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Google scholar is probably your best starting point. Just throw in the search terms you are interested in and start clicking and reading. Its free, and is a pretty complete archive.
The biggest issue you'll get into is that many papers are behind paywalls.
To get around that (and you morally should) you have two options.
Step one option a:
The first and easier is to go onto scihub and see if someone has uploaded the paper: https://www.sci-hub.st/
Step one option b:
The second is to make an account on research gate, track down one of the authors, and just straight up ask them for a copy. They'll almost always send it to you. If you can't find them on research gate, just throw their name into the google and they might have a lab or professional email you can track down.
Step two:
In terms of how to comprehend? My recommendation, if the paper is English language, is to start in the upper left corner of the first page, and read from left to right in a clockwise descending manner one line at a time, until you get to the lower right corner of the page. This can vary depending on the number of columns on the page, but will generally work. If there are any sections you don't understand, all scientific papers will have citations you can look up to get further explanation on a given subject. For each citation repeat steps one and two. Continue this process recursively until you comprehend the material.
And the point of the last couple of lines really is the point. There is no replacement for comprehension and understanding other than to read the material over and over again, to look up what its referencing, and to keep trying and working on it and digging until you do get it. You can find some youtube videos and lectures for some understanding, but even these aren't replacements for the conversation which is what actual publications represent.
Its work to understand research.
I would add to this libmaps, great resource to put the title of your document and it maps the paper, from where it is cited to whom cites the paper that has more up to date research. Then if the paper isn't available use my friend above's method to access the papers
Also Ai is your friend in interpreting and summarising the paper, but be careful it isn't perfect
MMmm.
No. Don't do this unless you want wildly wrong results. Summarizing a scientific paper and extracting its key conclusions using a GPT is not a trivial thing. It might work for faking your way through an undergraduate level project, but its fundamentally antagonistic towards developing real understanding. There is no replacement for just reading the paper and its citations until you understand it. Even if a GPT can summarize a scientific paper (and I have volumes of data to show they can't with out significant guard rails) reading or memorizing "just the conclusions" is a great way to fool yourself and others into thinking you understand something. You have not done the thing if you do only this thing. If you want to truly understand it, there are no shortcuts.