And, if the statistics of records are quite familiar and understandable, then with articles everything is not so simple.

It is impossible to find anywhere, but our colleague did not find information about how article statistics are calculated and what they mean. For example, data on reads and full views in each of the community articles varies:

Does it seem obvious to you that views and reads are completely different metrics and they should not be equal? Congratulations, you are not us! Our specialist was not afraid to make himself look like an idiot and asked support:

The answer was not long in coming! Although, no. Forced.

The agent confirmed what we suspected. What’s confusing is this: in a number of articles, the percentage of views of the entire article is less than the percentage of its reads.

On the left are views, that is, scrolling. On the right are reads, and we do not know how they are calculated by VK.

And this paradox does not fit into a coherent theory a little. Because it turns out that the proportion of people who scrolled to the very bottom of the article is less than the proportion who read the article! As if you don't have to scroll down to read the article!

Our nosy colleague tried to extract some more information:

Let's put together the crumbs of information that we received:

1. The infographic on the left in the statistics of the article provides data on page scrolling. That is, “started looking” means they opened the article. “Looked at 1/3, 2/3” - opened it and scrolled down a little with the mouse. “Viewed everything” means scrolled the article to the very bottom.
2. “Reads” in the information block to the right of the infographic is a more complex metric that, in addition to scrolling, takes into account other user actions. Which ones exactly are a VKontakte official secret. It can be assumed that the time the user spends on the article page, user interaction with links, etc. is taken into account. But these are only assumptions!

Why do you need to know this?

Those who frequently publish long-read articles are interested in their readership and readability increasing. How good the text is can be judged by the statistics of the article. Personally, we select those techniques that reflect well on the statistics, and abandon approaches that reduce the indicators.

But, if we knew what the calculation is based on, we would directly influence these parameters: yeah, readings depend on the depth of scrolling and viewing time - ok, let's dilute the text with infographics so that the user scrolls down and lingers, peering into the details. And if, suddenly, the algorithm for counting reads seemed to us not exhaustive, we would have completely stopped following the statistics.

But let's remember the recent past: the wiki pages that we used before the advent of the article editor had only the number of non-unique views as metrics! So, the viewing and reading indicators themselves that we see in articles now are a huge step forward.

The Internet has given us the opportunity to always be up to date with all the news. It also gave us access to a huge variety of interesting and useful materials. But, unfortunately, there have become so many such materials that now the problem is different - lack of time.

It will take too much time to read all the interesting articles and news. That's why we offer you five resources that select the most useful and interesting materials, based on your preferences and their popularity.

Surfingbird

Let's start with the most famous Russian-language aggregator interesting articles, news and photos. Not long ago, a scandal occurred, due to which many resources refused to cooperate with the service. But there's still plenty of useful material to be found at Surfingbird.

Based on unique (as always) algorithms, Surfingbird learns and displays content based on your preferences. Therefore, the more likes and dislikes you give, the more interesting the following materials will be for you.

Pocket Hits

Flipboard

As with Pocket, Flipboard regularly selects the best articles on various topics and publishes them in separate collections. Perhaps, at the moment this is the most functional and popular magazine on your device.

Longreads

Longreads is simply a treasure trove of wonderful, detailed and long articles. Its only drawback is the lack of Russian language. However, if you can read English fluently, you can find a wealth of interesting and exciting material.

Medium Top Stories

Medium is a platform where anyone can publish their articles. Whether this is due to the fact that its creator is the co-founder of Twitter, or the reason is something else, but Medium has become incredibly popular, and the amount of quality material on it is off the charts.

Like Pocket, Medium sends out the top 10 stories every week, and trust me, every one of them deserves your attention. If that's not enough for you, Medium has a Twitter account that posts some of the most interesting articles every day.

Physics and mathematics are very interesting sciences. This especially applies to physics, because it studies the world around us, which is still full of mysteries and secrets. Learning these secrets and learning new facts about the world around us is very entertaining. This section contains various scientific interesting facts, which will help you become convinced that science is especially interesting, fall in love with physics and mathematics, and also distract and unwind during labor-intensive and boring preparation for exams. It's complicated here scientific theories are set out in simple language, understandable even to schoolchildren.

• Myths and reality

Many people do not even suspect that around us there are many objects and things that have amazing properties. In this article we will discuss the hardness of some materials and interesting results that are obtained based on these properties.

• Useful facts

As you know, the speed of light is, although large, but still finite. There are completely material objects (for example, photons - the particles from which light consists) that move at the speed of light. How does the world “look” through the “eyes” of such fast objects?

• Useful facts

Through the efforts of various media as well as fiction and science fiction literature, black holes have acquired the image of very dangerous space objects that supposedly absorb everything in their path and can suddenly swallow the Earth. Let's figure this out?

A person is able, from a two-dimensional picture, to form a very complete idea of ​​the distances to the depicted objects, their shape and size, and thus fully perceive the three-dimensional world in all its depth. How do we achieve this?

• Just something complicated

The material in this article will introduce the reader to the basic concepts of genetics and interesting properties of the human genome. Genetics is the science of the patterns of heredity and variability. Depending on the object of study, the genetics of plants, animals, microorganisms, humans, and so on are classified.

• Myths and reality

Nowadays, you can often come across the opinion that the human brain supposedly works at only 10% of its full capabilities. The plot of some popular films is even built on the basis of such a statement. Let's try to figure out whether each of us can really suddenly become ten times smarter, or is this a myth, and if so, where did it come from?

You may have read a lot of interesting things, but there is probably something else that can surprise you. This article contains 30 interesting and reliable facts from biology, history, geography, physics and other sciences that will definitely not leave you indifferent.

• Just something complicated

This article will briefly discuss some of the flaws in the theory of evolution based only on natural selection. By the way, evolution is a natural process of development of living nature, accompanied by changes in the genetic composition of populations, the formation of adaptations, speciation and extinction of species, transformation of ecosystems and the biosphere as a whole.

• Just something complicated

This article lists and describes some of the factors that have directly or indirectly influenced or continue to influence the emergence and maintenance of life on our planet. There are so many of these factors that sometimes their entire combination ceases to seem random.

“Reading a scientific article is something that will make you feel stupid,” writes scientist Adam Ruben in his humor column for Science magazine. Adam is right: reading the peer-reviewed article scientific journal, many of us start with optimism (“It’s only a few pages after all”) and end with a desperate desire to urgently change our field of activity to one where there are either no scientific articles at all, or they are written in some other way. In fact, the problem is not with the articles - but with the way we select and read them.

We will tell you below what scientists themselves advise to do about this.

The main advice given by everyone, from scientists to students to journalists, is to break a large task (reading an article) into small blocks. Another question is how exactly to do this so as not to sit at the material for years and at the same time understand the subject. To answer it, you will have to “rewind” - namely, understand what kind of article you are about to read and (most importantly) whether you need it.

Understanding goals



There may be several reasons for reading an article: in some cases it is required material, for example, to prepare for a seminar - then you have no choice whether to read it or not. In other cases, there is still such a choice - a lot depends on why we want to read something. The purposes of reading a scientific article may be the following:

• Understand basic issues/get general idea about some direction in science
• Get an idea for your own research
• Find confirmation of your point of view
• Find a solution to a specific problem
• Clarify something in the selected area

This is not an exhaustive list, but you can catch a trend from it: you either want to understand some general issue, or you are looking for a solution to a private, highly specific problem (sometimes both together - but for this you will have to read several articles of different types). And the type of article, in turn, helps you understand how well your choice of material corresponds to your goals. It doesn’t always make sense to read everything in a row - sometimes it is no less useful to decide what to discard and what to return to later: scientists are not at all embarrassed by such a pragmatic approach.

What are the types of articles and how do they differ?

In a general sense, sources can be divided into “primary” and “secondary”. "Primary Sources" in scientific world There may be research reports, case studies, and in some cases editorials and conference proceedings. In other words: materials that describe a new study (primary research article). “Secondary sources” – review articles, book reviews, guidelines, commentaries, systematic reviews and meta-analysis. The word “secondary” does not mean anything bad: it means that these materials are prepared on the basis of already existing articles.

How to distinguish different types of articles

The easiest way, of course, is to focus on the type of material (often it is included in the subtitle of the article). In addition, a good “primary” article, which presents the result of the research, can be distinguished by its structure - it usually contains sections such as: “Introduction”, “Methods”, “Research” and “Interpretation” / “Discussion” (introduction, methods , results, and discussion, IMRAD).

True, the set of components may vary depending on the journal - some require additional subsections (for example, “Research Hypothesis”), in others the “Discussion” section is reflected in the “Conclusions” block.

But the logic remains the same: a research article must contain information about the topic of the study, how and with what help it was carried out, as well as what results were obtained and what it all means.

How to choose an article type

Let's return to our goals. If we want to dive into a topic and get some general understanding of it, it is useful to study “secondary” sources: reviews, meta-analyses. They will also allow you to decide in which direction to move with your own research - which areas in the chosen topic have already been well studied, and which require additional research.

If you already have general information, you can turn to primary sources - for example, research reports. They will help you understand what exactly has been done in the chosen field, in what direction you can “advance” the results achieved by other scientists, how problems related to the topic were solved (this can be convenient if, for example, you want to apply it in an already studied field new methods).

Problems like “find a solution to a specific problem” or “clarify something in a chosen area” are also closer to primary sources - assuming that general information, which may be contained in review materials, is already well known to you, and you know exactly what to look for. 

 And to confirm your point of view, cases can be useful, among other things. Here, as in the previous case, we are talking about the fact that you are searching using very specific, specific keywords.

So how to read scientific articles

Suppose you have chosen an article for yourself, the type of which corresponds to the task facing you. Now the most important thing is not to try to read it from beginning to end in its entirety. The simplest algorithm is proposed by Charles G. Durbin
in his article “How to read a scientific research paper”:

1. The first step is to make sure that the title and keywords are relevant to the topic that interests you.
2. Read the abstract and (if necessary) discussion/conclusions
3. If the abstract and discussion clearly describe the goals and objectives, unambiguously define the hypothesis, indicate the conclusions - and at the same time, all this information is relevant to your goals - then the article can be read in its entirety.

What does the article consist of?

As we noted earlier, scientific articles consist of sections of several fixed types. Therefore, it is worth understanding what is contained in each of them.

Heading

As in the case of a post on Habré, the title of a scientific article should be informative - that is, such that the reader immediately understands what the material will be about. Ideally, the reader should also have an understanding of what type of text it is - be it a study or a meta-analysis.

Unfortunately, not all good research papers have these characteristics. Editorial columns, book reviews, and other materials not dedicated to describing new research may sometimes contain lengthy headlines. In this case, you can first focus on the author - if you know who is an authoritative scientist in the chosen field (review articles will help you figure this out). However, a vague headline may be the first sign that this material may be worth putting aside for now.

Abstract (aka abstract)

This is not just an introduction to the text: an academic abstract is compiled according to strict rules. First, it should be concise (different journals have different requirements for the exact length of the abstract - but, as a rule, it takes one paragraph). Secondly, the abstract should answer the main questions of the article: provide introductory information about the context of the study, briefly talk about its goals, methods, results and conclusions.

Introduction

The introduction usually answers the question: why this study was conducted. This section most fully reflects the context: what is happening now in this industry, what studies have been conducted previously (literature analysis) and what questions scientists have not yet answered. All this should bring us to what, in fact, I was doing as part of my scientific work

By the way, the introduction is another marker for the reader. If you find it difficult to “wade” through its contents, and you have difficulty grasping the meaning of what is written, perhaps this material should be put aside. And it’s not that it’s poorly written: perhaps for now you should just switch to review articles or study the theoretical basis better. This will make the text clearer and you will be able to get much more value out of it.

It is important to understand that some scientific articles are the result of many years of work by dozens of scientists. Expecting that you can skim through the text in an evening and understand everything is unrealistic.
 Jeremy C. Borniger, Ohio State University

Materials and methods

This section describes what the author did - how he collected data, formed a sample or prepared samples for research, what calculations and experiments he performed. On the one hand, a detailed indication of methods helps to understand what has not yet been implemented in this area: which areas have been consciously (or unconsciously) not touched upon by scientists. On the other hand, a good description of the materials and methods is the key to reproducing such an experiment yourself.

Results

The results obtained are placed in a separate block. In this section, as a rule, no conclusions are made about what exactly the author managed to achieve - only specific data, graphs, diagrams. Usually scientists do not have the opportunity to describe every figure obtained - therefore, if you want to thoroughly understand the content of the material, you will have to carefully study all the illustrations and tables.

Interpretation/discussion

But in this section you can see the author’s opinion about the results obtained: what was done and what was not possible, what place the study occupies in relation to other works, what were the limitations and assumptions this study, and why the author obtained this particular result. It is important to keep in mind: this block, unlike the previous two, contains the author’s point of view, and not just dry facts - and you do not necessarily have to come to exactly the same conclusions by reading the material.


How scientists read articles

So, the “anatomy” of a scientific article is clear to us, and the main markers that you should pay attention to when reading are also clear. Now it’s worth understanding how scientists themselves read such materials.

Jennifer Raff, a bioanthropologist and geneticist at the University of Kansas, gives some practical advice which will help the reader:

1. Formulate the main question of the article (what problem scientists in this field are trying to solve)
2. Describe the context of the study in a few sentences (Jennifer suggests using five sentences) - or, in other words, tell yourself what has been done before this study to answer the main question.
3. Identify the specific questions that the authors of the article intend to answer.
4. As you read, write down any unfamiliar words and look up their meanings.
5. While reading the “Materials and Methods” section, draw an approximate diagram of the study.
6. Formulate the results of the research for yourself in one paragraph, focusing on the facts, and not on the opinions of the authors.

Jennifer advises using a critical approach and not taking researchers “at their word” - so she advises paying less attention to the “Interpretation” section, asking yourself the answers to the questions “What did the authors achieve?”, “Did they answer specific research questions?”, and also study the opinions of other representatives of the scientific community about this article.

Moreover, according to Jennifer, you should start reading an article not with the abstract, but with the introduction - this, according to her, helps her to maintain a critical attitude and evaluate the material more impartially - without relying on the opinion of the authors.

True, not everyone practices this approach: Science magazine interviewed 12 scientists (including editor-in-chief scientific journal) to find out how they read articles. It turned out that the majority still start with an abstract - especially in cases where they are not very familiar with the topic of the study.

At the same time, approximately half of the scientists surveyed practice Jennifer’s approach and study every word - from their point of view, it is impossible to understand a scientific article without “working through” every incomprehensible term. The other half first reads the material fluently - and only then (if necessary) goes into detail. Here are some more tips given to Science journalists by practicing researchers:

1. Don’t hesitate to ask questions: Google unclear terms, use “insufficiently scientific” sources like Wikipedia or blogs, and also discuss difficult moments articles with colleagues. After all, scientific texts are not fiction. As a last resort, you can even write a letter to the authors and ask them to explain an unclear point.

2. Break the article into blocks and read it in parts - it is quite possible that it will take you several days to read one article. This is normal - the same thing happens to scientists.

3. Print the article on paper and highlight the points that are most important to you. This will help you understand the material more easily and quickly restore your knowledge when you need to return to the text. Pay special attention to those points that change your perception and understanding of the research topic.

4. Try to be an “active reader” - that is, before you start reading, determine what exactly you want to get from the article: a list of the most significant studies in this area, a list of authors to pay attention to, a plan for conducting a similar study, confirmation or refutation of your point of view. In some cases, information that answers your question should be kept separately. For example, Lina A. Colucci of the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program stores all relevant information that relates to the context of the study in a separate text file. And he prefers to accumulate information about materials and research methods in Excel tables.

So TL;DR

1. Think about why you need to read a scientific article? Your goal will determine whether you need research materials (primary sources) or review materials (secondary sources).

2. Try to formulate for yourself the main problem that you want to solve. If your goal is to gain a general understanding of the subject, think about what exactly you want to know: who worked on the topic? How have research tasks changed? What is the current area of ​​interest for scientists? And so on. This will allow you to read “focused”, keeping the question in mind.

3. If you have figured out what type of article you need to read and have chosen the material for yourself, you can start reading. It is worth printing the article first - this will make the process easier.

• If you are familiar with the topic and are critical, you should start by reading the introduction. This will allow you not to be distracted by the authors’ conclusions and form your own opinion about their work.
• If you trust the source and authors, and are not so well versed in the topic, it is worth starting with the abstract. If there is not enough information in the abstract, refer to the last section (“Discussion” or “Conclusions”)

4. Do you think that the research topic and the content of the abstract/introduction correspond to your interests? Then you can continue reading.

5. While reading the introduction, determine for yourself the main question (what do scientists do in this field and what is the main problem they solve) and the specific questions that the authors of the material pose for themselves. Do brief retelling research context. Try to write down unfamiliar words and clarify their meaning – even in “non-scientific” sources.

6. Don't forget about breaks. Reading a scientific article is a long and complex task, and you may have to break it up over several days.

7. While reading the “Materials and Methods” section, try entering information into a table (if you need to understand how research is carried out in this area and want to compare the approaches of different scientists) or draw a diagram for yourself to conduct a study. This will help to better understand what exactly the scientists were doing.

8. In the “Results” section, pay close attention to graphic information: tables and figures. As a rule, they contain even more valuable data than the text itself.

9. Re-read the Discussion section. Think about whether the authors answered the questions posed in the introduction? How consistent is their interpretation of the results with yours?

10. Finally, research the opinions of critics and editors: what other authors have to say about this work.

Sometimes you want to think categorically. No halftones, just black and white keys. No sharps or flats. Only black and white. For me, there are people who read and those who don’t. But the word “read” has a special meaning for me.

Once upon a time, when there were no computers and the Internet, the only sources of communication with outside world there were newspapers, a television with two channels, a radio hanging on the wall in every house, and books. For whom and what exactly came first is not so important. We are all different people, we have different habits and tastes.

Everything was unimportant to me except books. Where did I read these books: during lessons at school I managed to read thick books, I hid a book and a flashlight under the blanket from my parents, and during dinner at home the book was always in front of my eyes. And at this time there was a program on the radio in which they also read works of art, and sometimes, looking up from reading, I listened to the voice coming from the speakers, telling about amazing events and adventures of heroes from books that could not be bought anywhere.

I know that you guessed it and you are absolutely right - this happened in the last century. Books in those days were in great short supply, and what we could beg from the library or from girlfriends was read in one gulp. And then a new dose was needed.

This can also be called a kind of addiction. It is precisely this “dependency” that we will talk about today. Why do people read?

Are there any benefits from reading books?

Probably, everyone can answer the question differently for themselves, why do they read? For some it is pleasure, for others a book is a source of knowledge, for others they read to pass the time, for example, on the road. Today, paper books have replaced the latest technologies - electronic books. But this does not change the essence. Books are still read, and people continue to be born who read from the cradle and those who do not. Strange, but the fact remains a fact. It often happens that children grow up in the same family, with absolutely different attitude to reading. Do you think the love of reading should be considered a talent or a special gift?

A lot of people say that a love of reading can and should be instilled from early childhood. That by their example, reading parents will be able to awaken their child’s interest in books. I don't have the academic degrees to discuss this topic, but I highly doubt that such actions will guarantee that a child will love to read. I admit only isolated cases. Even if you take into account the fact that habits are developed in 21 days.

What benefit does a person get from such a useful habit as reading?

1. In the first place I would put the development of clear and clear thinking and imagination. Thinking about what you read and reflecting, thinking out the sequel for the author and coming up with your own ending is a very exciting activity. We learn to read between the lines.

2. Reading books makes a person literate. By rereading tons of well-constructed sentences and correctly written words, we learn to write correctly and without errors. Reading aloud is especially helpful for this. Today this skill is becoming rare.

4. Good books make a person smarter. Such people are called well-read. Books broaden our horizons. We can keep the conversation going on different topics or to be competent and more knowledgeable in one thing. We can no longer be called a person who can’t even put two words together.

5. Books develop memory. If you love poetry, you know many of them by heart. By learning and remembering, we can apply the acquired skills in our other classes and activities.

6. Books teach you to empathize. Left alone with the characters of the novel, we become one with them and experience a whole range of feelings and emotions when reading. Reading books gives rise to our emotions.

7. If a book is well designed, if it has beautiful graphics and pictures, all this contributes to the formation of the right aesthetic taste.

8. When we read aloud, we develop and improve our diction. Which is very useful for public speaking. Beautiful speech is always an advantage.

9. Reading books with a pencil in hand helps you learn to highlight the main and important things, because it’s no secret that when we write something down, we improve our mechanical memory and the information is remembered much better.

10. By reading books, we develop our system of perceiving information through books. We develop our own reading methods, with the help of which we better assimilate information.

Not everyone has forgotten that Russia was considered the most reading nation. Those days have passed, but most people still feel the need to find, buy and read a good book.

And although the Internet is considered a place where you can find everything for free, you can’t download and read absolutely everything you’re interested in—you can’t find everything for free. Many authors defend their copyrights to their works, and do exactly the right thing by inviting us to buy a book in a store. And the speed of reading a “paper” book is higher than an electronic one. Again in e-book There are no fields where you can express your thoughts and make the necessary notes. Which in itself is an important skill.

However, there are many different opinions on whether an electronic or paper version of a book is better. But we won't argue. Since today each of us chooses the option that suits him best.

But today’s assistants in choosing books are online stores, which offer us not only to buy a book, but will also first familiarize us with the review and let us flip through and read a few pages. All this, as well as the reviews of those who have already read these books before, allow us to make the right choice and decide: to buy or not to buy this book.

One of the first online stores that provides a huge selection of literature was OZON. RU. More than 600,000 visitors visit the company's website every day. Today you can buy almost everything on the website. But for my readers, I have made available a selection of good business literature on topics close to the topic of the blog - personal effectiveness, leadership, marketing. Regular visitors will have the opportunity not to miss new items appearing in these book sections and purchase their favorite book “without leaving the checkout” in the library on the main page of the blog.

I hope that the benefits of reading books that you read in my article will further convince you that a book is a source of knowledge for us, and is one of the main ways to develop the skills a person needs. At all times, everyone needs a book: both old and young. But the situation with books is the same with us as with people, wrote Feuerbach. Although we meet many people, we choose only a few as our friends.

Read only best books, dear friends, and this will be an excellent investment in your piggy bank personal growth. Good books and exciting reading to you!