Dtyjlui

Yes, yes it is. But it gets easier. What most people don't realize when starting out reading academic papers, is that not every paper is an island (to paraphrase...). Terminology and 'lingo' is something you learn over time, and suddenly you realize that you no longer have to look up every second concept you stumble upon in a paper - it simply references stuff that you already know.

This is of course also the reason that forcing new students to read papers, and even write a report about them to make sure that the papers have been properly digested, is a very good idea. The fact that members of faculty even take time out to grade these reports, tells me that you are probably in capable hands.

I am in my second year of a statistics PhD. I have by now examined many hundreds of papers. Some of them are, I now know, of only tangential relevance to my research. Others are relevant but when I first saw them I did not understand them enough to know even that. And some are so relevant that I have sought to reproduce their findings and in doing so I have re-read them many times, often finding something new in them that I had not previously noticed. In parallel with reading these papers I have been learning about branches of statistics that I knew nothing of before.

The most important thing to realise, as I now have, is that academic papers are not generally written with the aim of explaining something to a novice, but rather are there to tell someone who is already expert how wonderful the author's research in that field of expertise should be seen to be.The day will come when you too can write papers that only a few people will understand, and to get there you will have struggled through countless really difficult papers.

Now, given that academic papers in statistics are bound to be hard to understand and that you have been asked to summarise as many as five of them in a short time, you have to accept that your summary will not be based on a complete understanding of all the material in all the papers. Imagine that you are a journalist rather than a researcher. You need to be able to write down:

1. what question does this paper seek to answer?


2. what is the answer?


3. what reasons does the author give for that answer?

If you can do that you already have a good summary of the paper. To do it you do not need to understand all the author's reasons, still less agree with them all. Later in your research, maybe, you will recall one of these papers and realise that it is relevant to your own work: then you really do have to roll up your sleeves and understand in detail, but not now.

Yes. But it's a question of practice. More reading= More understanding. More understanding easier to understand a new paper.

But you do not need to understand every single phrase.
For instance, if it is not exactly your field, I would jump over the methods section.

I got a recommendation during my Ph.D. first read Abstract, second Intro, third Conclusion. Some cases 3rd Results, 4th Conclusion.
The more you read the more you'll understand.

Read, read, read. That's the key

Reviews on the field of study are excellent starting points

Unfortunately, a paper is limited in length by money (lots of publications have a per page cost after their standard length) or guidelines. As such, authors have to sum up lots of dense information in a small space. They may take for granted lots of "known" papers. In a book, the authors would have more space to develop their ideas, add explanations that are only a citation in a paper.

It is hard indeed to start reading papers (it's even harder when it's not your mother tongue). I remember when I started that my understanding was very shallow. With time and experience, I'm now capable of understanding also the context, not just the paper itself. At the beginning, I had to look at the used terms and look them up online or read the cited papers/books to understand some of the mathematical basis for the paper I needed.

But it gets better, the curve in a specific domain may be similar close to 1-e^-t. Going from one domain to another gets easier, but there is always a learning curve to understand what everyone in a (new) domain takes for granted.

I agree with @nabla's answer that as you go further and read more and more papers, it gets easier for you and you don't have the difficulties in comprehending the terminologies. It is also very good that you think a lot on each individual paper and want to understand each bit of it. However, remember that you should know how to read a paper. Reading a paper is different from studying a mathematical textbook, which you do in order to prepare yourself for the exam. I suggest you the following steps:

1. First, consider yourself as a reviewer, who is employed to judge the paper and its novelties and then gives his/her opinion.




2. Try to scan the paper first. Read the abstract and conclusion and try to understand the framework of the paper.




3. After reading the abstract you will understand how far you are from the topic. Thus, try to search a little about the terminologies and methods that you are unfamiliar with (by simply googling them and checking Wikipedia).




4. Read the introduction carefully to see the state of art and the previous studies on the topic. People usually explain things in detail in the introduction, if no they refer to some general and review papers. Try to get those papers and read them.




5. Now read the whole paper. But remember nobody expects you to understand the mathematical model that the author is presenting in details. Try to have an idea about it. You are not going to write about the detailed mathematics in your report. Don't waste your time on that. If you are personally interested in details then that is another story.




6. After finishing the paper, ask the following questions from yourself:
   6.1. What was the main idea of the paper?
   6.2 What was the method that the author implemented?
   6.3 how satisfactory were the results?
   and so on...




7. Try to write your report according to the above information.

Good Luck!