These are probably what got you to look at the paper
Read the abstract
Read the conclusions
Feel free to stop reading the article at any point
How to read the article?
Look at the tables and figures (including captions)
This is really what was done in the work. This does not take much time, so it is worth looking at before really getting into details which will slow down the reading.
Read the introduction
This is the background needed and why the study was done.
Read the results and discussion
This is the heart of the paper.
Read the experiment
This is how they did the work. you only get to this point if you are really interested and need to understand exactly what was done to better understand the meaning of the data and its interpretation.
Take notes
Write some notes so you don’t have to reread the whole paper again
Notes should be systematic and easy to be searched (such as Mind Map, cards).
Time
Take 30 seconds or several minutes to survey a paper.
If you are really interested in a paper, you can take several hours, the most part of a day, or even several days to read it carefully.
Note: conclude according to the suggestions of Prof. Carr from University of Minnesota