Before getting to writing your paper, you'll need to read up on your subject. The portal for Ghent University students proposes the following three steps.

Scan the source

• Read the title and subtitle.
• Look at the date of publication. Aim for recent publications.
• Doublecheck how relevant and reliable the author is. (Are they a researcher? At which institution? etc)
• If the source is a book, read the back.
• If the source is a book, read the table of contents and mark the chapters that are relevant to you.
• Leaf through the source. Check the headings, look at the graphs and tables.

Read the text diagonally

• If there is an abstract, read it beforehand.
• Read the introduction and conclusion.
• Read the first and last sentences of a paragraph. If the text is well-written, those should contain the essence of the paragraph.

Read the text in full

• Read the text in full: you could mark the essence of the text to distinguish it from the details.
• Visualise the information in a schema so you can find the information again easily.
• Think about the type of connections in the source. Signal words are handy to make distinctions.