may change or reinforce the collective knowledge of a field. Therefore, the most important parts of this type of scientific paper are the data. Some people like to scrutinize the figures and tables (including legends) before reading any of the “main text”: because all of the important information should be obtained through the data. Others prefer to read through the results section while sequentially examining the figures and tables as they are addressed in the text. There is no correct or incorrect approach: Try both to see what works best for you. The key is making sure that one understands the presented data and how it was obtained.

For each figure, work to understand each x- and y-axes, color scheme, statistical approach (if one was used), and why the particular plotting approach was used. For each table, identify what experimental groups and variables are presented. Identify what is shown and how the data were collected. This is typically summarized in the legend or caption but often requires digging deeper into the methods: Do not be afraid to refer back to the methods section frequently to ensure a full understanding of how the presented data were obtained. Again, ask the questions in Rule 3 for each figure or panel and conclude with articulating the “take home” message.

Rule 5: Understand the formatting intentions

Just like the overall intent of the article (discussed in Rule 2), the intent of each section within a research article can guide your interpretation. Some sections are intended to be written as objective descriptions of the data (i.e., the Results section), whereas other sections are intended to present the author’s interpretation of the data. Remember though that even “objective” sections are written by and, therefore, influenced by the authors interpretations. Check out Table 2 to understand the intent of each section of a research article. When reading a specific paper, you can also refer to the journal’s website to understand the formatting intentions. The “For Authors” section of a website will have some nitty gritty information that is less relevant for the reader (like word counts) but will also summarize what the journal editors expect in each section. This will help to familiarize you with the goal of each article section.

Research articles typically contain each of these sections, although sometimes the “results” and “discussion” sections (or “discussion” and “conclusion” sections) are merged into one section. Additional sections may be included, based on request of the journal or the author(s). Keep in mind: If it was included, someone thought it was important for you to read.

Rule 6: Be critical

Published papers are not truths etched in stone. Published papers in high impact journals are not truths etched in stone. Published papers by bigwigs in the field are not truths etched in stone. Published papers that seem to agree with your own hypothesis or data are not etched in stone. Published papers that seem to refute your hypothesis or data are not etched in stone.

Science is a never-ending work in progress, and it is essential that the reader pushes back against the author’s interpretation to test the strength of their conclusions. Everyone has their own perspective and may interpret the same data in different ways. Mistakes are sometimes published, but more often these apparent errors are due to other factors such as limitations of a methodology and other limits to generalizability (selection bias, unaddressed, or unappreciated confounders). When reading a paper, it is important to consider if these factors are pertinent.

Critical thinking is a tough skill to learn but ultimately boils down to evaluating data while minimizing biases. Ask yourself: Are there other, equally likely, explanations for what is observed? In addition to paying close attention to potential biases of the study or author(s), a reader should also be alert to one’s own preceding perspective (and biases). Take time to ask oneself: Do I find this paper compelling because it affirms something I already think (or wish) is true? Or am I discounting their findings because it differs from what I expect or from my own work?

The phenomenon of a self-fulfilling prophecy, or expectancy, is well studied in the psychology literature [ 2 ] and is why many studies are conducted in a “blinded” manner [ 3 ]. It refers to the idea that a person may assume something to be true and their resultant behavior aligns to make it true. In other words, as humans and scientists, we often find exactly what we are looking for. A scientist may only test their hypotheses and fail to evaluate alternative hypotheses; perhaps, a scientist may not be aware of alternative, less biased ways to test her or his hypothesis that are typically used in different fields. Individuals with different life, academic, and work experiences may think of several alternative hypotheses, all equally supported by the data.

Rule 7: Be kind

The author(s) are human too. So, whenever possible, give them the benefit of the doubt. An author may write a phrase differently than you would, forcing you to reread the sentence to understand it. Someone in your field may neglect to cite your paper because of a reference count limit. A figure panel may be misreferenced as Supplemental Fig 3E when it is obviously Supplemental Fig 4E. While these things may be frustrating, none are an indication that the quality of work is poor. Try to avoid letting these minor things influence your evaluation and interpretation of the work.

Similarly, if you intend to share your critique with others, be extra kind. An author (especially the lead author) may invest years of their time into a single paper. Hearing a kindly phrased critique can be difficult but constructive. Hearing a rude, brusque, or mean-spirited critique can be heartbreaking, especially for young scientists or those seeking to establish their place within a field and who may worry that they do not belong.

Rule 8: Be ready to go the extra mile

To truly understand a scientific work, you often will need to look up a term, dig into the supplemental materials, or read one or more of the cited references. This process takes time. Some advisors recommend reading an article three times: The first time, simply read without the pressure of understanding or critiquing the work. For the second time, aim to understand the paper. For the third read through, take notes.

Some people engage with a paper by printing it out and writing all over it. The reader might write question marks in the margins to mark parts (s)he wants to return to, circle unfamiliar terms (and then actually look them up!), highlight or underline important statements, and draw arrows linking figures and the corresponding interpretation in the discussion. Not everyone needs a paper copy to engage in the reading process but, whatever your version of “printing it out” is, do it.

Rule 9: Talk about it

Talking about an article in a journal club or more informal environment forces active reading and participation with the material. Studies show that teaching is one of the best ways to learn and that teachers learn the material even better as the teaching task becomes more complex [ 4 – 5 ]; anecdotally, such observations inspired the phrase “to teach is to learn twice.”

Beyond formal settings such as journal clubs, lab meetings, and academic classes, discuss papers with your peers, mentors, and colleagues in person or electronically. Twitter and other social media platforms have become excellent resources for discussing papers with other scientists, the public or your nonscientist friends, or even the paper’s author(s). Describing a paper can be done at multiple levels and your description can contain all of the scientific details, only the big picture summary, or perhaps the implications for the average person in your community. All of these descriptions will solidify your understanding, while highlighting gaps in your knowledge and informing those around you.

Rule 10: Build on it

One approach we like to use for communicating how we build on the scientific literature is by starting research presentations with an image depicting a wall of Lego bricks. Each brick is labeled with the reference for a paper, and the wall highlights the body of literature on which the work is built. We describe the work and conclusions of each paper represented by a labeled brick and discuss each brick and the wall as a whole. The top brick on the wall is left blank: We aspire to build on this work and label this brick with our own work. We then delve into our own research, discoveries, and the conclusions it inspires. We finish our presentations with the image of the Legos and summarize our presentation on that empty brick.

Whether you are reading an article to understand a new topic area or to move a research project forward, effective learning requires that you integrate knowledge from multiple sources (“click” those Lego bricks together) and build upwards. Leveraging published work will enable you to build a stronger and taller structure. The first row of bricks is more stable once a second row is assembled on top of it and so on and so forth. Moreover, the Lego construction will become taller and larger if you build upon the work of others, rather than using only your own bricks.

Build on the article you read by thinking about how it connects to ideas described in other papers and within own work, implementing a technique in your own research, or attempting to challenge or support the hypothesis of the author(s) with a more extensive literature review. Integrate the techniques and scientific conclusions learned from an article into your own research or perspective in the classroom or research lab. You may find that this process strengthens your understanding, leads you toward new and unexpected interests or research questions, or returns you back to the original article with new questions and critiques of the work. All of these experiences are part of the “active reading”: process and are signs of a successful reading experience.

In summary, practice these rules to learn how to read a scientific article, keeping in mind that this process will get easier (and faster) with experience. We are firm believers that an hour in the library will save a week at the bench; this diligent practice will ultimately make you both a more knowledgeable and productive scientist. As you develop the skills to read an article, try to also foster good reading and learning habits for yourself (recommendations here: [ 6 ] and [ 7 ], respectively) and in others. Good luck and happy reading!

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the mentors, teachers, and students who have shaped our thoughts on reading, learning, and what science is all about.

Funding Statement

MAC was supported by the PhRMA Foundation's Postdoctoral Fellowship in Translational Medicine and Therapeutics and the University of Virginia's Engineering-in-Medicine seed grant, and KLS was supported by the NIH T32 Global Biothreats Training Program at the University of Virginia (AI055432). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

How to Read Research Papers: A Cheat Sheet for Graduate Students

• August 4, 2022
• PRODUCTIVITY

It is crucial to stay on top of the scientific literature in your field of interest. This will help you shape and guide your experimental plans and keep you informed about what your competitors are working on.

To get the most out of your literature reading time, you need to learn how to read scientific papers efficiently. The problem is that we simply don’t have enough time to read new scientific papers in our results-driven world. 

It takes a great deal of time for researchers to learn how to read research papers. Unfortunately, this skill is rarely taught.

I wasted a lot of time reading unnecessary papers in the past since I didn’t have an appropriate workflow to follow. In particular, I needed a way to determine if a paper would interest me before I read it from start to finish.

So, what’s the solution?

This is where I came across the Three-pass method for reading research papers. 

Here’s what I’ve learned from using the three pass methods and what tweaks I’ve made to my workflow to make it more personalized.

Build time into your schedule 

Before you read anything, you should set aside a set amount of time to read research papers. It will be very hard to read research papers if you do not have a schedule because you will only try to read them for a week or two, and then you will feel frustrated. An organized schedule reduces procrastination significantly.

 For example, I take 30-40 minutes each weekday morning to read a research paper I come across.

After you have determined a time “only” to read research papers, you have to have a proper workflow.

Develop a workflow

For example, I follow a customized version of the popular workflow, the “Three-pass method”. 

When you are beginning, you may follow the method exactly as described, but as you get more experienced, you can make some changes down the road.

Why you shouldn’t read the entire paper at once?

Oftentimes, the papers you think are so important and that you should read every single word are actually worth only 10 minutes of your time.

Unlike reading an article about science in a blog or newspaper, reading research papers is an entirely different experience. In addition to reading the sections in a different order, you must take notes, read them several times, and probably look up other papers for details. 

It may take you a long time to read one paper at first. But that’s okay because you are investing yourself in the process.

However, you’re wasting your time if you don’t have a proper workflow. 

Oftentimes, reading a whole paper might not be necessary to get the specific information you need.

The Three-pass concept

The key idea is to read the paper in up to three passes rather than starting at the beginning and plowing through it. With each pass, you accomplish specific goals and build upon the previous one.

The first pass gives you a general idea of the paper. A second pass will allow you to understand the content of the paper, but not its details. A third pass helps you understand the paper more deeply.

The first pass (Maximum: 10 minutes)

The paper is scanned quickly in the first pass to get an overview. Also, you can decide if any more passes are needed. It should take about five to ten minutes to complete this pass.

Carefully read the title, abstract, and introduction

You should be able to tell from the title what the paper is about. In addition, it is a good idea to look at the authors and their affiliations, which may be valuable for various reasons, such as future reference, employment, guidance, and determining the reliability of the research.

The abstract should provide a high-level overview of the paper. You may ask, What are the main goals of the author(s) and what are the high-level results? There are usually some clues in the abstract about the paper’s purpose. You can think of the abstract as a marketing piece.

As you read the introduction, make sure you only focus on the topic sentences, and you can loosely focus on the other content.

What is a topic sentence?

Topic sentences introduce a paragraph by introducing the one topic that will be the focus of that paragraph. 

The structure of a paragraph should match the organization of a paper. At the paragraph level, the topic sentence gives the paper’s main idea, just as the thesis statement does at the essay level. After that, the rest of the paragraph supports the topic.

In the beginning, I read the whole paragraph, and it took me more than 30 minutes to complete the first pass. By identifying topic sentences, I have revolutionized my reading game, as I am now only reading the summary of the paragraph, saving me a lot of time during the second and third passes.

Read the section and sub-section headings, but ignore everything else 

Regarding methods and discussions, do not attempt to read even topic sentences because you are trying to decide whether this article is useful to you.

Reading the headings and subheadings is the best practice. It allows you to get a feel for the paper without taking up a lot of time.

Read the conclusions

It is standard for good writers to present the foundations of their experiment at the beginning and summarize their findings at the end of their paper.

Therefore, you are well prepared to read and understand the conclusion after reading the abstract and introduction.

Many people overlook the importance of the first pass. In adopting the three-pass method into my workflow, I realized that many papers that I thought had high relevance did not require me to spend more time reading. 

Therefore, after the first pass, I can decide not to read it further, saving me a lot of time.

Glance over the references

You can mentally check off the ones you’ve already read.

As you read through the references, you will better understand what has been studied previously in the field of research.

First pass objectives

At the end of the first pass, you should be able to answer these questions: 

• What is the  category  of this paper? Is it an analytical paper? Is it only an “introductory” paper? (if this is the case, probably, you might not want to read further, but it depends on the information you are after)or is it an argumentative research paper?
• Does the  context  of the paper serve the purpose for what you are looking for? If not, this paper might not be worth passing on to the second stage of this method.
• Does the basic logic of the paper seem to be valid? How do you comment on the  correctness  of the paper?
• What is the main  output  of the paper, or is there output at all?
• Is the paper well written? How do you comment on the  clarity  of the paper?

After the first pass, you should have a good idea whether you want to continue reading the research paper.

Maybe the paper doesn’t interest you, you don’t understand the area enough, or the authors make an incorrect assumption. 

In the first pass, you should be able to identify papers that are not related to your area of research but may be useful someday. 

You can store your paper with relevant tags in your reference manager, as discussed in the previous blog post in the  Bulletproof Literature Management System  series.

This is the third post of the four-part blog series:  The Bulletproof Literature Management System . Follow the links below to read the other posts in the series:

• How to How to find Research Papers
• How to Manage Research Papers
• How to Read Research Papers (You are here)
• How to Organize Research Papers

The second pass (Maximum: 60 minutes)

You are now ready to make a second pass through the paper if you decide it is worth reading more.

You should now begin taking some high-level notes because there will be words and ideas that are unfamiliar to you. 

Most reference managers come with an in-built PDF reader. In this case, taking notes and highlighting notes in the built-in pdf reader is the best practice. This method will prevent you from losing your notes and allow you to revise them easily.

Don’t be discouraged by everything that does not make sense. You can just mark it and move on. It is recommended that you only spend about an hour working on the paper in the second pass. 

In the second pass:

• Start with the abstract, skim through the introduction, and give the methods section a thorough look. 
• Make sure you pay close attention to the figures, diagrams, and other illustrations on the paper. By just looking at the captions of the figures and tables in a well-written paper, you can grasp 90 percent of the information. 
• It is important to pay attention to the overall methodology . There is a lot of detail in the methods section. At this point, you do not need to examine every part. 
• Read the results and discussion sections to better understand the key findings.
• Make sure you mark the relevant references in the paper so you can find them later.

Objectives of the second pass

You should be able to understand the paper’s content. Sometimes, it may be okay if you cannot comprehend some details. However, you should now be able to see the main idea of the paper. Otherwise, it might be better to rest and go through the second pass without entering the third. 

This is a good time to summarize the paper. During your reading, make sure to make notes.

After the second pass, you can: 

• Return to the paper later(If you did not understand the basic idea of the paper)
• Move onto the thirst pass.

The third pass (Maximum: four hours)

You should go to the third stage (the third pass) for a complete understanding of the paper. It may take you a few hours this time to read the paper. However, you may want to avoid reading a single paper for longer than four hours, even at the third pass.

A great deal of attention to detail is required for this pass. Every statement should be challenged, and every assumption should be identified.

By the third pass, you will be able to summarize the paper so that not only do you understand the content, but you can also comment on limitations and potential future developments.

Color coding when reading research papers

Highlighting is one way I help myself learn the material when I read research papers. It is especially helpful to highlight an article when you return to it later. 

Therefore, I use different colors for different segments. To manage my references, I use Zotero. There is an inbuilt PDF reader in Zotero. I use the highlighting colors offered by this software. The most important thing is the concept or phrase I want to color code, not the color itself.

Here is my color coding system.

• Problem statement: Violet
• Questions to ask: Red (I highlight in red where I want additional questions to be asked or if I am unfamiliar with the concept)
• Conclusions: Green (in the discussion section, authors draw conclusions based on their data. I prefer to highlight these in the discussion section rather than in the conclusion section since I can easily locate the evidence there)
• Keywords: Blue
• General highlights and notes: Yellow

Minimize distractions

Even though I’m not a morning person, I forced myself to read papers in the morning just to get rid of distractions. In order to follow through with this process (at least when you are starting out), you must have minimum to no distractions because research papers contain a great deal of highly packed information.

It doesn’t mean you can’t have fun doing it, though. Make a cup of coffee and enjoy reading!

Images courtesy : Online working vector created by storyset – www.freepik.com

Aruna Kumarasiri

Founder at Proactive Grad, Materials Engineer, Researcher, and turned author. In 2019, he started his professional carrier as a materials engineer with the continuation of his research studies. His exposure to both academic and industrial worlds has provided many opportunities for him to give back to young professionals.

Did You Enjoy This?

Then consider getting the ProactiveGrad newsletter. It's a collection of useful ideas, fresh links, and high-spirited shenanigans delivered to your inbox every two weeks.

I accept the Privacy Policy

Hand-picked related articles

Why do graduate students struggle to establish a productive morning routine? And how to handle it?

• March 17, 2024

How to stick to a schedule as a graduate student?

• October 10, 2023

The best note-taking apps for graduate students: How to choose the right note-taking app

• September 20, 2022

Leave a Reply Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Name  *

Email  *

Add Comment  *

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Post Comment

The Semantic Reader Open Research Platform

Semantic Reader Project is a collaborative effort of NLP + HCI researchers from non-profit, industry, and academic institutions to create interactive, intelligent reading interfaces for scholarly papers. Our research led to the creation of Semantic Reader, an application used by tens of thousands of scholars each week.

The Semantic Reader Open Research Platform provides resources that enable the broader research community to explore exciting challenges around novel research support tools: PaperMage , a library for processing and analyzing scholarly PDFs, and PaperCraft , a React UI component for building augmented and interactive reading interfaces. Join us in designing the future of scholarly reading interfaces with our open source libraries!

Open Source Libraries

We provide PaperMage + PaperCraft for building intelligent and interactive paper readers. Below we showcase how to extract text from a PDF to prompt a LLM for term definitions and then visually augment the paper with highlights and popups.

Process and Analyze Scholarly PDF Documents

Create Visually Augmented Interactive Readers

Research Prototype Showcase

Here we present several interactive demos to showcase systems you can build with PaperMage and PaperCraft.

Augmenting Research Papers with Author Talk Videos

Demo Paper Presentation

Synergi & Threddy

Clipping Research Threads from Papers for Synthesis and Exploration

Paper Presentation

Paper Plain

Making Medical Research Papers Approachable to Healthcare Consumers

Demo Code Tutorial Paper

LLM Paper Q&A

A GPT-powered PDF QA system with attribution support.

Demo Code Tutorial

Augmenting Citations in Papers with Persistent and Personalized Context

In-Production Paper Presentation

Localizing Incoming Citations from Follow on Papers in the Margins

Automatic highlights for skimming support of scientific papers

In-Production Paper

Augmenting Papers with Just-in-Time Definitions of Terms and Symbols

Founding Project Demo Paper

Publications

Semantic reader project overview.

The Semantic Reader Project: Augmenting Scholarly Documents through AI-Powered Interactive Reading Interfaces Kyle Lo, Joseph Chee Chang, Andrew Head, Jonathan Bragg, Amy X. Zhang, Cassidy Trier, Chloe Anastasiades, Tal August, Russell Authur, Danielle Bragg, Erin Bransom, Isabel Cachola, Stefan Candra, Yoganand Chandrasekhar, Yen-Sung Chen, Evie (Yu-Yen) Cheng, Yvonne Chou, Doug Downey, Rob Evans, Raymond Fok, F.Q. Hu, Regan Huff, Dongyeop Kang, Tae Soo Kim, Rodney Michael Kinney, A. Kittur, Hyeonsu B Kang, Egor Klevak, Bailey Kuehl, Michael Langan, Matt Latzke, Jaron Lochner, Kelsey MacMillan, Eric Stuart Marsh, Tyler Murray, Aakanksha Naik, Ngoc-Uyen Nguyen, Srishti Palani, Soya Park, Caroline Paulic, Napol Rachatasumrit, Smita R Rao, P. Sayre, Zejiang Shen, Pao Siangliulue, Luca Soldaini, Huy Tran, Madeleine van Zuylen, Lucy Lu Wang, Christopher Wilhelm, Caroline M Wu, Jiangjiang Yang, Angele Zamarron, Marti A. Hearst, Daniel S. Weld . ArXiv. 2023 .

Interactive and Intelligent Reading Interfaces

Qlarify: Bridging Scholarly Abstracts and Papers with Recursively Expandable Summaries Raymond Fok, Joseph Chee Chang, Tal August, Amy X. Zhang, Daniel S. Weld . ArXiv. 2023 .

Papeos: Augmenting Research Papers with Talk Videos Tae Soo Kim, Matt Latzke, Jonathan Bragg, Amy X. Zhang, Joseph Chee Chang . The ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. 2023 .

Synergi: A Mixed-Initiative System for Scholarly Synthesis and Sensemaking Hyeonsu B Kang, Sherry Wu, Joseph Chee Chang, A. Kittur . The ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. 2023 .

🏆 Best Paper Award CiteSee: Augmenting Citations in Scientific Papers with Persistent and Personalized Historical Context Joseph Chee Chang, Amy X. Zhang, Jonathan Bragg, Andrew Head, Kyle Lo, Doug Downey, Daniel S. Weld . Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2023 .

Relatedly: Scaffolding Literature Reviews with Existing Related Work Sections Srishti Palani, Aakanksha Naik, Doug Downey, Amy X. Zhang, Jonathan Bragg, Joseph Chee Chang . Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2023 .

CiteRead: Integrating Localized Citation Contexts into Scientific Paper Reading Napol Rachatasumrit, Jonathan Bragg, Amy X. Zhang, Daniel S. Weld . 27th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces. 2022 .

🏆 Best Paper Award Math Augmentation: How Authors Enhance the Readability of Formulas using Novel Visual Design Practices Andrew Head, Amber Xie, Marti A. Hearst . Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2022 .

Scim: Intelligent Skimming Support for Scientific Papers Raymond Fok, Hita Kambhamettu, Luca Soldaini, Jonathan Bragg, Kyle Lo, Andrew Head, Marti A. Hearst, Daniel S. Weld . Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces. 2022 .

Exploring Team-Sourced Hyperlinks to Address Navigation Challenges for Low-Vision Readers of Scientific Papers Soya Park, Jonathan Bragg, Michael Chang, K. Larson, Danielle Bragg . Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 2022 .

Paper Plain: Making Medical Research Papers Approachable to Healthcare Consumers with Natural Language Processing Tal August, Lucy Lu Wang, Jonathan Bragg, Marti A. Hearst, Andrew Head, Kyle Lo . ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. 2022 . Presentation at CHI 2024.

Threddy: An Interactive System for Personalized Thread-based Exploration and Organization of Scientific Literature Hyeonsu B Kang, Joseph Chee Chang, Yongsung Kim, A. Kittur . Proceedings of the 35th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology. 2022 .

🏆 Best Paper Award SciA11y: Converting Scientific Papers to Accessible HTML Lucy Lu Wang, Isabel Cachola, Jonathan Bragg, Evie (Yu-Yen) Cheng, Chelsea Hess Haupt, Matt Latzke, Bailey Kuehl, Madeleine van Zuylen, Linda M. Wagner, Daniel S. Weld . Proceedings of the 23rd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. 2021 .

Augmenting Scientific Papers with Just-in-Time, Position-Sensitive Definitions of Terms and Symbols Andrew Head, Kyle Lo, Dongyeop Kang, Raymond Fok, Sam Skjonsberg, Daniel S. Weld, Marti A. Hearst . Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2020 .

Open Research Resources: Libraries, Models, Datasets

🏆 Best Paper Award PaperMage: A Unified Toolkit for Processing, Representing, and Manipulating Visually-Rich Scientific Documents Kyle Lo, Zejiang Shen, Benjamin Newman, Joseph Chee Chang, Russell Authur, Erin Bransom, Stefan Candra, Yoganand Chandrasekhar, Regan Huff, Bailey Kuehl, Amanpreet Singh, Chris Wilhelm, Angele Zamarron, Marti A. Hearst, Daniel S. Weld, Doug Downey, Luca Soldaini. Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing: Demos. 2023.

A Question Answering Framework for Decontextualizing User-facing Snippets from Scientific Documents Benjamin Newman, Luca Soldaini, Raymond Fok, Arman Cohan, Kyle Lo . undefined. 2023 .

🏆 Best Paper Award LongEval: Guidelines for Human Evaluation of Faithfulness in Long-form Summarization Kalpesh Krishna, Erin Bransom, Bailey Kuehl, Mohit Iyyer, Pradeep Dasigi, Arman Cohan, Kyle Lo . ArXiv. 2023 .

Are Layout-Infused Language Models Robust to Layout Distribution Shifts? A Case Study with Scientific Documents Catherine Chen, Zejiang Shen, D. Klein, G. Stanovsky, Doug Downey, Kyle Lo . ArXiv. 2023 .

The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform Rodney Michael Kinney, Chloe Anastasiades, Russell Authur, Iz Beltagy, Jonathan Bragg, Alexandra Buraczynski, Isabel Cachola, Stefan Candra, Yoganand Chandrasekhar, Arman Cohan, Miles Crawford, Doug Downey, Jason Dunkelberger, Oren Etzioni, Rob Evans, Sergey Feldman, Joseph Gorney, D. Graham, F.Q. Hu, Regan Huff, Daniel King, Sebastian Kohlmeier, Bailey Kuehl, Michael Langan, Daniel Lin, Haokun Liu, Kyle Lo, Jaron Lochner, Kelsey MacMillan, Tyler Murray, Christopher Newell, Smita R Rao, Shaurya Rohatgi, P. Sayre, Zejiang Shen, Amanpreet Singh, Luca Soldaini, Shivashankar Subramanian, A. Tanaka, Alex D Wade, Linda M. Wagner, Lucy Lu Wang, Christopher Wilhelm, Caroline Wu, Jiangjiang Yang, Angele Zamarron, Madeleine van Zuylen, Daniel S. Weld . ArXiv. 2023 .

VILA: Improving Structured Content Extraction from Scientific PDFs Using Visual Layout Groups Zejiang Shen, Kyle Lo, Lucy Lu Wang, Bailey Kuehl, Daniel S. Weld, Doug Downey . Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics. 2021 .

Document-Level Definition Detection in Scholarly Documents: Existing Models, Error Analyses, and Future Directions Dongyeop Kang, Andrew Head, Risham Sidhu, Kyle Lo, Daniel S. Weld, Marti A. Hearst . Proceedings of the First Workshop on Scholarly Document Processing @ ACL. 2020 .

See the  Project Overview Paper  to see a full list of contributors. † For questions and inquiries, please contact Joseph Chee Chang (PaperCraft & Intelligent reading interfaces), or Kyle Lo and Luca Soldaini (PaperMage & Scientific document processing).

Research Advisory Board

Intelligent reading interfaces research, scientific document processing research, research libraries and tooling.

Have a language expert improve your writing

Run a free plagiarism check in 10 minutes, generate accurate citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• Research paper

How to Write a Research Paper | A Beginner's Guide

A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research.

Research papers are similar to academic essays , but they are usually longer and more detailed assignments, designed to assess not only your writing skills but also your skills in scholarly research. Writing a research paper requires you to demonstrate a strong knowledge of your topic, engage with a variety of sources, and make an original contribution to the debate.

This step-by-step guide takes you through the entire writing process, from understanding your assignment to proofreading your final draft.

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

Upload your document to correct all your mistakes in minutes

Table of contents

Understand the assignment, choose a research paper topic, conduct preliminary research, develop a thesis statement, create a research paper outline, write a first draft of the research paper, write the introduction, write a compelling body of text, write the conclusion, the second draft, the revision process, research paper checklist, free lecture slides.

Completing a research paper successfully means accomplishing the specific tasks set out for you. Before you start, make sure you thoroughly understanding the assignment task sheet:

• Read it carefully, looking for anything confusing you might need to clarify with your professor.
• Identify the assignment goal, deadline, length specifications, formatting, and submission method.
• Make a bulleted list of the key points, then go back and cross completed items off as you’re writing.

Carefully consider your timeframe and word limit: be realistic, and plan enough time to research, write, and edit.

Here's why students love Scribbr's proofreading services

Discover proofreading & editing

There are many ways to generate an idea for a research paper, from brainstorming with pen and paper to talking it through with a fellow student or professor.

You can try free writing, which involves taking a broad topic and writing continuously for two or three minutes to identify absolutely anything relevant that could be interesting.

You can also gain inspiration from other research. The discussion or recommendations sections of research papers often include ideas for other specific topics that require further examination.

Once you have a broad subject area, narrow it down to choose a topic that interests you, m eets the criteria of your assignment, and i s possible to research. Aim for ideas that are both original and specific:

• A paper following the chronology of World War II would not be original or specific enough.
• A paper on the experience of Danish citizens living close to the German border during World War II would be specific and could be original enough.

Note any discussions that seem important to the topic, and try to find an issue that you can focus your paper around. Use a variety of sources , including journals, books, and reliable websites, to ensure you do not miss anything glaring.

Do not only verify the ideas you have in mind, but look for sources that contradict your point of view.

• Is there anything people seem to overlook in the sources you research?
• Are there any heated debates you can address?
• Do you have a unique take on your topic?
• Have there been some recent developments that build on the extant research?

In this stage, you might find it helpful to formulate some research questions to help guide you. To write research questions, try to finish the following sentence: “I want to know how/what/why…”

A thesis statement is a statement of your central argument — it establishes the purpose and position of your paper. If you started with a research question, the thesis statement should answer it. It should also show what evidence and reasoning you’ll use to support that answer.

The thesis statement should be concise, contentious, and coherent. That means it should briefly summarize your argument in a sentence or two, make a claim that requires further evidence or analysis, and make a coherent point that relates to every part of the paper.

You will probably revise and refine the thesis statement as you do more research, but it can serve as a guide throughout the writing process. Every paragraph should aim to support and develop this central claim.

A research paper outline is essentially a list of the key topics, arguments, and evidence you want to include, divided into sections with headings so that you know roughly what the paper will look like before you start writing.

A structure outline can help make the writing process much more efficient, so it’s worth dedicating some time to create one.

Your first draft won’t be perfect — you can polish later on. Your priorities at this stage are as follows:

• Maintaining forward momentum — write now, perfect later.
• Paying attention to clear organization and logical ordering of paragraphs and sentences, which will help when you come to the second draft.
• Expressing your ideas as clearly as possible, so you know what you were trying to say when you come back to the text.

You do not need to start by writing the introduction. Begin where it feels most natural for you — some prefer to finish the most difficult sections first, while others choose to start with the easiest part. If you created an outline, use it as a map while you work.

Do not delete large sections of text. If you begin to dislike something you have written or find it doesn’t quite fit, move it to a different document, but don’t lose it completely — you never know if it might come in useful later.

Paragraph structure

Paragraphs are the basic building blocks of research papers. Each one should focus on a single claim or idea that helps to establish the overall argument or purpose of the paper.

Example paragraph

George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” has had an enduring impact on thought about the relationship between politics and language. This impact is particularly obvious in light of the various critical review articles that have recently referenced the essay. For example, consider Mark Falcoff’s 2009 article in The National Review Online, “The Perversion of Language; or, Orwell Revisited,” in which he analyzes several common words (“activist,” “civil-rights leader,” “diversity,” and more). Falcoff’s close analysis of the ambiguity built into political language intentionally mirrors Orwell’s own point-by-point analysis of the political language of his day. Even 63 years after its publication, Orwell’s essay is emulated by contemporary thinkers.

Citing sources

It’s also important to keep track of citations at this stage to avoid accidental plagiarism . Each time you use a source, make sure to take note of where the information came from.

You can use our free citation generators to automatically create citations and save your reference list as you go.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

The research paper introduction should address three questions: What, why, and how? After finishing the introduction, the reader should know what the paper is about, why it is worth reading, and how you’ll build your arguments.

What? Be specific about the topic of the paper, introduce the background, and define key terms or concepts.

Why? This is the most important, but also the most difficult, part of the introduction. Try to provide brief answers to the following questions: What new material or insight are you offering? What important issues does your essay help define or answer?

How? To let the reader know what to expect from the rest of the paper, the introduction should include a “map” of what will be discussed, briefly presenting the key elements of the paper in chronological order.

The major struggle faced by most writers is how to organize the information presented in the paper, which is one reason an outline is so useful. However, remember that the outline is only a guide and, when writing, you can be flexible with the order in which the information and arguments are presented.

One way to stay on track is to use your thesis statement and topic sentences . Check:

• topic sentences against the thesis statement;
• topic sentences against each other, for similarities and logical ordering;
• and each sentence against the topic sentence of that paragraph.

Be aware of paragraphs that seem to cover the same things. If two paragraphs discuss something similar, they must approach that topic in different ways. Aim to create smooth transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections.

The research paper conclusion is designed to help your reader out of the paper’s argument, giving them a sense of finality.

Trace the course of the paper, emphasizing how it all comes together to prove your thesis statement. Give the paper a sense of finality by making sure the reader understands how you’ve settled the issues raised in the introduction.

You might also discuss the more general consequences of the argument, outline what the paper offers to future students of the topic, and suggest any questions the paper’s argument raises but cannot or does not try to answer.

You should not :

• Offer new arguments or essential information
• Take up any more space than necessary
• Begin with stock phrases that signal you are ending the paper (e.g. “In conclusion”)

There are four main considerations when it comes to the second draft.

• Check how your vision of the paper lines up with the first draft and, more importantly, that your paper still answers the assignment.
• Identify any assumptions that might require (more substantial) justification, keeping your reader’s perspective foremost in mind. Remove these points if you cannot substantiate them further.
• Be open to rearranging your ideas. Check whether any sections feel out of place and whether your ideas could be better organized.
• If you find that old ideas do not fit as well as you anticipated, you should cut them out or condense them. You might also find that new and well-suited ideas occurred to you during the writing of the first draft — now is the time to make them part of the paper.

The goal during the revision and proofreading process is to ensure you have completed all the necessary tasks and that the paper is as well-articulated as possible. You can speed up the proofreading process by using the AI proofreader .

Global concerns

• Confirm that your paper completes every task specified in your assignment sheet.
• Check for logical organization and flow of paragraphs.
• Check paragraphs against the introduction and thesis statement.

Fine-grained details

Check the content of each paragraph, making sure that:

• each sentence helps support the topic sentence.
• no unnecessary or irrelevant information is present.
• all technical terms your audience might not know are identified.

Next, think about sentence structure , grammatical errors, and formatting . Check that you have correctly used transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas. Look for typos, cut unnecessary words, and check for consistency in aspects such as heading formatting and spellings .

Finally, you need to make sure your paper is correctly formatted according to the rules of the citation style you are using. For example, you might need to include an MLA heading  or create an APA title page .

Scribbr’s professional editors can help with the revision process with our award-winning proofreading services.

Discover our paper editing service

Checklist: Research paper

I have followed all instructions in the assignment sheet.

My introduction presents my topic in an engaging way and provides necessary background information.

My introduction presents a clear, focused research problem and/or thesis statement .

My paper is logically organized using paragraphs and (if relevant) section headings .

Each paragraph is clearly focused on one central idea, expressed in a clear topic sentence .

Each paragraph is relevant to my research problem or thesis statement.

I have used appropriate transitions  to clarify the connections between sections, paragraphs, and sentences.

My conclusion provides a concise answer to the research question or emphasizes how the thesis has been supported.

My conclusion shows how my research has contributed to knowledge or understanding of my topic.

My conclusion does not present any new points or information essential to my argument.

I have provided an in-text citation every time I refer to ideas or information from a source.

I have included a reference list at the end of my paper, consistently formatted according to a specific citation style .

I have thoroughly revised my paper and addressed any feedback from my professor or supervisor.

I have followed all formatting guidelines (page numbers, headers, spacing, etc.).

You've written a great paper. Make sure it's perfect with the help of a Scribbr editor!

Open Google Slides Download PowerPoint

Is this article helpful?

Other students also liked.

• Writing a Research Paper Introduction | Step-by-Step Guide
• Writing a Research Paper Conclusion | Step-by-Step Guide
• Research Paper Format | APA, MLA, & Chicago Templates

More interesting articles

• Academic Paragraph Structure | Step-by-Step Guide & Examples
• Checklist: Writing a Great Research Paper
• How to Create a Structured Research Paper Outline | Example
• How to Write a Discussion Section | Tips & Examples
• How to Write Recommendations in Research | Examples & Tips
• How to Write Topic Sentences | 4 Steps, Examples & Purpose
• Research Paper Appendix | Example & Templates
• Research Paper Damage Control | Managing a Broken Argument
• What Is a Theoretical Framework? | Guide to Organizing

Unlimited Academic AI-Proofreading

✔ Document error-free in 5minutes ✔ Unlimited document corrections ✔ Specialized in correcting academic texts

• Resources Home 🏠
• Try SciSpace Copilot
• Search research papers
• Add Copilot Extension
• Try AI Detector
• Try Paraphraser
• Try Citation Generator
• April Papers
• June Papers
• July Papers

How to Read Research Papers— Unveiling AI Tool for Reading

Table of Contents

Reading research papers is an essential skill for students, academics, and professionals in various fields. It allows you to stay updated with the latest findings, develop critical thinking skills, and contribute to scholarly discussions. However, understanding these papers can be challenging due to their complex language and structure. That’s why we have written this article, which will provide you with comprehensive strategies on how to read a research paper effectively.

Let’s get started with how to identify the structure of a research paper!

Identify the structure of a research paper

Understanding the structure of a research paper is the first step toward how to read research paper effectively. Most research papers follow a standard structure, which includes an abstract , introduction , methodology , results, discussion and conclusion . Familiarizing yourself with the research paper structure can help you navigate the paper and understand its content.

Each section of a research paper serves a specific purpose. The abstract provides a summary of the entire research paper, the introduction presents the research question, the methodology explains how the research was conducted, the results section presents the findings, the discussion interprets these findings, and the conclusion summarizes the paper and suggests areas for future research.

Source: University of Wisconsin

Abstract: The abstract serves as a concise summary of the entire research paper. To efficiently grasp its content, focus on key elements such as the research question, methodology, and significant findings. This will provide a quick overview and help you decide whether the paper aligns with your interests.

Introduction: The research paper introduction sets the stage for the research, presenting the problem statement and the purpose of the study. Take note of the research gap, hypotheses, and objectives discussed here to understand the context of the paper.

Methodology: Understanding the methods employed in a study is crucial for evaluating the research's validity. Take note of the research design, data collection, and analysis methods to comprehend how the study was conducted.

Results: The results section presents the outcomes of the research. Approach this section with a critical mindset, assessing whether the results align with the research question and the methods used. Consider the implications of the findings within the broader context of the field.

Conclusion: The conclusion summarizes the key findings and their significance. It's a crucial part of the paper that brings together the entire study. Take the time to reflect on how the research contributes to the existing body of knowledge.

Citations: Follow the trail of references provided in the paper. This not only enhances your understanding but also leads you to related works that can deepen your knowledge of the subject.

More tips on how to read research papers effectively

Developing effective reading strategies can help you understand research papers more efficiently. These strategies include active reading, note-taking, and using AI tools for summarizing and understanding research papers.

Active reading involves engaging with the text, asking questions, and making connections. Note-taking helps you remember important information and organize your thoughts. Summarizing using AI tools allows you to condense the information and understand the main points of the paper easily.

Active Reading:

Active reading is a strategy that involves interacting with the text. This can include highlighting important information, making notes in the margins, and asking questions. Active reading can help you understand the content of the paper and remember it more effectively.

When reading a research paper, try to identify the main points, arguments, and evidence. Ask yourself questions like:

• What is the research question?
• What methods were used to answer it?
• What were the results? What conclusions were drawn?

This will help you engage with the paper and understand its content.

Source: https://idaho.pressbooks.pub/write/chapter/reading-for-writing/

Note-Taking:

Note-taking is another effective reading strategy. It involves writing down important information, ideas, and questions. Note-taking can help you remember the content of the paper, organize your thoughts, and prepare for discussions or writing assignments.

When taking notes, try to be concise and use your own words. This will help you understand the information and remember it more effectively. You can also use symbols or diagrams to represent complex ideas.

Source: University of Toronto

Using AI Tools to Summarize Research Paper:

When research papers are flooded with complex language, jargon, and acronyms, it’s important to use AI summarizer that helps you breakdown the sentences and makes it easier to read the information. In that case, you can make use of SciSpace Copilot which not only explains the highlighted section or paragraph, but also explains you the equations, tables, figures, and images present in the research paper. You can also rely on other AI tools to comprehend research papers in a short span of time.

Watch this video to learn how to use the AI summarizer:

Dealing with Technical Jargon:

Research papers often contain a lot of technical jargon. Don't be intimidated; instead, create a glossary for yourself. Look up unfamiliar terms and gradually build your understanding of the terminology used in your field of interest. As mentioned above, you can use AI summarizer to decode the jargon and get the essence of the research paper.

Joining Academic Communities:

Engage in discussions and forums related to your area of interest. Academic communities provide valuable insights, differing perspectives, and opportunities for networking with experts in the field.

Staying Updated on Research Trends:

To read research papers effectively, it's crucial to stay informed about the latest developments in your field. Subscribe to academic journals, follow reputable researchers on social media, and attend conferences or webinars to stay updated.

Using Academic Search Engines:

Make use of online tools and databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, SciSpace , and academic journals to access a vast repository of research papers. These platforms often provide additional features like citation tracking and related articles, enriching your reading experience.

Also Read: Beast Academic Search Engines(2024)

Reading research papers is a complex task that requires a good understanding of the structure of a research paper, effective reading strategies, and the ability to interpret results. However, with practice and patience, you can develop these skills and become proficient at reading research papers.

Remember, the goal is not just to read the paper, but to understand it, evaluate it, and use it to contribute to your own research or professional development.

Frequently Asked Questions

Active reading helps understand research papers better. It involves activities like highlighting, taking notes, asking questions, and summarizing. This makes it easier to understand and evaluate the research material.

Taking notes during research helps you remember important information, stay organized, avoid plagiarism, think critically, and serve as a reference for future use, allowing you to revisit key points and findings as needed.

SciSpace notebook is the go-to tool for taking notes effortlessly

The best AI tool for reading research papers varies based on individual needs. A popular AI tools include SciSpace Copilot.

Using AI tools to read research papers is easy. First, choose a tool, example — SciSpace Copilot. Then, upload your paper. It analyzes it and explains it in a language of your choice. You can then use this summary to help with your research or understanding of the topic.

You might also like

Cybersecurity in Higher Education: Safeguarding Students and Faculty Data

How To Write An Argumentative Essay

Beyond Google Scholar: Why SciSpace is the best alternative

Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper: Reading Research Effectively

• Purpose of Guide
• Writing a Research Proposal
• Design Flaws to Avoid
• Independent and Dependent Variables
• Narrowing a Topic Idea
• Broadening a Topic Idea
• The Research Problem/Question
• Academic Writing Style
• Choosing a Title
• Making an Outline
• Paragraph Development
• The C.A.R.S. Model
• Background Information
• Theoretical Framework
• Citation Tracking
• Evaluating Sources
• Reading Research Effectively
• Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources
• What Is Scholarly vs. Popular?
• Is it Peer-Reviewed?
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Common Grammar Mistakes
• Writing Concisely
• Avoiding Plagiarism [linked guide]
• Annotated Bibliography
• Grading Someone Else's Paper

Reading a Scholarly Article or Research Paper

Reading Research Publications Effectively

It's easy to feel overwhelmed and frustrated when first reading a scholarly article or research paper. The text is dense and complex and often includes abstract or convoluted language . In addition, the terminology may be confusing or applied in a way that is unfamiliar. To help overcome these challenges w hen you first read an article or research paper, focus on asking specific questions about each section. This strategy can help with overall comprehension and understanding how the content relates [or does not relate] to the research problem you are investigating. This approach will also help identify key themes as you read additional studies on the same topic. As you review more and more studies about your topic, the process of understanding and critically evaluating the research will become easier because the content of what you review will begin to coalescence around common themes and patterns of analysis.

Think about the following in this general order:

1.  Read the Abstract

An abstract summarizes the basic content of a scholarly article or research paper. Questions to consider when reading the abstract are: What is this article about? What is the working hypothesis or thesis? Is this related to my question or area of research? The abstract can be used to help filter out sources that may have appeared useful when you began searching for information but, in reality, are not relevant.

2.  Identify the Research Problem and Underlying Questions? 

If, after reading the abstract, you believe the paper may be useful, focus on examining the research problem and identifying the questions the author is trying to address. Look for information that is relevant to your research problem and make note of how and in what way this information relates to what you are investigating.

3.  Read the Introduction and Discussion/Conclusion

The introduction provides the main argument and theoretical framework of the article. Questions to consider for the introduction include what do we already know about this topic and what is left to discover? What other research has been conducted about this topic? How is this research unique? Will this study tell me anything new related to the research problem I am investigating?

Questions to ask yourself while reading the discussion and conclusion sections include what does the study mean and why is it important? What are the weaknesses in their argument? Does the conclusion contain any recommendations for future research and do you believe conclusions about the significance of the study and its findings are valid?

4.  Read about the Methods/Methodology

If what you have read so far closely relates to your research problem, then move on to reading about how the author(s) gathered information for their research. Questions to consider include how did the author do the research? Was it a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods project? What data is the study based on? Could I repeat their work and is all the information available to repeat the study?

5.  Read about the Results and Analysis

Next, read the outcome the research and how it was discussed and analyzed. If any non-textual elements [e.g., graphs, charts, tables, etc.] are confusing, focus on the explanations about them in the text. Questions to consider are what did the author find and how did they find it? Are the results presented in a factual and unbiased way? Does their analysis of results agree with the data presented? Is all the data present? What conclusions do you formulate from this data and does it match with the author's conclusions?

6.  Review the References

The list of references, or works cited, shows you the basis of prior research used by the author(s) to support their study. The references can be an effective way to identify additional sources of information on the topic. Questions to ask include what other research studies should I review? What other authors are respected in this field, i.e., who is cited most often by others? What other research should be explored to learn about issues I am unclear or need more information about?

Reading Tips

Preparing to Read a Scholarly Article or Research Paper for the First Time

Reading scholarly publications effectively is an acquired skill that involves attention to detail and the ability to comprehend complex ideas, data, and concepts in a way that applies logically to the research problem you are investigating. Here are some strategies to consider.

While You are Reading

• Focus on information in the publication that is most relevant to the research problem
• Think critically about what you read and seek to build your own arguments; not everything is 100% true or examined effectively
• Read out of order! This isn't a novel or movie; you want to start with the spoiler
• Look up the definitions of words you don't know as you read

There are any number of ways to take notes as you read, but use the method that you feel most comfortable with. Taking notes as you read will save time when you go back to examine your sources. Below are some suggestions:

• Print the article and highlight, circle, and/or underline text as you read [or, you can use the highlight text   feature in a PDF document]
• Take notes in the margins [Adobe Reader offers pop-up sticky notes]
• Focus on highlighting important quotes; consider using a different color to differentiate between quotes and other types of text you want to return to when writing
• Quickly summarize the main or key points at the end of the paper

As you read, write down questions that come to mind that relate to or may clarify your research problem. Here are a few questions that might be helpful:

• Have I taken time to understand all the terminology?
• Am I spending too much time on the less important parts of this article?
• Are there any issues that the authors did not consider?
• Do I have any reason to question the credibility of this research?
• What specific problem does the research address and why is it important?
• How do these results relate to my research interests or to other works which I have read?

Adapted from text originally created by Holly Burt, USC Libraries, April 2018. Thank you, Holly!

• << Previous: Evaluating Sources
• Next: Primary Sources >>
• Last Updated: Sep 8, 2023 12:19 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.txstate.edu/socialscienceresearch

The Science of Reading: What Teachers Need to Know

To better understand the science of reading and some of the intense debate around it, we spoke with literacy expert and psychology and education professor Nell K. Duke

The science of reading has become a hot topic in schools in recent years. Since 2019, more than 45 states have passed one or more bills aimed at reforming reading instruction. These bills were passed in response to a growing consensus among researchers that many classrooms had veered from the best practices for teaching reading. 

However, the science of reading remains a topic so fiercely debated in school districts and universities across the country, it is sometimes dubbed “the reading wars.” In addition, not everything labeled “science of reading” actually follows the science of reading, say experts. 

To help get an overview of what is going on we turn to literacy expert Nell K. Duke, a professor of education and psychology at the University of Michigan and the executive director of the Center for Early Literacy Success. 

What is The Science of Reading?  

“The science of reading refers to a body of research about reading, and that includes research about the reading process, what happens in our minds as we read, but also reading development, how do we learn to read, and how does that proceed for children differently and at different paces, and so forth,” Duke says. “Also reading instruction falls under the science of reading. For example, when we do research comparing one way of teaching reading to another way of teaching reading, and we look at which ones are more successful for kids.” 

The final aspect of the science of reading is the study of the implementation and efficacy of reading approaches at scale, whether in large cities or at the state level or in other places. 

Duke adds that although the science of reading has become a buzzword recently, it’s not new. It dates back to the 1800s and has been used through much of the 20th century. 

What Are Some Teaching Strategies That Don’t Adhere to The Science of Reading? 

Duke stresses that the majority of reading instruction practices employed by educators are at least somewhat effective at teaching reading, but are not always the most effective way to teach reading. “For example, something you’ll often see teachers do is try to get children to memorize certain high-frequency words,” Duke says. “That’s actually not the most effective way to teach those words and have them stick for kids.” 

Tech & Learning Newsletter

Tools and ideas to transform education. Sign up below.

She adds, “Another example that is so common in schools and has been for decades is to give kids a list of vocabulary words, and then their job is to look the word up in the dictionary and then write a sentence using the word, but that’s less effective than any other technique I’m aware of to teach vocabulary.”  

What Should Teachers Do Instead?  

When a child is learning a word such as “was,” Duke understands that it can be tempting to try and get them to memorize it. 

“That’s not spelled as you might guess, and so you might think, ‘I’m going to have kids memorize that whole picture of the word,’” she says. “It actually is still best to say, ‘was” and listen for the three phonemes the sound in ‘was.’” Then she advises having kids map the sounds of each syllable to the corresponding letter even if it is making a slightly unexpected sound, as is the case with the “a” in "was."

For vocabulary, teachers want to avoid the dictionary scavenger hunt. “One thing that helps with vocabulary is to help children relate new words to known words,” Duke says. To do this, she suggests making a web or map of words that have similar meanings. 

 What Role Does Technology Play in All This  

Duke believes there is potential for technology, including AI, to help students more efficiently learn to read. The trick is making sure to utilize tools that are based on the latest research. 

For example, Duke has worked with Amira Learning , an AI-powered writing tool built on the science of reading, and says this type of collaboration between literacy researchers and edtech developers is what is needed. 

“The right model for the field in my view is one where there is a partnership or collaboration between people who have the expertise in technology and people who have expertise in reading instruction,” she says.  

Why Did Some Schools Move Away From Phonics? 

Some science of reading advocates say that not enough emphasis has been placed on phonics in some districts and states. Duke says that like anything else, reading instruction is subject to trends. 

“Sometimes I think what happens is that because reading is so complex, there's so many different things that go into it, people will pay attention to one of those important things for a while and they let others fall to the wayside, and then they switch to some other one and then others fall to the wayside,” she says. “It's a little bit like if you get really focused on having good sleep habits, maybe you pay a little bit less attention to the exercising. When it comes to teaching, sometimes people have gotten wrapped up in some other focus, like building comprehension or motivation to read and that has led to less attention to phonics. Or at other times people paying less attention to phonics, or less attention to comprehension, or less attention to motivation . . . but the thing that we know about reading is that all of them have to get our attention.” 

• Study: Students Who Read Print Learn More Than Those Who Read Tablets
• Reading Intervention Strategies That Drive Measurable Outcomes

Erik Ofgang is Tech & Learning's senior staff writer. A journalist,  author  and educator, his work has appeared in the Washington Post , The Atlantic , and Associated Press. He currently teaches at Western Connecticut State University’s MFA program. While a staff writer at Connecticut Magazine he won a Society of Professional Journalism Award for his education reporting. He is interested in how humans learn and how technology can make that more effective. 

Edtech Show & Tell: April 2024

How Sal Khan Uses AI To Teach

Building Equity Through Next Generation Science Standards

Most Popular

By Ray Bendici 22 March 2024

By Sascha Zuger 21 March 2024

By Erik Ofgang 21 March 2024

By Michael Gaskell 19 March 2024

By Frank Pileiro 15 March 2024

By Ray Bendici, Diana Restifo 14 March 2024

By Diana Restifo 13 March 2024

By Erik Ofgang 11 March 2024

By Stephanie Smith Budhai, Ph.D. 11 March 2024

By Luke Edwards 11 March 2024

By Erik Ofgang 7 March 2024

R Discovery: Academic Research 4+

Access 100m+ research papers, cactus communications private limited, designed for ipad.

• 4.8 • 643 Ratings

Screenshots

Description.

R Discovery is a free app for students and researchers to find and read research papers. This literature search and reading app for researchers curates an academic reading library based on your interests so you stay updated on latest academic research with access to scholarly articles, scientific journals, open access articles, and peer reviewed articles. With R Discovery, you can do a literature search like on Google Scholar, refseek, Research Gate, or Academia.edu, or let our AI generate separate feeds of relevant scholarly articles for you. We search, you read. It’s that simple! R Discovery gives you access to: • 250M+ Research articles (journal articles, clinical trials, conference papers & more) • 40M+ Open access articles (world’s largest OA journal articles library) • 3M+ Preprints from arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv & other preprint servers • 9.5M+ Research topics • 14M+ Authors • 32K+ Academic journals • 100K+ Universities & Institutions • Content from Microsoft Academic, PubMed, PubMed Central, CrossRef, Unpaywall, OpenAlex, etc. See how R Discovery’s personalized research reading feed and unique features save time and improve your literature reading! Largest repository of open access articles Access the largest library of open access journal articles and preprints on mobile, with 40M+ open access articles from top publishers and global research databases. Unlock full-text papers with institutional access Use your university credentials to log in and access paywalled journal articles for your thesis research with our GetFTR & Libkey integrations. Most reliable, cleanest research database Read science articles from the most trustworthy global research paper database, cleaned to remove duplication, eliminate ambiguities in journal, publisher, author names, and exclude predatory content. Curated research feeds Benefit from our AI-curated research feeds dedicated to the Top 100 papers, open access articles, preprints, paywalled papers, journal feeds, etc. Coming up: New feeds on patents, conferences & seminars. Reading lists from the research community Access and share research recommendations by a community of peers in your field; these lists allow for quick, easy, relevant research discovery and better literature reading. Collaborative reading lists Save, view, and share your reading lists with co-researchers on your study. Easy knowledge sharing via our premium collaborative reading list feature helps accelerate innovation; so invite your peers to join now. Audio streaming Amplify your reading with audio listening for library lists, research paper titles & abstracts. This Prime feature lets you create audio playlists and delve into research articles on the go. Research paper translation Read research articles in your own language with our academic translation Prime feature. Choose a paper to read and click on the translate option to read in your chosen language. Auto sync library with Zotero, Mendeley Our auto sync Prime feature integrates your research paper topics and research library with Mendeley, Zotero, updating it every time you save or remove papers. Coming up: Endnote integrations! Easy accessibility, summaries & notifications Read research that matters with alerts on Just Published research papers and assess relevance with research summaries. Bookmark articles on the research app and read on the web. R Discovery partners with research publications, including Elsevier, Wiley, IOP, Springer Nature, Sage, Taylor & Francis, Hindawi, NEJM, Emerald Publishing, Duke University Press, Intech Open, AIAA, Karger, Underline.io, SAGE, JStage for the best content. Enjoy free research discovery or upgrade to R Discovery Prime to unlock unlimited use of our premium features. Join 2.4M+ academics and redefine the way you read on R Discovery, the highest rated app in this space (rated 4.6+ on App Store). Get it now!

Version 3.2.3

In this release, you can search research papers without mandatory onboarding. Now find best research papers for you without any hassle. You can now pause your Prime membership and again restart it when you need it in your project. You can also now read the research papers under a minute with quick summaries available in story like format for quick readings. Improvements and bug fixes.

Ratings and Reviews

643 Ratings

Keeps improving

The app keeps getting better and provides a good UI. I like the fact that I get to pick concepts I am interested in and can focus on multiple areas at the same time.

Developer Response ,

Hi, thanks for sticking with the app and sharing about the improvements we keep making to it! We liked to hear that it fulfills your need to read about multiple areas of interest :) Do keep sharing feedback and suggestions for improvement by writing to us at [email protected].

I want to love this app…

The app is great and has a lot of features that are great for students and researchers. I love that I can select topics and journals that are relevant to me and that it provides me plenty of OpenAccess options. However, the app is super clunky and slow. It seems bloated on the back end and it makes the app almost unusable. I think I may just use it to get a reading list going and then read the articles on another app like Zotero or Reader.

Hi! Thanks for taking the time and sharing your feedback with us. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you faced with R Discovery. We request you to please write to us at [email protected] with your registered email ID, and we will try to fix this as soon as possible for you. Regards.

Great info and very helpful

Hi there, thanks so much for the review and for rating our app 5 stars. We're happy to know that you're finding R Discovery helpful. Please do let us know if you have any other feedback/suggestions/feature requests to share with us by writing to us at [email protected]. We'd love to hear from you!

App Privacy

The developer, Cactus Communications Private Limited , indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .

Data Used to Track You

The following data may be used to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies:

• Contact Info
• Search History
• Identifiers

Data Linked to You

The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:

Data Not Linked to You

The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

• Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

Information

• App Support
• Privacy Policy

More By This Developer

Cactus Quest Learning

You Might Also Like

Researcher: Discover & Discuss

Academia.edu

Web of Science MyRA

Persian Translator Offline

EITA Mobile

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• My Account Login
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• Perspective
• Open access
• Published: 26 March 2024

Ecological countermeasures to prevent pathogen spillover and subsequent pandemics

• Raina K. Plowright   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3338-6590 1 ,
• Aliyu N. Ahmed   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6039-1101 2 ,
• Tim Coulson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9371-9003 3 ,
• Thomas W. Crowther   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5674-8913 4 ,
• Imran Ejotre 5 ,
• Christina L. Faust   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8824-7424 6 ,
• Winifred F. Frick   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9469-1839 7 , 8 ,
• Peter J. Hudson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0468-3403 9 ,
• Tigga Kingston   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3552-5352 10 ,
• P. O. Nameer   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7110-6740 11 ,
• M. Teague O’Mara   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6951-1648 7 ,
• Alison J. Peel   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3538-3550 12 ,
• Hugh Possingham   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7755-996X 13 ,
• Orly Razgour   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3186-0313 14 ,
• DeeAnn M. Reeder   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8651-2012 15 ,
• Manuel Ruiz-Aravena   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8463-7858 1 , 12   nAff26 ,
• Nancy B. Simmons   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8807-7499 16 ,
• Prashanth N. Srinivas   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0968-0826 17 ,
• Gary M. Tabor   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4711-1018 18 ,
• Iroro Tanshi 19 , 20 , 21 ,
• Ian G. Thompson   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3445-8696 22 ,
• Abi T. Vanak   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2435-4260 23 , 24 ,
• Neil M. Vora   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4989-3108 25 ,
• Charley E. Willison   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7272-1080 1 &
• Annika T. H. Keeley   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7237-6259 18  

Nature Communications volume  15 , Article number:  2577 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

6028 Accesses

697 Altmetric

Metrics details

• Epidemiology
• Policy and public health in microbiology
• Viral infection

Substantial global attention is focused on how to reduce the risk of future pandemics. Reducing this risk requires investment in prevention, preparedness, and response. Although preparedness and response have received significant focus, prevention, especially the prevention of zoonotic spillover, remains largely absent from global conversations. This oversight is due in part to the lack of a clear definition of prevention and lack of guidance on how to achieve it. To address this gap, we elucidate the mechanisms linking environmental change and zoonotic spillover using spillover of viruses from bats as a case study. We identify ecological interventions that can disrupt these spillover mechanisms and propose policy frameworks for their implementation. Recognizing that pandemics originate in ecological systems, we advocate for integrating ecological approaches alongside biomedical approaches in a comprehensive and balanced pandemic prevention strategy.

Similar content being viewed by others

The role of environmental factors on transmission rates of the COVID-19 outbreak: an initial assessment in two spatial scales

Canelle Poirier, Wei Luo, … Mauricio Santillana

Pathogen spillover driven by rapid changes in bat ecology

Peggy Eby, Alison J. Peel, … Raina K. Plowright

A generalizable one health framework for the control of zoonotic diseases

Ria R. Ghai, Ryan M. Wallace, … Casey Barton Behravesh

Introduction

Reducing the risk of future pandemics requires investment in prevention, preparedness, and response. At present, most attention and funding is allocated to mitigation after a pathogen is already circulating in humans, prioritizing outbreak detection and medical countermeasures such as vaccines and therapeutics 1 . By contrast, primary pandemic prevention—defined as reducing the likelihood a pathogen transmits from its animal host into humans (zoonotic spillover; Fig.  1 ) 2 —has received less attention in global conversations, policy guidance, and practice 1 , 2 . Given the time delays in identifying and responding to outbreaks, and the inequity in treatment distributions, investing in pandemic prevention is essential to achieve efficient, equitable, and cost-effective protection from disease.

Primary pandemic prevention is the set of actions taken to reduce the risk of pathogen spillover from animals to humans, focusing on processes upstream of the spillover event (left panel). By contrast, secondary pandemic prevention (middle panel) focuses on limiting the spread of an outbreak to prevent its escalation into an epidemic or a pandemic. Pandemic response (right panel) involves actions taken to address a pandemic once one is underway. Although not illustrated here, pandemic preparedness involves developing capabilities to respond to a pandemic if one were to occur, and can be implemented concurrently with primary and secondary pandemic prevention. The nature of interventions varies across these phases: Primary pandemic prevention emphasizes ecological and behavioral interventions, but also encompasses biosafety practices in virological research 83 , whereas secondary pandemic prevention and response prioritize epidemiological and biomedical interventions. Definitions: an outbreak is “an increase, often sudden, in the number of cases of a disease in a particular area 84 ”; an epidemic is an outbreak extending over a wider geographic area 84 ; and a pandemic is “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people 84 ”.

To effectively prevent pandemics, we must recognize two key points: first that pandemics almost always start with a microbe infecting a wild animal in a natural environment and second that human-caused land-use change often triggers the events–whether through wildlife trade or other distal activities–that facilitate spillover of microbes from wild animals to humans 3 . As land-use change becomes more intense and extensive, the risk of zoonotic spillovers, and subsequent epidemics and pandemics, will increase. Designing land management and conservation strategies to explicitly limit spillover is central to meeting the challenge of pandemic prevention at a global scale.

Herein, we present a roadmap for reducing pathogen transmission from wildlife to humans and other animals. We show how strategic conservation and restoration of nature for reservoir hosts, and mitigation of risks for humans most at risk—what we define as ecological countermeasures—can prevent spillover and protect human and animal health, while also addressing key drivers of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Mechanisms of spillover

Despite hundreds of thousands of potentially zoonotic microbes circulating in nature 4 , pandemics are rare. Microbes, termed pathogens if they cause disease, must overcome a series of barriers, simplified and described below, to transmit from a wild animal to a human. Crossing those barriers requires the alignment of specific conditions—including ecological, epidemiological, immunological, and behavioral conditions—that are often complex and dynamic 5 .

First, the distribution of the species that maintains the zoonotic pathogen in nature (the reservoir host) and the species that is infected (the recipient host) must be connected, usually through overlapping distributions. Once wildlife reservoir hosts and humans overlap, the second barrier is the immune functions within wildlife hosts that keep potential zoonotic pathogens at low levels. Particular stressors (e.g., habitat loss, lack of food) can increase host viral infection and shedding 6 . A pathogen that passes through this second barrier and is shed by the animal host encounters a third barrier: humans must be exposed to a pathogen for spillover to occur. That exposure depends on specific interactions or behaviors of humans and the virus-shedding host. Exposure to the pathogen may be through direct contact, such as a bite, or indirect contact with the reservoir host’s excreta or a non-vertebrate vector (e.g., blood-feeding parasite). Often a bridging host species, such as commercially traded wildlife or a domestic animal, is infected by the reservoir host and subsequently amplifies and transmits the pathogen to humans. The fourth barrier is human susceptibility. The pathogen must be able to establish an infection within humans by overcoming structural and immunological barriers (e.g., binding to a human cell). Those barriers are substantial–one reason pandemics are rare–protecting humans from a continuous rain of microbes from soils, plants, and animals 5 . Fifth, after establishing an infection within a single human, the pathogen must be able to amplify within this new host, be excreted (e.g., through respiration), and then transmitted onward and exponentially 7 . If any of these barriers is not overcome, a pandemic cannot occur 5 .

Land use-induced spillover

Intact ecosystems provide the first line of defense against new pandemics because they strengthen the first three barriers to spillover (minimizing distribution overlap, host stress, and human exposure) and hence decrease the likelihood that the conditions for spillover occur or align 3 . Conversely, land-use changes and other environmental disturbances erode those first three barriers to spillover by changing the reservoir hosts’ spatial behavior and allostatic load (energy and stress budget), as well as altering human behavior. In this context, we identify targeted ecological countermeasures designed to decrease these risks (Fig.  2 ).

Historic (left panel): Historically, reservoir hosts and large human populations (and their domestic animals) were more separated, viruses circulated at low levels with seasonal fluctuations in prevalence, and the holes in the barriers to spillover were small and did not align 5 . Land use-induced spillover (middle panel): Land-use change increases the risk of spillover by driving two phenotypic changes in reservoir hosts: changes in behavior that alter how they use space, and changes in reservoir host energy and stress levels (allostatic load) that influence viral infection and shedding. Land-use change can also lead to emergent human behaviors that increase exposure to pathogens. Land-use change generally increases the overlap of reservoir, human, and bridging hosts; increases the probability that reservoir hosts are shedding pathogens; and increases the probability that humans are exposed to those pathogens. In sum, these changes increase the size and alignment of the holes in the barrier to spillover. Ecological countermeasures (right panel): Ecological countermeasures can address all three issues. Retaining natural resources reduces the overlap of humans and domestic recipient hosts in space and time, reduces the probability of allostatic overload and reduces the likelihood of emergent human behaviors that facilitate exposure.

We focus on ecological countermeasures in bats since several major epidemics and pandemics (e.g., those caused by SARS-CoV-2, Ebola virus, SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, and Nipah virus) have an evolutionary origin in bats (but notably do not cause disease in their bat reservoir hosts) 8 . Certain bat species are also the hosts of four of the nine diseases prioritized by the World Health Organization as having the potential to generate epidemics that pose a great risk to public health, and for which there are insufficient countermeasures 9 . However, the ecological countermeasures we present also apply to other host taxa, particularly species that are susceptible to local resource depletion and can sustain the circulation of potential pathogens (e.g., species that aggregate in large numbers like colonial nesting birds, or in spatially structured but extensive aggregations, such as prairie dogs and other rodents). For species tied to permanent refuges (roosts, breeding grounds, burrow systems and warrens), loss of habitat may quickly push populations into allostatic overload or in more mobile species, prompt resource tracking and migration with attendant energetic costs and risks.

Reservoir host energy and stress (allostatic load)

Healthy animals maintain a positive energy balance, where energy inputs either from foraging or stored reserves of fat, balance or exceed energy expenditure required for survival and reproduction (Fig.  3 ). This balance of energy in physiological systems occurs through allostasis—a dynamic process that integrates the neuroendocrine, metabolic, cardiovascular, and immune systems to adapt to varying conditions. Animals regularly adapt to increased energy demands needed to migrate, hibernate, or reproduce. The total resources an animal requires at any given time is an animal’s “allostatic load” 10 , 11 . Allostatic load is frequently estimated with biomarkers such as cortisol, a glucocorticoid hormone indicative of stress 12 , or related energetic and immune metrics, such as total white-blood-cell count, the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, and immune regulatory markers. When in balance, glucocorticoid hormones help manage energy usage and have generally beneficial effects on immunity. For example, they mediate anti-inflammatory processes, support T cell maintenance, and enhance the functions of Th2, Th17 and B cells, which collectively bolster the body’s defense against infection and keep immune responses in check 13 , 14 . Across millennia, animals evolved the capacity to maintain allostasis under predictable variations in their environments, precisely aligning energetically expensive activities with periods of maximum food availability 15 (Fig.  3 ).

Bats have evolved mechanisms to meet their exceptionally high energy needs under prevailing environmental conditions. A Baseline levels of energy (green) are required for basic daily activities – to fuel cells, to move around, to find food and water, and to maintain the immune system. At any given time, a certain amount of food - or energy - is available (blue+purple+green), which varies seasonally. Bats optimize their energy intake and energy expenditure, timing expensive activities like migration and reproduction (purple) to periods in which more food is available. Under normal conditions, an energetic buffer (blue) exists providing energetic wiggle room for years with poor food availability. B Perturbations in the environment, whether natural (e.g., fire in some instances) or man-made (e.g., downstream effects of global climate change, habitat destruction, etc.) increase the amount of energy needed for survival and reproduction. For example, animals may be required to travel greater distances to locate food and resting sites. Such increased exertion diminishes the energetic buffer that enables them to withstand periods of resource scarcity. C At its worst, these perturbations result in a reversal of fortune; less energy is available than the bat needs. In these conditions, or with disturbance or harassment, animals experience allostatic overload (red). This leads to suppression of immune function, and increased susceptibility to viral infection and shedding. Figure adapted, in part, from concepts in 10 .

Animals are less able to manage the physiological and behavioral challenges that arise from unpredictable environmental changes, particularly those caused by human activities. Perhaps the most common consequence of environmental change is decreased food availability, leading to weight loss 16 . When food is limited, energy expenditure may exceed energy input and the animal shifts into a state of allostatic overload (Fig.  3 ).

Habitat destruction, degradation, and fragmentation profoundly increase the likelihood of allostatic overload. This risk is compounded when animals face repeated stressors, such as cave disturbance or harassment 17 . To survive, animals must divert energy from other systems, including their immune defenses 14 , 16 . The effects of allostatic overload are largely mediated by the chronically elevated glucocorticoid hormones, which can lead to immune system dysregulation, impaired resistance to infection, and a shift in the balance between pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory processes. This state, the effects of which accumulate over an animal’s lifetime, facilitates viral infection and shedding 13 , 18 , 19 , 20 . Consequently, animals experiencing allostatic overload may shed more pathogens for longer periods, increasing the risk of spillover. Empirical evidence underscores the link between stress, acute food deprivation, and low body weight with higher probability, magnitude, and duration of viral shedding, as observed in bats 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 and birds 26 , 27 .

Reservoir host spatial behavior

Changes in land use not only affect the energy needs of reservoir hosts but also alter how reservoir hosts use space, including how they encounter humans, livestock, or other bridging hosts. Typically, animals have home ranges sufficient for them to acquire the resources they need such as food, water, shelter, and mates. Some species, especially those dependent on unpredictable or briefly available food, may need to migrate or move regularly to find these resources. Land-use changes can limit the amount and accessibility of food resources. In response, and to avoid or mitigate allostatic overload, animals often need to expand their search area or modify their home ranges to find sufficient food 28 , 29 . For example, fruit-eating bats Dermanura watsoni were observed to have larger daily feeding ranges in degraded habitats 30 . Such adaptations may increase the likelihood of encounters and, consequently, pathogen transmission between reservoir hosts, humans, and livestock. This may be especially true if they must traverse resource-sparse areas to find food, increasing stress and mortality risk. A study in Uganda, for example, showed increased contact between humans and non-human primates with increasing forest fragmentation 31 .

Moreover, wildlife populations may adapt to areas where they historically did not occur, and some species that host zoonotic pathogens have proven more likely to thrive in disturbed landscapes than in undisturbed sites 32 . For example, in response to the loss of winter habitat, Australian Pteropus alecto bats, carriers of Hendra virus, are shifting to agricultural and urban areas. Here, they feed on suboptimal but reliable foods in proximity to livestock 33 .

Increased zoonotic risk, then, often coincides with stressful life stages or times and places of resource scarcity 21 , 33 , 34 . Understanding which animals are most likely to modify their distributions, or are at the highest risk of allostatic overload, helps target countermeasures to spillover. For example, the P. alecto bats that shifted to novel agricultural and urban habitats shed higher levels of Hendra virus than bats in traditional habitats, especially during winter and after periods of food scarcity 22 , 35 . This combination of factors breaches the barriers earlier noted and has led to a higher probability of spillover 22 .

Human behavior

Although human interaction with a pathogen is a fundamental component of pathogen spillover, mere spatial overlap between humans and virus-shedding reservoir hosts is not sufficient for spillover. Specific human behaviors (not always within one’s control) that provide a transmission route and sufficient dose for infection are usually required—for example, harvesting guano or date palm sap 36 , 37 , 38 , visiting a tourist cave 34 , or butchering wildlife with inadequate protection 39 . Such behaviors, which increase the frequency and intensity of contact with wildlife and wildlife excreta, can become more prevalent because of land-use change, frequently precipitated by the construction of new roads. While road construction, if designed well, can bring benefits such as employment, reduced transportation costs, and development 40 , roads also facilitate increased access to wildlife habitats. This access can enable activities such as the extraction of wild animals for food and trade, timber harvest, and livestock grazing, following deforestation 41 , 42 . New settlements that follow roads may also promote synanthropic responses of wildlife; for example, bats are commonly found roosting on roofs of rural homes 43 .

Road construction not only alters exposure opportunities but also introduces people into communities that lack immunity to local pathogens. By contrast, Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs) who have coexisted with these environments may have some protective immunity to local pathogens through repeated exposures. This is evident from the presence of antibodies to various outbreak-prone viruses in populations with frequent wildlife exposure. For example, antibodies to filoviruses were detected in bat harvesters in remote northeast India 44 and antibodies to SARS-related coronavirus have been identified in people residing near caves in Yunnan Province, China 45 . Such evidence suggests that while pandemics may be rare, local spillovers could be relatively common. Furthermore, the construction of roads not only increases the risk of exposure for those lacking immunity but also facilitates the rapid spread of novel pathogens once they have entered the human population, thereby increasing the likelihood of a pandemic.

Apart from the direct impact of road construction, there is a multitude of factors relating to deforestation and forest degradation that could affect human exposure to pathogens, including agricultural practices such as the cultivation of palm oil and extractive industries, notably mining 46 . Typically, such activities are either preceded by or necessitate the building of roads, further intertwining human exposure with infrastructural development. IPLCs living in and around forests, aren’t always the main beneficiaries of these activities and can be actively harmed by them 47 , 48 . For example, land-use change can result in decreased income and food security, incentivizing some individuals to increase hunting and bush travel. This underscores the need for development projects, including road construction, to take holistic approaches that optimize outcomes for people rather than focusing on single outcomes that can have unintended consequences. Such an approach could deliver much of the economic benefits to people while reducing environmental and social damage. Individual human behaviors that increase spillover risk must be considered in the context of such socio-ecological factors–including vulnerabilities and inequalities—as well as in a historical and cultural context 49 .

Ecological countermeasures defined

We define ecological countermeasures as actions that protect and restore wildlife habitat or mitigate wildlife-human interactions to reduce the risk of pathogen spillover. These measures are strategically designed to increase the resilience of reservoir host populations, reduce stress and likelihood of viral shedding, prevent distributional shifts, and protect vulnerable human communities. By addressing these factors, ecological countermeasures target the root causes of spillover. They effectively strengthen barriers to spillover and decrease the likelihood that the conditions for spillover align.

We propose a tiered approach that considers the land-use context surrounding the habitats of reservoir hosts (Fig.  4 ), focusing on enhancing habitat integrity, heterogeneity, and connectivity. In our view, the most effective strategy to reduce the probability of another pandemic is to preserve intact ecosystems and bolster their resilience through restoration and the creation of buffer zones. This priority is driven by the likelihood that the next pandemic will be triggered by an as-yet-unknown pathogen, referred to as “Disease X” by the World Health Organization 50 , that has had scarce opportunities for spillover or for evolutionary adaptation in bridging hosts. Our primary emphasis should be on maintaining and enhancing the integrity and resilience of still-intact landscapes to prevent new interfaces that could enable the emergence of Disease X.

We propose a tiered approach that considers the land-use context surrounding the habitats of reservoir hosts. Because the next pandemic is most likely to be triggered by a pathogen that is currently limited in its exposure to human populations, the highest priority should be to preserve intact ecosystems and enhance their resilience through restoration and increasing connectivity. In regions where humans and reservoir hosts share landscapes, we prioritize the safeguarding of critical areas needed for reservoir hosts’ feeding, resting, and social aggregation. Simultaneously, we aim to protect human communities and livestock most at risk of exposure to zoonotic pathogens.

In regions where humans and reservoir hosts share landscapes, we prioritize the safeguarding of critical areas needed for reservoir hosts’ feeding, resting, and social aggregation. Simultaneously, we aim to protect human communities most at risk of exposure to zoonotic pathogens. In the following sections, we explain how these strategies target the fundamental drivers of pathogen spillover and promote the health of both wildlife and human populations. While we focus on bats as reservoir hosts, ecological countermeasures are relevant across diverse reservoir host species, as long as specific ecological contexts and local practices are considered 51 . We present these strategies with a simple policy-focused message as they would apply to bats: protect where bats forage (where bats eat), protect where bats roost (where bats sleep), and protect people at risk (Fig.  4 ).

Protect where bats forage

The quality of foraging areas determines the energetic buffer protecting individuals from allostatic overload in times of increased energetic costs or reduced resource availability (Fig.  2b ). If animals have enough nutritious food, they are less likely to become energetically or physiologically stressed, reducing the risk of allostatic overload and infection and shedding (Fig.  2c ). Moreover, the location of bat foraging areas relative to human activity determines the spatial overlap with potential recipient hosts. If enough food is available in relatively unmodified landscapes, or immediately around roosts, bats are also less likely to use areas with higher human population densities. Thus, protecting where bats eat not only ensures that they are healthy, but that they are spatially separated from people.

In natural landscapes (Fig.  4 , left panel), the overarching priority is to preserve or improve the integrity of ecosystems that animals inhabit, as previously outlined. This may entail securing extensive areas of unmodified habitats, and proactively managing these landscapes to prevent fragmentation and degradation.

In landscapes that have already been degraded (Fig.  4 , middle panel), the focus should shift to protecting, restoring, and connecting key food sources that sustain reservoir hosts during periods of resource scarcity (e.g., winter or the dry season) and through energy-demanding life stages (e.g., pregnancy and lactation). Additionally, in environments facing degradation from land-use and climate change, ecological countermeasures are crucial for mitigating food shortages caused by habitat deterioration across multiple scales.

The natural-rural interface often presents a heterogeneous landscape to bats, characterized by a mix of high-quality foraging habitats embedded in or interdigitating with degraded habitats or areas of human land use. These areas, while fragmented, can still offer valuable nutritional resources. It is crucial to protect key foraging sites, especially those outside of protected areas, and to preserve habitats surrounding roosts. A priority is to maintain or create connectivity among quality habitat patches to ensure a consistent flow of resources. Thereafter, efforts should be directed towards the restoration of critical habitats and water sources, particularly in the vicinity of roosts, coupled with strategic livestock management to reduce interactions with bats. Active management strategies should aim to maximize the benefits of human land-uses such as croplands and plantations, for both humans and bats 52 , 53 .

In suburban and urban settings (Fig.  4 , right panel), priority activities focus on the separation of bats and people through strategic planning and restricting human access. At the broadest scale, urban expansion plans should avoid encroaching on large wildlife habitats. Within urban areas, it is crucial to preserve bat foraging resources without inadvertently increasing contact with human populations. This necessitates a collaborative effort between local communities, urban planners and bat experts who understand the requirements of local species. For example, ornamental or landscaping trees used in city planning may attract fruit-eating bats (such as members of the Pteropodidae and Phyllostomidae families) in subtropical and tropical regions. This is also true for fruit trees in residential backyards 54 . A practical approach might include selecting alternative landscaping species and planting bat-attractive trees in areas that are less accessible to humans. Wildlife-safe protective netting around backyard fruit trees can also limit bats’ access to ripe fruits and minimize fruit loss 43 , 52 , 53 . Box  1 provides real-life examples of preserving or enhancing bat foraging habitat and Supplementary Table  1 provides more examples of ecological countermeasures.

Box 1 Real-life examples illustrate the importance of protecting or enhancing where bats forage

In subtropical Australia, no Hendra virus spillovers occurred when Pteropus species bats left agricultural areas to feed on pulses of nectar in winter-flowering forests 33 . In some areas of the subtropics, over 90% of these crucial habitats have been cleared and the remaining forest flowers on multi-year cycles. Consequently, the occurrence of abundant winter flowering has become increasingly rare 33 . Restoring these habitats would target animals’ needs during predictable periods of scarcity, decrease their allostatic load, and reduce their reliance on human-dominated areas for food. Replanting winter habitats would be a sustainable, scalable, and effective strategy to reduce the risk of spillover of not just Hendra virus, but other viruses carried by Pteropus species bats.

Great fruit-eating bats ( Artibeus lituratus ) captured in areas of Colombia that used agroforestry had higher body weights and body condition scores than those within conventional farming areas 85 . Thus, emphasizing agroforestry in agricultural landscapes can provide critical food and shelter for bats 86 , 87 , 88 , 89 , 90 . In turn, bat predation of agricultural insect pests provides economic and ecological benefits to agriculture by increasing crop yields and reducing pesticide applications 90 .

To improve the foraging efficiency of wild little brown bats ( Myotis lucifugus ), insect density was increased using UV light lures 91 . This approach aimed to reduce the bats’ allostatic load and their susceptibility to white-nose syndrome, a disease caused by a fungal pathogen that does not pose a risk of spillover to people. Increased fat reserves can improve a bat’s ability to survive this disease. Bats had reduced commuting costs and increasing foraging efficiency, demonstrating that bats behaviorally respond to increased prey availability during critical energetic periods. This work highlights the potential benefits of restoring and enhancing habitats near bat hibernacula to improve the resilience of reservoir host species.

Agave plants are being restored along bat migration corridors in the southwest United States and northeast Mexico to provide nectar for Mexican Long-nosed bats ( Leptonycteris nivali ) and Lesser Long-nosed bats ( Leptonycteris yerbabuenae ) during energetically expensive migration 92 . In the first five years, over 80,000 agaves were planted within 50 km of six key bat roosts, encompassing both migratory and maternity roosts. This restoration effort not only aids bats but also benefits farmers and rural communities in Mexico, as wild agaves are also harvested for food and beverages, livestock fodder, fencing materials, and other uses. Agaves hold significant cultural value and contribute to the livelihoods of rural Mexican communities 92 . Consequently, restoring bat foraging habitat is an example of how conservation efforts can simultaneously enhance human well-being when co-benefits are identified and integrated.

Protect where bats roost

Roosts are locations where bats sleep, shelter, mate, socialize, and raise their young. With few exceptions, bats cannot construct shelters and must roost in pre-existing natural (e.g., caves, rock crevices, tree cavities, and tree foliage) or human-made (e.g., buildings, bridges, mines) structures. Moreover, species are typically highly selective of their roost sites, seeking out particular microclimates, light conditions, ingress, and egress conditions. The number of bats using a roost can vary greatly, containing anywhere from a few bats to hundreds of thousands, depending on the species and nature of the roost.

Protecting the roost includes minimizing disturbance and persecution—conversely, often a first response to an outbreak of a bat-borne pathogen. Disturbance not only causes stress, impairing their immune responses but can also force bats into new areas. This increases their energy expenditure and likelihood of contact with humans 22 , 55 . Moreover, culling bats has been linked to increased active infection within bat populations (e.g., rabies in vampire bats [ Desmodus rotundus 56 ] and Marburg virus in Egyptian fruit bats [ Rousettus aegyptiacus 21 ], and a greater risk of spillover.

Roosts are typically small natural features, and protecting roost sites is a specific management action that can reduce the risk of pathogen spillover. This may require establishing protection buffers around roosts or installing physical barriers (Fig.  4 , and Supplementary Table  1 ). Such buffers are also vital for preserving the quality and quantity of foraging habitats surrounding the roost. Engaging local communities is another key strategy, especially if the roost holds cultural or use value, as is common with caves 57 . Local communities are less likely to harm bats if they are aware of bat natural history, and have previously engaged in environmental education 58 , and are aware of the benefits of bat presence 59 .

Protect people at risk

The third countermeasure, focused on the safety of humans and livestock in proximity to reservoir hosts, is less ecologically oriented but is crucial in mitigating pathogen exposure risk (Fig.  4 , Supplementary Table  1 ). Pathogen exposure can occur through contact with reservoir hosts, their body fluids, excreta, or through aerosols and droplets derived from these sources. Thus, identifying and modifying human behaviors that elevate the risk of such exposures is essential.

For communities reliant on bat-associated economic activities, such as guano harvesting, tourism, and wildlife consumption 45 , 56 , 60 , 61 , adopting safe practices is critical (Supplementary Table  1 ). Additional measures may include restricting and regulating the trade of bats 62 and preventing contact between bats and farmed wildlife 63 . When the specific mechanisms of pathogen spillover are understood, the implementation of preventative measures can be relatively straightforward. In Bangladesh, an effective measure to prevent Nipah virus transmission is covering the areas of date palm trees where sap is collected, which prevents bats from contaminating the sap and transmitting the Nipah virus to humans 64 . In Malaysia, a regulation requiring fruit trees to be planted at a distance from pig sties may explain the lack of subsequent Nipah virus spillovers 65 . Similarly, keeping horses away from trees frequented by bats at night may reduce the risk of Hendra virus transmission between bats and horses 66 .

Box  2 lists interventions in the context of the degree of human landscape modification. Future work must assess the relative effectiveness, feasibility, and prioritization of these countermeasures across different countries and regions since the underlying conditions and legal landscapes will vary. Additionally, given the dynamic nature of climate and land use-induced changes impacting natural and human environments, a flexible, iterative, and adaptive approach is essential for prioritization of these countermeasures 67 .

Box 2 Countermeasures in the context of degree of human landscape modification

Ecological countermeasures that protect where bats eat and roost, and protect people at risk, must consider the activities of bats and humans in the landscape. Countermeasures can be implemented at a range of geographic extents and within different contexts of degrees of human modification (Fig.  4 and Supplementary Table  1 )

In large wild areas, protect where bats forage and roost:

Maintain or increase the integrity of ecosystems by preventing the destruction and fragmentation of natural areas.

In shared landscapes dominated by natural areas interspersed with human land uses:

Protect where bats eat:

Connect protected areas.

Preserve and restore vegetation diversity and structural complexity in bat foraging habitats.

Protect and restore habitats that provide food during periods of resource scarcity and high energetic demand.

Maintain or restore landscape heterogeneity through, for example, wide buffers of natural vegetation along sensitive habitat like streams and wetlands.

Promote sustainable agriculture and forestry practices that support bat foraging and roosting.

Minimize disruption to water sources used by bats.

Protect natural areas when planning new developments.

Protect where bats roost:

Limit human access to roost sites to minimize disturbances.

Create buffers of foraging habitat around known roosts.

Protect a diversity of roosting options for bats, including large cavity-bearing trees, tree snags, and caves.

Provide alternative roosting options such as boxes and hollow trees.

Protect people at risk:

Manage livestock to reduce interactions with bats and bat excreta.

Provide information on risks and risk mitigation associated with certain activities.

Use personal protective equipment for individuals in contact with bats or their excreta.

Vaccinate at-risk populations for endemic bat-borne pathogens such as Ebola or rabies and potentially against pandemic potential pathogens in the future.

Empower communities as stewards of the local land and wildlife, including bats.

In heavily modified landscapes such as intensively farmed and urban areas:

Preserve where bats eat and roost:

Conserve remaining natural habitats that provide shelter or food.

Maintain and restore connectivity.

Restore foraging habitat near roosts.

Restore habitat buffers around roosts.

Increase the proportion of native plant species that provide food and shelter for bats in remnant natural areas away from people.

Exclude bats from human food (e.g. fruit trees) and water supplies.

Exclude humans from roosts in public buildings and structures (e.g. churches, bridges, culverts).

Humanely exclude bats from houses and construct bat-proof housing.

Actively involve communities in risk mitigation measures.

Policy outlook

Currently, multilateral policy discussions focus predominantly on enhancing pandemic preparedness (e.g., developing new vaccines, readying healthcare systems) 1 , 68 . While these capacities are undeniably important, integrating a more balanced approach that also prioritizes spillover prevention could reduce human suffering and negative economic impacts in the long term. Despite this, prioritizing prevention proves challenging and is overshadowed by reactive strategies that are activated only after a pathogen is already circulating among humans. This is evident in the current draft of the World Health Organization (WHO) Pandemic Agreement, which does not mention “primary pandemic prevention” and uses the word “prevention” only in the context of secondary prevention measures such as early detection and outbreak response 69 .

Although the importance of pandemic prevention is well-acknowledged, the concept of using ecological countermeasures—actions that protect and restore wildlife habitat or mitigate wildlife-human interactions—as a preventative strategy is only emerging. Ecological countermeasures offer multiple advantages: not only can they prevent spillover, but they engage multiple sectors in action beyond public health, and they contribute multiple co-benefits including climate change mitigation, biodiversity protection, and added ecosystem services (e.g., pest control and pollination by bats). Feedback among these sectors calls for integrated approaches. For example, both climate change and biodiversity loss can intensify processes that drive spillover. Excess heat, extreme climate events, and changing plant phenology are likely to increase allostatic load and alter wildlife (and human) spatial behavior 70 . The loss of biodiversity, including predator species, often leaves ecosystems dominated by species that are more competent hosts for zoonotic pathogens 32 . Together these processes escalate the need for ecological countermeasures.

Ecological countermeasures support, strengthen, and work in accord with existing and future policy frameworks, including those under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Paris Agreement, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)’s Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, the new Pandemic Fund through the World Bank, and the WHO Pandemic Agreement. Such existing policy efforts offer opportunities for nations to invest in and incorporate primary pandemic prevention alongside preparedness efforts 1 .

Centrally, ecological countermeasures are fundamentally equitable because health benefits almost always accrue regardless of access to health systems. We’ve seen with COVID-19 and mpox that the most vulnerable populations, at greatest risk of infection and adverse outcomes, often had limited access to vaccines 71 . By contrast, spillover prevention benefits everyone globally, irrespective of individuals’ access to health systems 1 , 72 , 73 .

An Intergovernmental Panel for Pandemics

Many international entities have mandates that include enhancing pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response, including the One Health High-Level Expert Panel, the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, and the Quadripartite. Such bodies all address unique and important issues, but none acts as an official scientific body that regularly assesses and synthesizes the full breadth of the latest data on pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response.

To address this, we strongly support the establishment of an Intergovernmental Panel for Pandemics, which could eventually come to fruition with the passage of the WHO Pandemic Agreement. This panel, if created, would provide regular scientific assessments to guide governments as they implement policies and programs related to pandemics. The scope of such a panel must include primary pandemic prevention alongside preparedness and response. The panel could be modeled after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services 74 , 75 .

We recognize a risk of fragmentation with multiple different panels focused on climate, biodiversity, and pandemics. It is critical, therefore, to assure their coordination. By doing so, repeated efforts can be avoided, and, where applicable, intersectoral solutions can be implemented to harness co-benefits and synergies across sectors.

Moreover, there is a need to critically evaluate the evidence for the effectiveness of various pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response strategies. Although the global health community widely endorses strategies such as disease surveillance, perhaps largely due to their familiarity and experience with such methods, investments in primary prevention remain unprioritized. This raises a critical question: is there evidence that surveillance offers a greater reduction in pandemic risk compared to primary pandemic prevention (for example, is surveillance likely to activate response strategies in time to prevent spread of a pathogen with high transmissibility and pre-symptomatic spread)? To address these issues, an independent, broadly representative body could provide unbiased and politically neutral evaluation of the various strategies, encompassing prevention, preparedness, mitigation, and response 75 .

Metrics for pandemic prevention

Any program to mitigate pandemic risk through the conservation and restoration of nature must be evaluated to ensure it has the intended impact. Thus, we propose that the Intergovernmental Panel for Pandemics develop clear and robust metrics. These metrics should not only evaluate primary pandemic prevention efforts but also integrate them into existing biodiversity and climate change frameworks. Such metrics could monitor program performance, ensure accountability and transparency, and guide equitable wealth distribution to local communities based on program outcomes.

Numerous existing biodiversity assessment metrics could be shared with pandemic prevention metrics. Examples include the Ecological Integrity Index, STAR biodiversity index, and SEED biocomplexity metric, all in line with the CBD protocols. Additionally, there needs to be metrics specifically addressing spillover risk, including the guidance presented here (e.g., protect habitats where reservoir hosts forage and rest, especially during periods of resource scarcity; and reduce land-use changes that increase human-wildlife encounters).

The development of these metrics presents an opportunity to maximize the co-benefits of biodiversity preservation, climate change mitigation, and pandemic prevention. Such an integrated and synergistic approach should increase the success of program implementation globally 75 , 76 . For instance, restoration of koala ( Phascolarctos cinereus ) habitats in Australia, if strategically focused on trees that both support koalas and provide nectar for bats, could concurrently restore water catchments, sequester carbon, and reduce the risk of bat virus spillovers 33 .

Empowering local communities through One Health efforts

The One Health approach–popularized in recent years to optimize the health of people, animals, and ecosystems 77 –offers opportunities to implement ecological countermeasures for primary pandemic prevention. Currently, however, One Health efforts are overwhelmingly focused on disease surveillance in livestock and humans, rarely considering environmental drivers of emerging health threats 78 . One of the bottlenecks to advancing a more holistic One Health practice is the lack of practitioners across the animal-human-environment fields. To bridge this gap, we propose the creation of networks of ecosystem health workers to operationalize One Health and support local communities in implementing primary pandemic prevention. Those ecosystem health workers—who may include local forestry, wildlife, veterinary, medical, or public health officers–could be trained in, and help develop and implement, locally relevant ecological countermeasures, while embedded in larger governmental One Health teams. Their duties could include environmental education and ecological consultation (Supplementary Table  1 ), and information collection relevant to management actions (Box  3 ). They could also engage local universities and create pipelines for research on ecological countermeasure implementation and monitoring. They could ensure that local information is reported to national and international entities to inform effective, equitable decision-making 79 .

In parallel, it is essential to recognize the vital role of IPLCs in this framework. Integrating the perspectives and knowledge of IPLCs is not just a matter of cultural respect and justice; it is also a pragmatic strategy for designing and implementing appropriate, feasible and practical ecological countermeasures. Collaborating with IPLCs will help ensure that countermeasures align with local context and meaningfully incorporate local and Indigenous knowledge. IPLCs have managed natural ecosystems for thousands of years, and their involvement is increasingly seen as critical for reaching global climate and conservation goals 80 . Engaging IPLCs as equal partners in designing and implementing solutions to threats such as pandemics and climate change will increase the chances of successful outcomes 80 , 81 .

Box 3 Key questions for risk assessment and mitigation through ecological countermeasures, using bats as an example

Natural systems focus:

Which species of bats are present?

To what extent are local roost sites and foraging areas mapped?

Are local roost sites, and buffers around these sites, protected from disturbance?

What and where are the highest-quality habitats for these species in each season?

What resources are limited, either seasonally or consistently?

What habitat is required to ensure food is available during critical life stages?

How well are the local bat biology and movement patterns understood?

Human interactions focus:

Is land-use change likely to change the distribution and decrease the availability of bat foraging grounds, increase encounter rates with humans, or increase disturbance to roosts?

What is the nature of current bat-human interactions?

Are bat-human interactions increasing and, if so, why?

What are the attitudes of local communities toward bats, and why?

Who has regulatory authority to implement countermeasures?

Who are the key stakeholders needed to develop implementation mechanisms?

Is the available information sufficient to make informed decisions or actions?

Can areas critical to bats’ viability and health be protected or restored?

What steps can be taken to reduce contact between people and bats?

Expand the evidence base for ecological countermeasures

Our current understanding of pathogen spillover is characterized by vast knowledge inequalities. Biomedical aspects of spillover are extensively explored, while ecological components of spillover are under-represented. For example, thousands of publications detail the entry of bat-origin coronaviruses into human cells, but only a few studies explore their circulation in nature 82 . Moreover, studies on spillover are relatively rare but studies that examine the entire spillover process—from environmental drivers to reservoir hosts to human infections—are exceptionally rare. Therefore, our understanding of spillover is built on partial knowledge, such as studies demonstrating increased frequency of animal-human contact following habitat loss, or higher shedding in animals under stress (Supplementary Table  2 ). Although there is strong evidence for these component drivers of spillover, there is a critical need for studies that encompass the entire spectrum of spillover stages, including wildlife ecology, wildlife viral dynamics, human exposure, and human infection. Such studies need to be transdisciplinary, landscape-scale, with replication in space and time, shared data, and integration of local knowledge. Critically, these investigations must be grounded in the ecological systems where pandemics are likely to originate.

Pandemics have predominantly been addressed through a biomedical lens. While biomedical approaches are an essential part of the pandemic response toolbox, the genesis of a pandemic is rooted in ecological systems, necessitating ecological approaches for prevention. By aligning our research priorities with this understanding, we can build a comprehensive set of preemptive countermeasures that mitigate pandemic risk.

Conclusions

Spillover is an ecological process and, in the realm of human health, an ecological problem. While the human health issues arising from spillover events, such as outbreaks and pandemics, are addressed by epidemiological and biomedical countermeasures (e.g., testing, isolation, vaccines), the ecological aspects of spillover necessitate ecological solutions. In an ideal world, successful ecological countermeasures, which prevent spillover, would greatly reduce the need for biomedical countermeasures. We do not live in an ideal world; thus, we must move forward on both fronts.

To date, biomedical countermeasures to treat pandemics have received far more attention than ecological countermeasures. Our goal here has been to highlight the use of targeted ecological interventions as sensible, equitable, and efficient methods to prevent pandemics. While currently underutilized, ecological countermeasures have demonstrated potential in preventing spillover 33 , 76 . As challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and a growing global population intensify, the relevance and necessity of ecological approaches for pandemic prevention are expected to increase.

Although we illustrate the science of ecological countermeasures using bats as a case study, the concepts are applicable across various wildlife reservoir host taxa, including ungulates, primates, and rodents. To reduce the likelihood of pandemics, we must protect where animals forage and rest so that we can keep wildlife healthy, minimize allostatic load, reduce the need for animals to alter their spatial behavior, and minimize risky human-wildlife encounters.

The current confluence of political will, resources, and scientific evidence for primary pandemic prevention provides an opportunity to incorporate ecological countermeasures into multiple policy frameworks. Such countermeasures can help prevent pandemics by, in part, protecting and restoring nature across the globe. Explicit consideration of such countermeasures within global land management and conservation strategies is key to simultaneously addressing the intertwined threats of biodiversity loss, climate change and global pandemics.

Vora, N. M. et al. Want to prevent pandemics? Stop spillovers. Nature 605 , 419–422 (2022).

Article   ADS   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Markotter, W. et al. Prevention of zoonotic spillover: From relying on response to reducing the risk at source. PLoS Pathog. 19 , e1011504 (2023).

Article   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Plowright, R. K. et al. Land use-induced spillover: a call to action to safeguard environmental, animal, and human health. Lancet Planet Health 5 , e237–e245 (2021).

Article   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Carroll, D. et al. The Global Virome Project. Science 359 , 872–874 (2018).

Plowright, R. K. et al. Pathways to zoonotic spillover. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 15 , 502–510 (2017).

Plowright, R. K. et al. Transmission or within-host dynamics driving pulses of zoonotic viruses in reservoir–host populations. PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis. 10 , e0004796 (2016).

Wasik, B. R. et al. Onward transmission of viruses: how do viruses emerge to cause epidemics after spillover? Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 374 , 20190017 (2019).

Banerjee, A. et al. Novel insights into immune systems of bats. Front. Immunol. 11 , 26 (2020).

World Health Organization. Prioritizing Diseases for Research and Development in Emergency Contexts https://www.who.int/activities/prioritizing-diseases-for-research-and-development-in-emergency-contexts (2022).

Wingfield, J. C. et al. How birds cope physiologically and behaviourally with extreme climatic events. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 372 , 20160140 (2017).

McEwen, B. S. & Wingfield, J. C. Allostasis and allostatic load*. In Encyclopedia of Stress 2nd edn (ed. Fink, G.) 135–141 (Academic Press, 2007).

Wingfield, J. C. The concept of allostasis: coping with a capricious environment. J. Mammal. 86 , 248–254 (2005).

Article   Google Scholar  

Shimba, A., Ejima, A. & Ikuta, K. Pleiotropic effects of glucocorticoids on the immune system in circadian rhythm and stress. Front. Immunol. 12 , 706951 (2021).

Shimba, A. & Ikuta, K. Immune-enhancing effects of glucocorticoids in response to day-night cycles and stress. Int. Immunol. 32 , 703–708 (2020).

Article   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Reeder, D. M. & Kramer, K. M. Stress in free-ranging mammals: integrating physiology, ecology, and natural history. J. Mammal. 86 , 225–235 (2005).

Acevedo-Whitehouse, K. & Duffus, A. L. J. Effects of environmental change on wildlife health. Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci. 364 , 3429–3438 (2009).

Phelps, K. L. & Kingston, T. Environmental and biological context modulates the physiological stress response of bats to human disturbance. Oecologia 188 , 41–52 (2018).

Article   ADS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Godbout, J. P. & Glaser, R. Stress-induced immune dysregulation: implications for wound healing, infectious disease and cancer. J. Neuroimmune Pharmacol. 1 , 421–427 (2006).

Article   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Shimba, A. & Ikuta, K. Control of immunity by glucocorticoids in health and disease. Semin. Immunopathol. 42 , 669–680 (2020).

Guito, J.C. et al. Coordinated inflammatory responses dictate Marburg virus control by reservoir bats. Nat. Commun. 15 , 1826 (2024).

Amman, B. R. et al. Marburgvirus resurgence in Kitaka Mine bat population after extermination attempts, Uganda. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 20 , 1761–1764 (2014).

Becker, D. J., Eby, P., Madden, W., Peel, A. J. & Plowright, R. K. Ecological conditions predict the intensity of Hendra virus excretion over space and time from bat reservoir hosts. Ecol. Lett. 26 , 23–36 (2023).

Seltmann, A. et al. Seasonal fluctuations of astrovirus, but not coronavirus shedding in bats inhabiting human-modified tropical forests. Ecohealth 14 , 272–284 (2017).

Ruhs, E. C. et al. Applications of VirScan to broad serological profiling of bat reservoirs for emerging zoonoses. Front. Public Health 11 , 1212018 (2023).

Subudhi, S., Rapin, N. & Misra, V. Immune system modulation and viral persistence in bats: understanding viral spillover. Viruses 11 , 192 (2019).

Owen, J. C. et al. Reservoir hosts experiencing food stress alter transmission dynamics for a zoonotic pathogen. Proc. Biol. Sci. 288 , 20210881 (2021).

CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Gervasi, S. S., Burgan, S. C., Hofmeister, E., Unnasch, T. R. & Martin, L. B. Stress hormones predict a host superspreader phenotype in the West Nile virus system. Proc. Biol. Sci. 284 , 20171090 (2017).

PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Mueller, T. et al. How landscape dynamics link individual- to population-level movement patterns: a multispecies comparison of ungulate relocation data. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 20 , 683–694 (2011).

Tucker, M. A. et al. Moving in the Anthropocene: global reductions in terrestrial mammalian movements. Science 359 , 466–469 (2018).

Ripperger, S. P., Kalko, E. K. V., Rodríguez-Herrera, B., Mayer, F. & Tschapka, M. Frugivorous bats maintain functional habitat connectivity in agricultural landscapes but rely strongly on natural forest fragments. PLoS ONE 10 , e0120535 (2015).

Bloomfield, L. S. P., McIntosh, T. L. & Lambin, E. F. Habitat fragmentation, livelihood behaviors, and contact between people and nonhuman primates in Africa. Landsc. Ecol. 35 , 985–1000 (2020).

Gibb, R. et al. Zoonotic host diversity increases in human-dominated ecosystems. Nature 584 , 398–402 (2020).

Eby, P. et al. Pathogen spillover driven by rapid changes in bat ecology. Nature 613 , 340–344 (2023).

Schmidt, J. P. et al. Spatiotemporal fluctuations and triggers of ebola virus spillover. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 23 , 415–422 (2017).

Lunn, T. J. et al. Periodic shifts in viral load increase risk of spillover from bats. Preprint at bioRxiv https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.09.06.556454 (2023).

Luby, S. P. et al. Recurrent zoonotic transmission of Nipah virus into humans, Bangladesh, 2001–2007. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 15 , 1229–1235 (2009).

Arankalle, V. A. et al. Genomic characterization of Nipah virus, West Bengal, India. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 17 , 907–909 (2011).

Hegde, S. T. et al. Investigating rare risk factors for Nipah virus in Bangladesh: 2001–2012. Ecohealth 13 , 720–728 (2016).

Leroy, E. M. et al. Human Ebola outbreak resulting from direct exposure to fruit bats in Luebo, Democratic Republic of Congo, 2007. Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis. 9 , 723–728 (2009).

Vilela, T. et al. A better Amazon road network for people and the environment. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117 , 7095–7102 (2020).

Article   ADS   CAS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Laurance, W. F., Goosem, M. & Laurance, S. G. W. Impacts of roads and linear clearings on tropical forests. Trends Ecol. Evol. 24 , 659–669 (2009).

Poulsen, J. R., Clark, C. J., Mavah, G. & Elkan, P. W. Bushmeat supply and consumption in a tropical logging concession in northern Congo. Conserv. Biol. 23 , 1597–1608 (2009).

Voigt, C. C. et al. Bats and buildings: the conservation of synanthropic bats. In Bats in the Anthropocene: Conservation of Bats in a Changing World (eds Voigt, C. C. & Kingston, T.) 427–462 (Springer International Publishing, 2016).

Dovih, P. et al. Filovirus-reactive antibodies in humans and bats in Northeast India imply zoonotic spillover. PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis. 13 , e0007733 (2019).

Wang, N. et al. Serological evidence of bat SARS-related coronavirus infection in humans, China. Virol. Sin. 33 , 104–107 (2018).

Pacheco, P. et al. Deforestation: A Threat to People and Nature https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/deforestation-fronts (2021).

Nicas, J. & Moriyama, V. The Amazon’s largest isolated tribe is dying. N. Y. Times Illegal Gold Rush Poisons Indigenous People in Amazon Haven. Available online: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/25/world/americas/brazil-amazon-indigenous-tribe.html (2023).

Cornwall, W. Illegal gold mines flood Amazon forests with toxic mercury. Science https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ada0701 (2022).

Nakkeeran, N. et al. Beyond behaviour as individual choice: a call to expand understandings around social science in health research. Wellcome Open Res 6 , 212 (2021).

Honigsbaum, M. Disease X and other unknowns. Lancet 393 , 1496–1497 (2019).

Prist, P. R. et al. Promoting landscapes with a low zoonotic disease risk through forest restoration: the need for comprehensive guidelines. J. Appl. Ecol. 60 , 1510–1521 (2023).

Law, B., Park, K. J. & Lacki, M. J. Insectivorous bats and silviculture: balancing timber production and bat conservation. In Bats in the Anthropocene: Conservation of Bats in a Changing World (eds. Voigt, C. & Kingston, T.) 105–150 (Springer, Cham, 2016).

Williams-Guillén, K., Olimpi, E., Maas, B., Taylor, P. J. & Arlettaz, R. Bats in the anthropogenic matrix: challenges and opportunities for the conservation of Chiroptera and their ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes. In Bats in the Anthropocene: Conservation of bats in a Changing World (eds. Voigt, C. & Kingston, T.) 151–186 (Springer, Cham, 2016).

Amman, B. R., Schuh, A. J., Albariño, C. G. & Towner, J. S. Marburg virus persistence on fruit as a plausible route of bat to primate filovirus transmission. Viruses 13 , 2394 (2021).

Seltmann, A. et al. Habitat disturbance results in chronic stress and impaired health status in forest-dwelling paleotropical bats. Conserv Physiol. 5 , cox020 (2017).

Streicker, D. G. et al. Ecological and anthropogenic drivers of rabies exposure in vampire bats: implications for transmission and control. Proc. Biol. Sci. 279 , 3384–3392 (2012).

Furey, N. M. & Racey, P. A. Conservation ecology of cave bats. In Bats in the Anthropocene: Conservation of Bats in a Changing World 463–500 (2016).

Reid, J. L. Knowledge and experience predict indiscriminate bat‐killing intentions among Costa Rican men. Biotropica 48 , 394–404 (2016).

Deshpande, K., Vanak, A. T., Devy, M. S. & Krishnaswamy, J. Forbidden fruits? Ecosystem services from seed dispersal by fruit bats in the context of latent zoonotic risk. Oikos 2022 , (2022).

Huong, N. Q. et al. Coronavirus testing indicates transmission risk increases along wildlife supply chains for human consumption in Vietnam, 2013–2014. PLoS ONE 15 , e0237129 (2020).

Vora, N. M. et al. Bat and lyssavirus exposure among humans in area that celebrates bat festival, Nigeria, 2010 and 2013. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 26 , 1399–1408 (2020).

Osofsky, S. A., Lieberman, S., Walzer, C., Lee, H. L. & Neme, L. A. An immediate way to lower pandemic risk: (not) seizing the low-hanging fruit (bat). Lancet Planet Health 7 , e518–e526 (2023).

Biggs, D. et al. Governance principles for the wildlife trade to reduce spillover and pandemic risk. CABI One Health https://doi.org/10.1079/cabionehealth.2023.0013 (2023).

Khan, S. U. et al. A randomized controlled trial of interventions to impede date palm sap contamination by bats to prevent nipah virus transmission in Bangladesh. PLoS ONE 7 , e42689 (2012).

Pulliam, J. R. C. et al. Agricultural intensification, priming for persistence and the emergence of Nipah virus: a lethal bat-borne zoonosis. J. R. Soc. Interface 9 , 89–101 (2012).

Martin, G., Webb, R. J., Chen, C., Plowright, R. K. & Skerratt, L. F. Microclimates might limit indirect spillover of the bat borne zoonotic Hendra virus. Microb. Ecol. 74 , 106–115 (2017).

Article   ADS   PubMed   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Plowright, R. K., Sokolow, S. H., Gorman, M. E., Daszak, P. & Foley, J. E. Causal inference in disease ecology: investigating ecological drivers of disease emergence. Front. Ecol. Environ. 6 , 420–429 (2008).

Kache, P. A., Cook, S., Sizer, N., Hannah, L. & Vora, N. M. Urgent need for integrated pandemic policies on pathogen spillover. Lancet Planet Health 5 , e668–e669 (2021).

Mettenleiter, T. C. et al. Draft of WHO Pandemic Agreement plays down primary prevention. Lancet 403 , 525–526 (2024).

Carlson, C. J. et al. Climate change increases cross-species viral transmission risk. Nature 607 , 555–562 (2022).

Asiedu, K. G. A year after outbreak, Africa waits for its share of mpox vaccines. Los Angel. Times (2023).

Adetifa, I., Muyembe, J.-J., Bausch, D. G. & Heymann, D. L. Mpox neglect and the smallpox niche: a problem for Africa, a problem for the world. Lancet 401 , 1822–1824 (2023).

Kozlov, M. WHO may soon end mpox emergency—but outbreaks rage in Africa. Nature 614 , 600–601 (2023).

ADS   CAS   PubMed   Google Scholar  

Phelan, A. L. How climate law can help to prevent the next pandemic. Nature 605 , 397 (2022).

Oppenheim, B., Brown, K. & Waldman, R. The world needs an intergovernmental panel on pandemic risk. Nat. Med. 27 , 934 (2021).

Hopkins, S. R. et al. How to identify win–win interventions that benefit human health and conservation. Nat. Sustain. 4 , 298–304 (2020).

World Health Organization News. Tripartite and UNEP support OHHLEP’s definition of ‘One Health’ (World Health Organization, 2021). https://www.who.int/news/item/01-12-2021-tripartite-and-unep-support-ohhlep-s-definition-of-one-health .

Ahmed, T., Tahir, M. F., Boden, L. & Kingston, T. Future directions for One Health research: regional and sectoral gaps. One Health 17 , 100584 (2023).

Greer, S. L., Bekker, M. P. M., Azzopardi-Muscat, N. & McKee, M. Political analysis in public health: middle-range concepts to make sense of the politics of health. Eur. J. Public Health 28 , 3–6 (2018).

Article   PubMed Central   Google Scholar  

Walker, W. S. et al. The role of forest conversion, degradation, and disturbance in the carbon dynamics of Amazon indigenous territories and protected areas. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117 , 3015–3025 (2020).

Jones, I. J. et al. Improving rural health care reduces illegal logging and conserves carbon in a tropical forest. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 117 , 28515–28524 (2020).

Ruiz-Aravena, M. et al. Ecology, evolution and spillover of coronaviruses from bats. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 20 , 299–314 (2022).

Rasmussen, A. L. et al. Virology—the path forward. J. Virol. 98 , e0179123 (2024).

The World Bank. Establishment of a Financial Intermediary Fund for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness and Response . http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/733191656685369495/Establishment-of-a-Financial-Intermediary-Fund-for-Pandemic-Prevention-Preparedness-and-Response (2022).

Chacón-Pacheco, J. J. & Ballesteros-Correa, J. MEJOR CONDICIÓN CORPORAL DE Artibeus lituratus EN FRAGMENTOS DE BOSQUE SECO ASOCIADOS A SISTEMAS SILVOPASTORILES QUE EN SISTEMAS CONVENCIONALES DE GANADERÍA EN CÓRDOBA, COLOMBIA. Oecol. Aust. 23 , 589–605 (2019).

Harvey, C. A. & González Villalobos, J. A. Agroforestry systems conserve species-rich but modified assemblages of tropical birds and bats. Biodivers. Conserv. 16 , 2257–2292 (2007).

Helbig-Bonitz, M. et al. Bats are not birds—different responses to human land‐use on a tropical mountain. Biotropica 47 , 497–508 (2015).

Williams-Guillén, K. & Perfecto, I. Effects of agricultural intensification on the assemblage of leaf-nosed bats (phyllostomidae) in a coffee landscape in Chiapas, Mexico. Biotropica 42 , 605–613 (2010).

Olimpi, E. M. & Philpott, S. M. Agroecological farming practices promote bats. Agric. Ecosyst. Environ. 265 , 282–291 (2018).

Tuneu-Corral, C. et al. Pest suppression by bats and management strategies to favour it: a global review. Biol. Rev. Camb. Philos. Soc. 98 , 1564–1582 (2023).

Frick, W. F. et al. Bats increased foraging activity at experimental prey patches near hibernacula. Ecol. Solut. Evid. 4 , e12217 (2023).

Frick, W. F., de Wit, L. A., Ibarra, A., Lear, K. & O’Mara, M. T. Conserving bats and their foraging habitats. In A Natural History of Bat Foraging (eds. Russo, D. & Fenton, B.) Ch. 16, 305–325 (Academic Press, 2024).

Download references

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Sonia Altizer, Andrew Breed, Daphne Carlson-Bremer, Peggy Eby, Lee Hannah, Eric Moise Bakwo Fils, and Paul Webala for the discussions that helped shape this manuscript. Thank you to Mary Noel at Blu Skye Consulting for helping organize a workshop that generated ideas for this manuscript, Robyn Egloff for help with figures, and Scott Bischke, Erica Fleishman, and Brooklin Hunt for comments on a draft of the manuscript. Funding: Cornell Center for Pandemic Prevention, Preparedness, and Response (R.K.P., C.E.W.); National Science Foundation DEB-1716698, EF-2133763, EF-2231624 (R.K.P., P.J.H., A.J.P., M.R.A.); Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency PREEMPT program Cooperative Agreement D18AC00031 (R.K.P., P.J.H., A.J.P., M.R.A., A.T.H.K.); National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health R01AI151144 (D.M.R. and I.E.); Montpellier Advanced Knowledge Institute On Transitions (R.K.P.); Natural Environment Research Council NE/V014730/1 (C.L.F.). The views, opinions, or findings expressed are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official views or policies of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

Author information

Manuel Ruiz-Aravena

Present address: Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Aquaculture, Mississippi State University, Starkville, USA

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Public and Ecosystem Health, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA

Raina K. Plowright, Manuel Ruiz-Aravena & Charley E. Willison

Medical Research Council Unit The Gambia, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, WC1E 7HT, UK

Aliyu N. Ahmed

Department of Biology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3SZ, UK

Tim Coulson

Department of Environmental Systems Science, ETH Zürich, Zürich, 8092, Switzerland

Thomas W. Crowther

Department of Biology, Muni University, P.O. Box 725, Arua, Uganda

Imran Ejotre

School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary Medicine, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK

Christina L. Faust

Bat Conservation International, Austin, TX, 78746, USA

Winifred F. Frick & M. Teague O’Mara

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, USA

Winifred F. Frick

Centre for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, 16801, USA

Peter J. Hudson

Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, 79409-3131, USA

Tigga Kingston

College of Climate Change and Environmental Science, Kerala Agricultural University, Kerala, 680 656, India

P. O. Nameer

Centre for Planetary Health and Food Security, Griffith University, Nathan, QLD, 4111, Australia

Alison J. Peel & Manuel Ruiz-Aravena

School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, 4072, Australia

Hugh Possingham

Biosciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4PS, UK

Orly Razgour

Department of Biology, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, 17937, USA

DeeAnn M. Reeder

Department of Mammalogy, Division of Vertebrate Zoology, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, NY, 10024, USA

Nancy B. Simmons

Institute of Public Health, Bengaluru, Karnataka, 560070, India

Prashanth N. Srinivas

Center for Large Landscape Conservation, Bozeman, MT, 59771, USA

Gary M. Tabor & Annika T. H. Keeley

Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

Iroro Tanshi

Small Mammal Conservation Organization, Benin City, 300251, Nigeria

Department of Animal and Environmental Biology, University of Benin, Benin City, 300000, Nigeria

Australian Capital Territory, Canberra, 2605, Australia

Ian G. Thompson

Centre for Policy Design, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bengaluru, Karnataka, 560064, India

Abi T. Vanak

School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 4041, South Africa

Conservation International, Arlington, VA, 22202, USA

Neil M. Vora

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed to idea generation, writing, and editing. R.K.P., A.T.H.K., I.G.T., T.C., O.R., C.L.F., and A.T.V. led working groups that facilitated the first draft of each section; R.K.P., D.M.R., and O.R. developed the figures.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Raina K. Plowright .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information.

Nature Communications thanks the anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information, rights and permissions.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Plowright, R.K., Ahmed, A.N., Coulson, T. et al. Ecological countermeasures to prevent pathogen spillover and subsequent pandemics. Nat Commun 15 , 2577 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46151-9

Download citation

Received : 31 January 2024

Accepted : 16 February 2024

Published : 26 March 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-46151-9

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines . If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

• Mobile Site
• Staff Directory
• Advertise with Ars

Filter by topic

• Biz & IT
• Gaming & Culture

Front page layout

image processing —

Playboy image from 1972 gets ban from ieee computer journals, use of "lenna" image in computer image processing research stretches back to the 1970s..

Benj Edwards - Mar 29, 2024 9:16 pm UTC

On Wednesday, the IEEE Computer Society announced to members that, after April 1, it would no longer accept papers that include a frequently used image of a 1972 Playboy model named Lena Forsén. The so-called " Lenna image ," (Forsén added an extra "n" to her name in her Playboy appearance to aid pronunciation) has been used in image processing research since 1973 and has attracted criticism for making some women feel unwelcome in the field.

Further Reading

In an email from the IEEE Computer Society sent to members on Wednesday, Technical & Conference Activities Vice President Terry Benzel wrote , "IEEE's diversity statement and supporting policies such as the IEEE Code of Ethics speak to IEEE's commitment to promoting an including and equitable culture that welcomes all. In alignment with this culture and with respect to the wishes of the subject of the image, Lena Forsén, IEEE will no longer accept submitted papers which include the 'Lena image.'"

An uncropped version of the 512×512-pixel test image originally appeared as the centerfold picture for the December 1972 issue of Playboy Magazine. Usage of the Lenna image in image processing began in June or July 1973 when an assistant professor named Alexander Sawchuck and a graduate student at the University of Southern California Signal and Image Processing Institute scanned a square portion of the centerfold image with a primitive drum scanner, omitting nudity present in the original image. They scanned it for a colleague's conference paper, and after that, others began to use the image as well.

The image's use spread in other papers throughout the 1970s, '80s, and '90s , and it caught Playboy's attention, but the company decided to overlook the copyright violations. In 1997, Playboy helped track down Forsén, who appeared at the 50th Annual Conference of the Society for Imaging Science in Technology, signing autographs for fans. "They must be so tired of me... looking at the same picture for all these years!" she said at the time. VP of new media at Playboy Eileen Kent told Wired , "We decided we should exploit this, because it is a phenomenon."

The image, which features Forsén's face and bare shoulder as she wears a hat with a purple feather, was reportedly ideal for testing image processing systems in the early years of digital image technology due to its high contrast and varied detail. It is also a sexually suggestive photo of an attractive woman, and its use by men in the computer field has garnered criticism over the decades, especially from female scientists and engineers who felt that the image (especially related to its association with the Playboy brand) objectified women and created an academic climate where they did not feel entirely welcome.

Due to some of this criticism, which dates back to at least 1996 , the journal Nature banned the use of the Lena image in paper submissions in 2018.

The comp.compression Usenet newsgroup FAQ document claims that in 1988, a Swedish publication asked Forsén if she minded her image being used in computer science, and she was reportedly pleasantly amused. In a 2019 Wired article , Linda Kinstler wrote that Forsén did not harbor resentment about the image, but she regretted that she wasn't paid better for it originally. "I’m really proud of that picture," she told Kinstler at the time.

Since then, Forsén has apparently changed her mind. In 2019, Creatable and Code Like a Girl created an advertising documentary titled Losing Lena , which was part of a promotional campaign aimed at removing the Lena image from use in tech and the image processing field. In a press release for the campaign and film, Forsén is quoted as saying, "I retired from modelling a long time ago. It’s time I retired from tech, too. We can make a simple change today that creates a lasting change for tomorrow. Let’s commit to losing me."

It seems like that commitment is now being granted. The ban in IEEE publications, which have been historically important journals for computer imaging development, will likely further set a precedent toward removing the Lenna image from common use. In the email, IEEE's Benzel recommended wider sensitivity about the issue, writing, "In order to raise awareness of and increase author compliance with this new policy, program committee members and reviewers should look for inclusion of this image, and if present, should ask authors to replace the Lena image with an alternative."

reader comments

Channel ars technica.