I wouldn’t beat yourself up over it. Very few papers can be understood without reading a significant amount of the neighboring literature and the history of how that work came to be. There are norms and customs and a kind of academic language in every community that you won’t be able to see unless you’ve read a lot from that community. Even if you have the right math level it’s tricky.
A single paper is part of a conversation, not something that stands alone. Trying to read one random paper is like finding a 1000 page thread on an obscure topic that has been running for 10+ years and reading only the last page. It won’t make any sense without reading back a ways.
A single paper is part of a conversation, not something that stands alone. Trying to read one random paper is like finding a 1000 page thread on an obscure topic that has been running for 10+ years and reading only the last page. It won’t make any sense without reading back a ways.