(If you don't have knowledge enough to read research papers, study about the field to get essential knowledge at first.)
2. Write research papers. Generally speaking, research paper is created by criticizing previous research papers and introducing your better idea. So it's very important to read and understand current research papers.
3. Get Master degree from some university. Master degree is considered as a first step of researcher.
4. Get PhD from some university. PhD is a proof of your research ability. The more famous the university is, the better it is. If you can create good research papers, it should not be so difficult to get PhD.
5. Keep publishing your research papers on peer-reviewed journals. Peer-reviewed journals list. How many research papers you have published on the peer-reviewed journals is considered as your achievement. The more papers you publish on peer-reviewed journals, the better researcher you are.
Of course the quality of the papers are important too, but generally speaking, how many research papers you have published on the peer-reviewed journals is the simplest indicator to see how good researcher you are. (By the way, how many times your paper is cited is considered as an important factor to see the quality of a research paper.)
6. After getting PhD and publishing nice papers on journals, you would be able to be a professor at some university. Or be a professional researcher at some big company like Google. If you get some such job, now you are a nice researcher.
The point is that it is very important to read research papers. Because it will help you when you write research papers. Also, what field you will be in is important. Some fields earn better money such as Medical, computer science or Engineering. But some fields like Classical literature earn little money and have little chance to be employed by companies or schools.
