How do you read scholarly work?

[KafkasCat]

With the summer and endless research plans ahead of me, I've been looking into how to tweak my research habits. It's a bit embarrassing, especially since I'm in the humanities, but I think my approach to reading scholarly works could use some improvement Or perhaps it's actually not that surprising that this would be the case especially in the humanities, where so many papers have intriguing, but diluted theses, avoid topic sentences at all costs, and abstracts are as rare as a tt job in today's market ...

Part of the problem, I think, is that my Ivy grad program didn't offer any research methods intros or instructions – the assumption was that we all already knew how to conduct research. Coming from a state school with a BA, I had some basics, and have been able to make it work through the dissertation and into my first VAP job. I learned a lot along the way, and my publishing record is solid and steadily growing, but I still feel like I'm missing something important. I always feel like I don't read enough and don't remember enough of what I do read. I usually top out at around 3 hours of focused reading a day, less if it's something complex, say Adorno, a bit more if the work is pretty straight-forward.

I've found some useful critical reading tips, like coming to the text with a specific question in mind in order to avoid basically rewriting every single step of the argument in one's notes, which would have been really helpful to know in grad school (as a first-gen student, I felt like I didn't know ANYTHING and was trying to compensate by trying to absorb every little detail, which led not only to some awful research habits but also to some pretty useless notes).

So, how do you read? How much do you manage to read in a day if you don't have to teach? Do you have any tips for reading faster/more? Has your reading pace improved over time? How do you skim if a paper has an elusive structure? What is the most useful reading tip you have ever received? How do you read enough to "keep up with the field" (especially if you are inter or cross-disciplinary, and have multiple fields)? Do you read digitally? On paper?

I've found this post and the related Youtube series pretty helpful:
https://thesiswhisperer.com/2019/05/01/beware-the-couch-reflections-on-academic-reading/

Of course I'm particularly interested in hearing from the humanists, but any insight is welcome. Thanks!

[Parasaurolophus]

I pretty much never feel like I've read enough, or like I remember anything. If I haven't written about it myself, presented it, or taught it, I pretty much don't remember it. I give a lot of presentations, though, and I try to be pretty thorough in my research, so that I ended up mentioning lots of stuff in my published work, so that helps. And I pepper my classes with lots of stuff I haven't read before, but which I've been meaning to read, and that forces me to do some reading. Going to conferences has the added advantage that in a one-hour session, you get a great picture of what the published paper will look like, without having to spend time and energy actually reading it.

On the whole, though, I do between an hour to an hour and a half of academic reading a day, when I'm not totally bogged down by teaching or in the throes of writing a new paper. That comes out to about one article a day, a few days a week. (They're all Adorno-like in complexity; if I'm reading outside my field, it's easier and faster, but I still only read the one.) I highlight the component parts of the argument, and make notes to myself about counterarguments, confirming evidence/arguments, related readings, etc. And then I don't open it up again until and unless I need it for research. When I do need it for research, I open it up again and re-read the highlighted bits, as well as my comments. If I need something in particular for my research, I'll skim an article until I find what I needed, then go back later for a more careful read, once the reading won't interrupt my writing process.

For monographs, I like to go to author-meets-critics sessions at the conferences I attend, to get a sense of what the book's argument is, and where its weaknesses lie. Following that, I might acquire the book, but I don't often get around to reading it. Unless it's directly relevant to ongoing research, I don't feel I need to. I'll also read two or three book reviews of new and interesting monographs in my field and subfield, and then leave it alone unless I really need it.

I do pretty much all of this reading on the computer now, apart from the odd physical monograph, and my 'to read' folder is bursting at the seams, and growing every day. I don't know that I'm being particularly efficient, though.

[Juvenal]

What do I read?

I'm STEM, but--should I diminish myself?--an "ancient, retired/but still an adjunct" soul at a CC.  How do I keep up?  Well, "cutting edge" information--rarely of use in an intro class--comes from the front matter in "Nature" and "Science."  As far as I can see, no one else in the department subscribes to both.  Why do I bother?  I put out past issues in the faculty lounge and...

[San Joaquin]

I'm in a field where abstracts are expected.  Some of them are well written enough that they summarize the work.  Otherwise, I use a lot of annotated bibliography when I am working on something larger, and I do some coding of those resources to the emergent outline of whatever I'm writing at some point, usually by the ooooh-fancy method of colored markers in the margins.

As for keeping up:  make good investments of your time.  A piece has to show me its colors or I may not read it at all, and yes, my reading speed is pretty fast.

Focus is elusive, and I often generate folders on ancillary topics just to stuff things in that may or may not get a follow-up later.

[glowdart]

I read very few texts cover to cover. I skim a lot, often in the library shelves before even deciding to check something out.

Mostly, I read scholarship as I'm writing, which includes planning an article conceptually. I'll take notes in a document file or photocopy pages or write on a print-out of an article if it is important.

The trick for me is to be conscious of the reason I'm reading. Most of the time, I'm either reading for secondary context for a piece I'm writing, reading to create course notes, or reading to determine if I'm assigning a piece in class. That reason directs my engagement. If I'm just reading for interest, then I eat like I read a novel or a news article; in this case, it doesn't matter if I remember anything because I'm reading for enrichment. It is not purpose-driven.

I find that keeping up with the field does not mean doing the deep reading you do in grad school. There isn't time. You can be exposed to new developments that aren't related to your courses or research through skimming, Twitter, podcasts, and other distillations. You're never going to remember it all. If you're never going to use it, then having heard of it is enough. If you need it later you'll need to re-read it anyway.

[spork]

Disclaimer: I am a grumpy old man disenchanted with academe's self-destructive emphasis on producing irrelevant publications.

My work-related reading falls into two categories that often bleed into each other:

• What information (from multiple disciplines) should I try to reconfigure into something that it is understandable and interesting to undergraduates? I refuse to make students pay $200 for a crappy textbook and provide them with what I think is the essential information on the topic myself.
• What is the latest research on effective teaching?

Scanning the literature that pops up in my journal database search results therefore devolves into a three-step process: 1) topic, 2) research design, 3) clarity and style. I ignore whatever doesn't meet these criteria. It's not worth my time to try to decipher a badly-written description of badly-designed research, especially if it's on a tangential subject that doesn't meet my immediate needs.

My philosophy and method is partly a function of my own post-secondary education. I got fairly good instruction in the basics of my field as an undergraduate. Although my PhD is in the same field, in reality my doctoral courses and research were in another area and very interdisciplinary. So I emerged from graduate school with some significant holes in my knowledge of the discipline that my PhD is nominally in. As someone whose career has been teaching-oriented, I felt that my students should at least be introduced to major scholars and the work they did in this discipline, since that didn't happen for me as part of my formal education. But I can't force students to read, much less understand, the dense 500-page books that made these people well-known. So I boil down their work and assign well-written material that relates to it.

[Juvenal]

Retired-but-adjuncting... All I teach nowadays is first semester of a course for a certain STEM field.  How do I "keep up" when there is not much need for deep reading anymore, and there never was really a lot needed, since all courses I ever taught were relatively "basic" at my CC?  So, "nowadays"?  The "front matter" articles in "Nature" and "Science," and the very occasional research articles that follow (and that I can understand--not many these depthy days).  Certainly enough to keep up with any developments that might be likely useful--slightly so, for intro courses, alas, where basic material hardly shifts much from year to year and the general course outline restricts fellow instructors from being too adventurous.  Most usefully, my readings might show a paradigm being slightly jostled.