If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

- Sir Isaac Newton

It may seem strange to begin a book on writing with a chapter about reading. However, reading is a fundamental skill for the research writer because: research relies on the published work of others, reading will improve your writing (Yoshimura, 2009), and reading articles in a given discipline provides field-specific examples of good writing.

The following information is meant to improve reading skills needed for writing research. First, there are suggestions to help identify sources which are acceptable in an academic paper. After that is an outline of how research papers are organized and structured. Third is a discussion on how active readers can use papers from their field to guide their writing. Finally, there is a description of the kinds of language that everyone who reads research should know in order to easily understand an article.