Hopping to the references right away doesn’t work for me. I prefer just going through the whole paper once and coming back. To me it’s analogous to reading a book in a language not familiar to me. You read it lengthy chuck of texts even though you come across words you don’t know. Then you can find the meaning of words and read the texts again for better understanding . This way I think is more helpful to grasp the whole topic and intention of texts faster.