Sstrhsrtj

I am starting my PhD in Statistics program next year, and I have some concerns.
In my institution, there is a mandatory course that every PhD students have to take in lieu of taking one qualifying examination.
The course requires students to read 5 academic papers and write a report, which will be graded by faculty members.

I was browsing through the reading list for this course, and I often find myself pondering over one 20-pages long paper for days and weeks because I want to make sure that I understand every math/concepts/other details of the paper.
I am supposed to make a report for 1 paper/month, and I am now quite worried about what I am expected to do as a PhD student because it feels like it takes me eternity to comprehend a single paper. I feel discouraged because I have done very well in my Bachelor's and Master's programs in Statistics, but I am having such a hard time comprehending these academic papers.

Is it normal for beginning PhD students to have a hard time comprehending academic papers?

Yes, yes it is. But it gets easier. What most people don't realize when starting out reading academic papers, is that not every paper is an island (to paraphrase...). Terminology and 'lingo' is something you learn over time, and suddenly you realize that you no longer have to look up every second concept you stumble upon in a paper - it simply references stuff that you already know.

This is of course also the reason that forcing new students to read papers, and even write a report about them to make sure that the papers have been properly digested, is a very good idea. The fact that members of faculty even take time out to grade these reports, tells me that you are probably in capable hands.

I am in my second year of a statistics PhD. I have by now examined many hundreds of papers. Some of them are, I now know, of only tangential relevance to my research. Others are relevant but when I first saw them I did not understand them enough to know even that. And some are so relevant that I have sought to reproduce their findings and in doing so I have re-read them many times, often finding something new in them that I had not previously noticed. In parallel with reading these papers I have been learning about branches of statistics that I knew nothing of before.

The most important thing to realise, as I now have, is that academic papers are not generally written with the aim of explaining something to a novice, but rather are there to tell someone who is already expert how wonderful the author's research in that field of expertise should be seen to be.The day will come when you too can write papers that only a few people will understand, and to get there you will have struggled through countless really difficult papers.

Now, given that academic papers in statistics are bound to be hard to understand and that you have been asked to summarise as many as five of them in a short time, you have to accept that your summary will not be based on a complete understanding of all the material in all the papers. Imagine that you are a journalist rather than a researcher. You need to be able to write down:

1. what question does this paper seek to answer?


2. what is the answer?


3. what reasons does the author give for that answer?

If you can do that you already have a good summary of the paper. To do it you do not need to understand all the author's reasons, still less agree with them all. Later in your research, maybe, you will recall one of these papers and realise that it is relevant to your own work: then you really do have to roll up your sleeves and understand in detail, but not now.

Yes. But it's a question of practice. More reading= More understanding. More understanding easier to understand a new paper.

But you do not need to understand every single phrase.
For instance, if it is not exactly your field, I would jump over the methods section.

I got a recommendation during my Ph.D. first read Abstract, second Intro, third Conclusion. Some cases 3rd Results, 4th Conclusion.
The more you read the more you'll understand.

Read, read, read. That's the key

Reviews on the field of study are excellent starting points