What are the conclusions? What have we learned from the paper? Shall the standard practice of the field be changed as a result of the new findings? Is the result generalizable? Can the result be applied to other areas of the field? What are the open problems? In short, what are the lessons one can learn from the paper? Every well-written research paper contains an abstract, which is a summary of the paper. The role of an abstract is to outline the answers to the above questions. Look therefore, first
to the abstract for answers. The paper should be an elaboration of the abstract. Another way of looking at paper reading is that every good paper tells a story. Consequently, when you read a paper, ask yourself, “What is the plot?” The four questions listed above make up an archetypical plot structure for every research paper.