good morning #academic and #writingcommunity folx! Does anyone have a way to compile and organize literature for papers and manuscripts that they swear by? I feel like I’ve tried it all and also have hated it all 😌
@academicchatter @academicsunite @phdstudents @phdlife @PhD_Genie
@emkmiller @academicchatter @academicsunite @phdstudents @phdlife @PhD_Genie
Personally, I use 3 parallel methods to organize and browse the articles/books I read:
1) #Zotero, like many people here. However, I use it mostly to facilitate the creation of bibliographies. However, the metadata system is not flexible enough for my taste...
@emkmiller @academicchatter @academicsunite @phdstudents @phdlife @PhD_Genie
2) ...So I also keep a spreadsheet of all articles with columns "Authors", "Journal", "Year", but also "Stimulus content", "Task", "Analysis method", etc... The last column is a field "Topic" for which the keywords are organized in a tree to avoid duplicates (http://dbao.leo-varnet.fr/2022/05/20/a-mind-map-of-concepts-in-auditory-speech-perception/). This makes it easier to find a reference when you have only one fragment of memory about it. But to be honest, I think it's mostly useful to force me to organize my thoughts when reading.
However, this is only for article references ...
@emkmiller @academicchatter @academicsunite @phdstudents @phdlife @PhD_Genie
3) So I also extract snippets from everything I read, like @jnyrose, and store them in a very large OneNote folder (sorry, I haven't found a suitable alternative) with many entries. I must say this is very satisfying, but I don't know if it is useful: I never had to go back to it to look for all the citations on a specific topic.
@leovarnet @emkmiller @academicchatter @academicsunite @phdstudents @phdlife @PhD_Genie for me, I think part of it is that I have sort of two complementary but different roles at my University, so I sometimes have to swap writing up one thing in one area with another thing in a tangential but essentially different area. Being able to quickly read through a batch of “stuff on topic”, helps me switch back and forth and get into flow more quickly.