when reading a technical paper, you want to take notes and ask questions, which are the basis for discussion with others + what is the problem they want to solve? is it important? (usually in the introduction section) + how was the problem attempted before? why are those effects not sufficient (in a particular situation)? does their argument make sense? (related work) what is the impact of this paper? (scholar.google.com) + what is their new idea? based on what assumptions and why are they (not/still) reasonable? (system model, new scheme, etc) + why is this idea better? any proof or performance study to support? is the performance study (proof, simulation, emulation, experimentation) reasonable and reproducible? is the data input reliable? is the assessment process logic? is the result improved due to their idea or something else? + what did they not consider? why? (discussion, future work, etc) + did they miss something else?! + do you have something (scheme, approach) even better?! + can you show it?! in addition, a good paper tells you not only how to do research, but also how to write a paper