Question 1: What can you learn from the title of the paper? What question(s) are being addressed? Try rewording the title, make it for example shorter.
Q 2: Who are the authors and where do they work?
Q3: Does the abstract draw a big picture and clearly state the question, hypothesis, experimental design and results?
Question 4: Do you find the scientific question interesting and important? If so, state them in your own words.
Question 5: What observation or idea led to research? (Look in abstract and introduction.) What work does it build on?
Question 6: Is this paper an extension of previous work or does it aim to present an alternative point of view?
Question 7: What experiments/measurements/observations were actually done?
Question 8: What results were actually presented? (Consider starting with figures.) What can you learn from the figures? Please state the information here in your own words.
Question 9: What are the variables in the assays? How are the negative and positive controls chosen? Explain the experimental purpose of each in your own words.
Question 10: Are the results convincing? Why or why not?
Question 11: What are main discussion points / conclusions / implications? (Be sure to refer to data/observations.)
Question 12: Summarize the paper in your own words.
Question 13: What is the significance of the work presented in the paper? Do you agree with the authors about the significance of their work?
Question 14: Can you think of another explanation for the results? Do the authors address this in their discussion? If so, how?
Question 15: What parts of the paper do you find most intimidating or difficult to understand? How do you deal with this? Do you skip over these portions or do you spend too much time trying to understand them with little success?
paper.
Question 16: Did you identify resources that might help you? Which of these was most useful?
Question 17: What parts of the paper do you find most interesting? Why?
Question 18: If you were a reviewer for this journal, would you have accepted this paper, rejected it, or asked for revisions? What suggestions would you give to the authors?

Question 1: What can you learn from the title of the paper? What qu...