Once you gained some understanding in a field, follow citation trails. There will often be dozens of other papers cited and can result in an extensive reading list. Thus it is helpful to limit yourself to the few most promising ones.

Citations need two factors: fre...

Once you've found the keywords and some main papers or authors everybody cites on the topic, try to find reviews.

• Literature reviews qualitatively review all the papers on a topic.
• Meta-analyses try to collect effects from multiple papers to...

There's always something more to read that can potentially give you more insight. There is seldom a point that will tell you you're done.

Because research is open-ended, it can be hard to keep up It is helpful to decide upfront how much time you want to commit to r...

A classic problem in research is to forget what you've read or where you've read it. Some people use Zettlekasten, a sophisticated note-taking system.

Another system is Caplan's approach, where you highlight the sections you may need to revisit later. Then...