Post #4106572

2026-07-25 16:51 UTC

A student was telling me, they haven’t read some papers I asked them to read because it takes them a very long time. Well, let me tell you: it took me 20 days (with 2-4 hours per day) to read a single large paper in my field, to understand the multiple years of work that went into it with its many implications for my own research and for the broader field. 20 days. And it was worth it. There are no shortcuts. #academia

Replies (5)

@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange 2026-07-26 07:29

@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz If your field is anything like mine, that 20-day period could have been significantly shortened if: Publication venues didn’t have strict page counts that force people to omit clarifying detail and useful pedagogy to make sure that the novel idea fits in the paper.Publication venues didn’t implicitly select for a particular style that reflects in-group membership but makes it harder to understand the ideas.Publications didn’t reject papers with clear explanations because the research looks obvious when you explain it well enough.

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@daniel@colquitt.xyz 2026-07-25 17:02

@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz it’s taken me months to understand a single paper.

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@argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-07-25 18:32

@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz And I thought reading terms of service was time-consuming!

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@clew@ecoevo.social 2026-07-25 18:57

Did it help them when you told them that? It seems to me that journal clubs are supposed to demonstrate some of this but that they are vulnerable to fear of looking slow. @albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz

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@FlipperPA@fosstodon.org 2026-07-25 19:00

@albertcardona@mathstodon.xyz One of the oldest rules of being human: the more effort and time you put into something, the more likely you get value from it.

Open ##4188404