1. Immediately relevant to my current interests
2. by people I who know write good papers.
For chaff-vs-wheat some of my friends use arxiv sanity?
to find popular articles I go to
-google scholar page of someone well known for a topic and look at their highly cited papers
-look at citations of highly cited papers
edit: just a warning-short term popularity of a scientific paper is almost surely not a good indicator of long term value.
from there I look for papers
1. Immediately relevant to my current interests 2. by people I who know write good papers.
For chaff-vs-wheat some of my friends use arxiv sanity?
to find popular articles I go to -google scholar page of someone well known for a topic and look at their highly cited papers -look at citations of highly cited papers
edit: just a warning-short term popularity of a scientific paper is almost surely not a good indicator of long term value.