How do you read a paper? Why do we even have scientific papers? How do you evaluate the content, or quality, or usefulness, or a paper? These are some of the questions I want to address in this tutorial series, alongside practical tips for finding and curating references, keeping track of notes and synthesising ideas. These four sessions aim to introduce these ideas and tools to research students at the start of their PhD. My research background is in biomedical research - including genetics, model organisms and cancer research - so the content will lean more to a STEM field, but some of the principles and ideas are much more broadly applicable. Feel free to re-use the content or draw on it as a jumping-off point if it's helpful. And if you have ideas or suggestions for changes, please let me know. - Only the first tutorial is online at the moment - The other three tutorials will be added later this year when I re-run this course with the newest PhD students at the CRUK Manchester Institute, and revist/edit the content again