Why do we still read papers blindly in 2026?
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One thing that always bothered me during research:
We search → get a list of papers → start reading those papers .
But before reading, the real questions are:
Why is this paper even relevant to my work?
What role does it play in the bigger research landscape?
Is it foundational, supporting, or just noise?
Most tools stop at “here are the papers.”
Cicadus tries to go one step further:
Explain why a paper matters before you read it
Show how it connects to other work
Curious how others approach this:
How do you currently decide which papers are worth reading first?
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Most times, I am stuck trying to figure out is that paper really worth reading even though i'm more than half way through it. From my experience, there is no straight cut determining factor as to decide the worthiness of a paper. The abstract of the paper will only help so much. So, it is more of a 'go with the flow and figure it out late' factor. If there are tools which could genuinely help reducing the time spent here and increasing efficiency, I am all for it.