Using text-to-voice for better comprehension of academic literature

This is intimidating to admit although I know I'm not alone: I sometimes have a hard time working my way through academic papers and similar writings.

I say this as somebody who reads a lot of non-fiction! Even when I find the subject compelling, academic writing is just not not usually as engaging as you might find in a publication designed to be more accessible like Harvard Business Review, or even a well-written text-book.

Part of the challenge is the verbosity and "sameness" of so much of the language in this genre of writing. On the one hand these are important, even hallmark features of academic writing. On the other hand, for me this can lead to a bit of reading highway hypnosis, where I know I've just read about a study design, a procedure, and the results...but I couldn't tell you what was unique about this particular study.

Reading digitally while taking notes the analog way. Wait, isn't this backward from what many people would do?

One thing that I find helps a lot is using text-to-voice technology so I can have this type of reading "read" back to me. I've used several tools for this - currently my favorite is called VoiceDream reader. Occasionally I'll listen to a paper while out on a walk, like you might with a podcast or an audio book, but more often I read along while listening. I am able to set the reading to a fairly high speed (much faster than I most people talk, for example), and in most documents the software can move a marker along the page as the text is being read aloud. This bit of visual and auditory energy seems to provide enough forward "momentum" for me to prevent the mental bicycle from stalling out and falling over.