80/20 Scan

From this metafilter thread:

The next most enduringly useful "off-syllabus" thing I learned is how to do an "80/20 Scan" of any non-fiction books for research/quick learning purposes. The idea is to get 80% of the useful information a book has to offer by spending a short period of time with it. Basically a collection of tips (e.g. always read the preface to the book as it is basically instruction on how to read the book for various purposes and tells you what you can ignore, find one thing in the book you already know well and use that to gauge the credibility of the source, skim chapter subtitles, figures and tables first then read in depth, read the ends of the chapters first because that is usually a summary of what was said, etc.). Doesn't replace deep reading, but ensures your deep reading is most efficient if all you are seeking is information.

This also follows the idea that concept-density isn't uniformly distributed across the book/paper, and you should spend different amounts of time on different sections.

An example, from someone in the social sciences (via MetaFilter)

I focus heavily on the abstract and introduction, skim lit review (you might want to familiarize yourself more with this section, if you aren't as knowledgeable about the field, skim methods, skim analyses, and read result/conclusion.