Advice for Graduate Students

I recommend you start by reading "structure of a successful paper" in the site of Dr. Faloutsos below.

Professor Jennifer Welch of CS at Texas A & M University has these criteria to see if you carefully read a research paper or not:

Identify and summarize the main points of the paper

State why results of the paper are new, interesting or significant

State the assumptions made to develop the work

Write a critique of the paper

If you are able to provide the above points, then you are able to build on the results of the papers you read.