Wider reading on a subject, whether for a research project or just out of general curiosity, helps broaden your perspective and reinforce your knowledge. The problem is that with more than three million research articles published every year, there just isn’t enough time to read every paper cover-to-cover. While not all of them will be relevant to your research, a small fraction of three million is still, well, a lot!
Skimming and scanning can help you acquire knowledge more efficiently. These approaches help you to process a lot of text whilst paying the most attention to keywords and other specific information relevant to your research. Aimlessly skimming through the text won’t do you any good, of course. Like most techniques, skimming and scanning work best when you follow a few defined steps.
So, we’ve put together this quick cheat sheet to help you understand use skimming and scanning techniques when you next read an academic text.
Skimming
Skimming is a reading technique that helps you process a text without reading every single word (exhaustive reading). Skimming helps you read long articles or chapters faster, without missing essential information. Here are a few things to keep in mind when skim-reading a text:
1. Know what you’re looking for
Skimming requires you to ignore a sizable part of the text in question. Without a set purpose, you can end up skipping relevant parts that contain information that is essential to your research. The first step of skimming should always be to note down the general themes, arguments, and findings you are looking for in the text and pay attention to any associated keywords.
2. Practice two-dimensional reading
Yes, all reading is technically two-dimensional. However, we’re using the word in a very specific context here. Skimming is much easier when you scan for statements or phrases horizontally and vertically. Moving your eyes down the page as well as side-to-side helps you make the process more efficient and productive than only reading horizontally.
3. Establish the main argument early on
All reading material (especially non-fiction) is written to make a certain argument. With every new chapter or section, the author is trying to make a new point that will ultimately serve to support the text’s central theme. Knowing early on what key argument the author is making can help you identify patterns in how the text is written and structured. This will help you know where to look for the information you need.
When and why is skim-reading used?
As skimming requires you to eliminate quite a lot of information, it should only be used when:
- You are reading a long paper that covers the topic in extensive detail.
- You are looking for specific information related to a particular topic.
- You already have some knowledge about the subject.
While it’s not a hard and fast rule, skimming can be very effective with papers that include a good amount of supporting evidence and examples. Skim-reading is an important skill to master because not every piece you read will be as taut and clearly written as you’d like it to be. Skimming saves you time and effort that you might otherwise spend reading irrelevant information.
Scanning
Scanning is also a reading technique that requires the reader to focus on a few keywords or critical pieces of information. The only difference is that scanning is used to locate a specific statement, concept, or fact. As opposed to skimming, scanning is not the ideal method for papers you are reading for the first time or topics you’re less familiar with. Here are a few things you need to keep in mind while scanning a text:
1. Know exactly what you’re looking for
Scanning is a technique that should be employed to find specific (eg. a couple of sentences) information about a subject. As opposed to skimming, where you work with a general idea of what you’re looking for, scanning requires you to have a concrete idea of the facts or statements you need to find. Boiling down what you need into a few concise keywords can also be helpful here.
2. Scan using search terms
Scanning is usually a lot quicker than skimming. This means that the text in question can be scanned multiple times to find different sets of facts about specific topics. Scanning using a few search terms (or keywords) each time increases your chances of finding relevant and useful information. Search terms can be seen as the ‘more practical’ version of the keywords you generally use. As opposed to keywords (which are more general), search terms are the words you would expect to find in the text verbatim.
3. Use the index and table of contents
Extensive papers or reports are often structured in a very specific way. Different sections of these papers are neatly indexed and presented in tables before the preface. Use this table to locate the sections or chapters that might give you the information you are looking for. One of the best things about scanning is that it allows you to skip large portions of the literature and focus on very specific parts.
When and why is scanning used?
As scanning only allows you to find precise pieces of information, it should only be used when:
- The paper you are reading has clearly demarcated sections that cover different aspects of the topic.
- You are looking for small but specific sections of text that you might want to quote more or less verbatim.
- You need the information (names, statistics, etc) as part of more general research.
Scanning is almost exclusively used for academic and journalistic purposes. While the practice is fast and helps you zero in on the required information quickly, much context is lost in the process.
Reading automation
Skimming and scanning are both useful reading techniques that can be used to acquire knowledge from extensive reading material more efficiently. Both methods, however, can only be employed in specific situations and as a researcher, you will still ultimately need to read a lot of full-text articles thoroughly.
With Scholarcy, you can improve your productivity and efficiency by automating skim-reading and scanning of long texts. It uses AI to condense pages of written material into a clear, concise summary with important points, findings, and data all highlighted. Screening articles, note-taking, formatting citations, and building bibliographies, can all be done easily in Scholarcy.
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