# 4a. Read
## Introduction
Reading is an important part of studying and an essential part of the research process. The most important starting tip: don’t start reading randomly. This might take you a lot of time and not deliver the value you were hoping for. Instead, prepare your reading carefully by prioritising which sources to read first, using different types of reading effectively and knowing what you want to get out of it.
There are multiple types of reading you will encounter and use for different purposes as you are reading for research:
````{tab-set}
```{tab-item} Skimming & Scanning
**What is it**: _Skimming_ is quickly glancing over a text to take in key text features that give clues about the context of the text, such as sub-headings, graphs and figures. This type of reading is really useful when you are still deciding whether a resource is relevant and reliable for your research project in a broad sense.
When you _scan_ an article, you are looking at specific parts of a text. Maybe you are looking for specific information on keywords or methodologies mentioned in a text, or maybe you want to first evaluate a source in more detail before you decide to read and process it (Leiden University ATC Academic reading & writing, n.d.).
**When to use it**:
1. During evaluation of sources
2. To prioritise which sources to read and in what order
```
```{tab-item} Close Reading
**What is it**: _Close reading_, also called active reading, is a deliberate, focused and slow type of reading where you carefully examine a text to understand it - which includes actively asking yourself questions about the text, annotating/circling the text and taking notes while reading. It requires you to understand the authors’ thought sequence, how different parts of the text relate to each other, and what data and argumentation the conclusions are based on (Leiden University ATC Academic reading & writing, n.d.).
After you have close read a source you should be able to understand and summarise it. This may require multiple re-reads, and perhaps looking up terminology or parts that you do not understand yet in other resources.
**When to use it**: To really understand a text (and as a start to summarise it and gather key bits such as quotes and findings, that will help you answer some of your specific information search questions).
```
````
Now that you know about the different types of reading, let’s see how you can use them while reading for research. A good practice is to first skim and scan to decide your reading order, followed by close reading of your selected sources, and finally, also knowing when you should stop reading.
::::{grid}
:gutter: 3
:::{grid-item-card} Step 1
[Decide Your Reading Order](#step-1-deciding-your-reading-order)
Skim and Scan your sources and decide which ones to prioritise
:::
:::{grid-item-card} Step 2
[Close Reading, Note-taking and Updating Your Search](#step-2-close-reading-note-taking-and-updating-your-search)
Read in more detail and take notes. Use your knowledge to update your search strategy
:::
:::{grid-item-card} Step 3
[When to Stop](#step-3-when-to-stop-reading-and-searching)
Evaluate if you have read and found enough information
:::
::::
## Step 1: Deciding Your Reading Order
After your initial search and evaluation of your sources, you might end up with 10 academic articles, a book, and a more popular source like a newspaper. Where to begin? How much time should you spend on what? To help you prioritise, do a skim and scan of your stack of sources, keeping in mind a couple of key questions to help you decide which ones to read first:
1. **How much do I already know about my topic?**
If your knowledge is limited, first reading sources that have more foundational knowledge (for example, definitions of terms, context of the topic and basic explanations), or sources with more accessible language and sentence structures can help you build more understanding of a topic before going to dense sources with more complex language or more specific articles.
2. **Which sources seem the most relevant to my specific information search question?**
You already checked for relevance when you were selecting these resources, but when prioritising check again the titles and abstracts and decide which resources are most likely to provide you with the information you are looking for. These can, for example, include resources that are recommended by your lecturer or peers, or other influential resources.
3. **How much time do I have?**
There will often be more resources to read than you have time, so you must prioritise! Check the number of pages of the resources and their complexity and relevance to your information search question. How much time do you estimate it would take to go through each of them? Which ones seem worth your time?
When deciding your reading order, and also when close reading, continue examining if the sources you selected are relevant or reliable. A resource might have slipped through during your [previous CRAAP assessment](3b-evaluating-sources.md) or your understanding of your topic might have changed, and a source that originally looked good might now seem less relevant or reliable. If so, drop it (record why in your reference manager or research notes) and move on. If you notice that a lot of your resources are not relevant, you may need to return to your search strategy and refine it to find more relevant resources.
```{admonition} Tip: Be flexible
:class: tip
Be flexible towards your initial reading order. As you are reading through your sources your knowledge will grow, and you may realise that a certain article lower on the list is actually more important and should be reprioritized, or the other way around.
```
After finalising your preparation, you are ready for the next step: close reading & notetaking.
## Step 2: Close Reading, Note-taking and Updating Your Search
After you’ve decided on your reading order, it is time to actually start reading. You can use the following steps to support your close reading journey:
1. Prepare Your Close Reading
2. Close Reading & Notetaking
3. Update Your Search Strategy
### Prepare Your Close Reading
**Set up an Optimal Reading Environment**
Reading requires focus, and taking care of an optimal reading environment can help set you up for success.
```{admonition} Tips for an Optimal Reading Environment
:class: dropdown tip
- Read when you have energy. Recognise during which parts of the day you personally can focus best, and at which parts you should relax or do something else.
- Choose a reading environment that works for your personal attention span. Do you need a quiet environment? Or can you focus best in noisier environments like a café or studying with fellow students?
- Minimise disturbances or distractions: Turn on Do Not Disturb mode on your phone and computer, put on focus music (white noise, instrumental, or whatever genre works for you).
- Take regular breaks: For example every 25 minutes (you could use a Pomodoro timer for this). Manage your energy and also recognise when you need to take a longer break or stop for the day.
- Reach out to fellow students: if you know they are reading the same articles, you could discuss your initial findings with them. Hearing different perspectives on an article can often help deepen your understanding.
- Go in with a curious mindset: Be interested in discovering new perspectives that may not be yours or may be unclear at first. And be willing to examine perspectives that may be conflicting.
```
**Define With What Purpose You Read a Source**
Establishing a clear purpose for reading a resource can help guide your reading. What are you hoping to get out of close reading the resource? What are you going to use it for and how exactly is it helping to answer your information search question?
Some example purposes could be:
- You want to explore a topic and build your foundational knowledge
- You are looking for an overview of what has been done before
- You want an answer to a specific information search question
- You are looking for a specific method or argument
- You want to broaden your perspectives and connect to what you already know
- You found a very new resource and want to learn what it adds to what you have previously read
**Read Specific Sections Before Reading the Entire Resource**
Before close reading a resource, make sure you have done an initial readthrough of all the relevant sections.
For a scholarly source, reading the _abstract_, _introduction_, _discussion_ and _conclusion_ first makes it easier to understand the contents and goals of the source before you dive further into it.
Have a look at the video below from PittCCLibrary to learn more about the different sections of a scholarly article to focus on while reading:
"How to Read a Scholarly Article" by PittCCLibrary is licensed under CC-BY
### Close Reading and Notetaking
**Close Read with Critical Questions in Mind**:
When you close read a scholarly source, you should also critically evaluate the source. Having critical questions in mind as you read the source also promotes active reading. Below are some critical questions you can take with you as you read the different parts of the text:
- How does the author know this and do they give any scientific evidence?
- Is this in line with my knowledge or does it contradict any knowledge I already have?
- Is the method well explained and justified?
- Are the results, methods and conclusions consistent with each other?
- Does the author correctly explain any surprising results?
- What are my own thoughts and beliefs compared to the author’s findings?
**Take Notes**
As you close read the text, make sure you take notes. If you don’t, you may lose a lot of time finding back certain quotes or information later in your project. There is no one size fits all notetaking strategy. However, there are some general tips you can take into consideration:
1. Be systematic and consistent with notes (location stored, types of notes)
2. Include citation of the source when note-taking, or take notes on the article itself
3. Tag if a note is a summary, quote, paraphrasing, own idea/question to help you reuse it later (Lumen, n.d.).
4. Connect your notes to your reference manager, either by creating note files as part of the reference record in your reference manager library, or by using plugins to cite sources from the reference manager as you do your notetaking in Word or other note-taking apps.
5. Don’t overdo it. Your notes should be linked to your reading goals, your information search questions, important concepts and findings, or action items (for instance something you want to look up)
6. Create a glossary of terms (term, definition, link to resource), this allows you to manage your knowledge of frequently used terms, and might be helpful to include in your end-product.
7. Are there certain things, such as terms, concepts or arguments, that you do not understand yet? Make a note of this so you can come back to it.
For more tips and specific strategies for notetaking, have a look at the chapter "Reading, Noting, & Synthesizing Sources" by Lumen Learning.
```{admonition} Tip: Notetaking Tools
:class: tip
Tip: The choice of your preferred notetaking app and style of notetaking is based on your personal preference. There are a lot of tools available for you to use. Have a look at the video "Which Note App are You?" from Tiago Forte to help you reflect on what type of notetaking tool might work best for you.
```
**Expect to Read a Source Multiple Times:**
You may need to go through (parts of) of a text multiple times to fully understand it, especially if you are dealing with more specialised information. After an initial scan and read-through, you might have already underlined important items or unclear concepts/terms. You can revisit these parts while you do additional note-taking and look up concepts you don’t understand yet.
It could happen that you still don’t understand certain parts of a text even after multiple rounds of reading.
If this is the case, you can always come back to it later, for example when you have read more foundational articles and your understanding of the topic has increased. Note that you should keep in mind the amount time you have for reading and need to prioritise if you do not have too much time. In the beginning, progress might feel slow when you start reading academic research on a topic that is new for you, but over time you will start to recognize recurring terms, concepts, theories and researchers, which will help you to speed up.
```{admonition} Tip to Support Reading: Text-to-speech software
:class: dropdown tip
Text-to-speech software
If you have difficulty reading, for example because of dyslexia, you could try text-to-speech software (or TTS) to have your computer read aloud to you. TU Delft offers a free TextAid license for all students.
```
### Update Your Search Strategy
While you have made an initial search strategy using the knowledge you had at the time, as you close read relevant articles your ideas will likely evolve and you may need to adapt your search strategy to find more relevant articles. Some suggestions:
- When you are close reading through your sources, take notes of relevant keywords you come across and update your literature search.
- If an article is highly relevant, consider using this as a key article to do snowballing or similar document searching to find additional literature (see also: [2d: Additional Search Methods](2d-additional-search-methods.md))
## Step 3: When to Stop Reading and Searching
As discussed in [Overview of Information Skills](0-information-skills.md), there are multiple moments during your thesis when you will need to search, evaluate and read information from others. In the beginning of your project you will conduct an in-depth review on what others have done, when conducting your project you might need to periodically search for sources, based on new concepts you encounter, the results you are finding, and to check if any new research has come out. Throughout your project you also synthesise your findings with what others have done.
This means that you do not stop searching and reading entirely throughout your project.
However, at the beginning of the project you do a more in-depth review and search of the literature, and at some point you need to move on from the literature review phase and start conducting your research. To avoid staying stuck in this phase for too long you can follow the guidelines below:
You stop searching and reading for your literature review when you either don't find any new literature anymore, or the literature you find doesn't have any new approaches, or your time has run out. Watch this video from Erasmus University, where Professor Liesbet van Zoonen explains approaches to evaluate how far you are in your literature review process:
"When to stop reading and start writing" by Erasmus University Library is licensed under CC-BY
Below you can find three practical guidelines you can take into account when you are reading to find out when you should either stop, or continue reading and searching for more academic sources:
1. Check if you have enough understanding in relation to your information search question. Have a look at your information search question and the information you have gathered. Are you able to answer your question based on enough relevant and reliable information? This potentially means that it is time to stop reading.
2. Check with your lecturer or supervisor.
Share your findings and ideas. They can help you figure out whether you have found enough literature, or if you should continue.
3. Check how much time you have and plan accordingly.
Dividing your time for a literature study can be done using the following rules of thumb from Erasmus University:
- 1/3 of your time reading
- 1/3 of your time searching
- 1/3 of your time writing up your findings
Take these guidelines into consideration and try to plan accordingly (Erasmus University Library, 2020)
4. Keep a narrow focus on your information search question.
If you feel like after a significant time reading and searching you are still overflowing with research articles, maybe revisit your literature search question. Can you make it more specific? Sometimes this cannot be avoided, as on some topics a lot of research is available. In this case, consult with your lecturer if you can make some changes to your search and reading strategies.
## References
- Erasmus University Library. (2020, April 20). _When to stop reading and start writing_ [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojRfybNJNuk
- Leiden University ATC Academic reading & writing. (n.d.). _Reading well_ [Video]. Leiden University MediaSpace™ video portal. https://video.leidenuniv.nl/media/t/1_6ggi9g46?utm_source=edusources.nl&utm_content=link&kalturaSeekFrom=2&kalturaClipTo=526&kalturaStartTime=1
- Lumen. (n.d.). _Reading, Noting, & Synthesizing Sources_. College Reading and Writing. https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-esc-introtocollegereadingandwriting/chapter/research-writing-synthesizing-information-from-multiple-texts/
- PittCCLibrary. (2016, January 6). _How to Read a Scholarly Article_ [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3tV8g70YuU