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What is your research workflow when it comes to writing papers and using software for citations and notes? (primary relation to literature review)
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Posted by david
Mar 15, 2011 at 06:34 PM
So far, having met with a couple pf researchers, they just use a single word document for writing notes on the research they accumulate and then assemble the paper using those notes - it seems the most simplistic usage for them.
For archival purposes, they also store their research citations in Endnote.
How do you manage your citations and notes on research and use them for writing papers / literature review?
Posted by MadaboutDana
Mar 15, 2011 at 09:54 PM
I am always astounded at just how little use academics in particular make of the many amazing tools out there for collating / structuring information. The “giant Word file” approach seems to be very popular. There’s certainly a crying need for some kind of info processing tool that isn’t as complex as ridiculously over-the-top implementations like Citavi (or even Mendeley), but still allow you to export neatly formatted citations/end-notes etc.
I was briefly enchanted by NOOKstudy, but appalled on more in-depth use to find out that the search tool is a complete heap of cr*p - oh, and if you’ve annotated PDF files, there’s absolutely no way of exporting the annotated PDF itself (although you can export the annotations - to a Word file - which is less than useless if you’ve simply highlighted specific passages). I attempted to use NOOKstudy to translate an annual report (the side-by-side feature is brilliant), but discovered that the search function simply doesn’t work - even worse, doesn’t work consistently between the Library view (which will come up with one lot of results) and the Reader view (which comes up with another set of results!). Very depressing, and proof - if any were needed - that it is very specifically targeted at the educational market…
Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 15, 2011 at 10:48 PM
david wrote:
>
>How do you manage your
>citations and notes on research and use them for writing papers / literature review?
I think a lot depends on how complex your research/writing project is. Clearly the more complex and bigger the project, the more need for sophisticated solutions. I don’t think there is a single tool that does it all and that serves all purposes. Eventually one needs to assemble the assortment of tools that suit the purpose of the given project best.
Here’s my work flow (some of these are simultaneous):
- capture website info with Surfulater;
- capture writing ideas in Notes on iPod Touch/iPad, which syncs with Gmail;
- collect references in EndNote and link to PDFs on PC hard drive;
- read and annotate PDFs with PDF XChange Viewer on PC or GoodReader on iPod Touch/iPad;
- copy quotes and notes from PDF and Gmail and paste them into Whizfolders in order to organise them into hierarchical outline; use Whizfolders as main database of ideas and quotes;
- use NVivo for analysing other collected material (text, image, audio, video).
- draft final outlines in Natara Bonsai;
- do the final writing in MS Word.
This is what I’ve been doing so far, however I’m interested in replacing EndNote with Citavi and introducing Scrivener for Windows between the Bonsai outline and the MS Word as an interim step.
I also use several other software for managing audio files and image files, as well as brainstorming and mindmapping tools. I may also need to use some timelining software and UltraRecall for organising thousands of digital files. So obviously this is for a big project lasting for several years, not just the literature review.
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Mar 16, 2011 at 10:47 PM
Dr Andus wrote:
>- capture website info with Surfulater;
>- capture writing ideas in Notes on iPod Touch/iPad, which syncs with Gmail;
>- collect references in EndNote and link to PDFs on PC hard drive;
>- read and annotate PDFs with PDF XChange Viewer on PC or GoodReader on iPod Touch/iPad;
>- copy quotes and notes from PDF and Gmail and paste them into Whizfolders in order to organise them into hierarchical outline; use Whizfolders as main database of ideas and quotes;
>- use NVivo for analysing other collected material (text, image, audio, video).
>- draft final outlines in Natara Bonsai;
>- do the final writing in MS Word.
Dr,
My workflow was* very similar to yours, but I only used two tools in practice: Surfulater for all reference material and Brainstorm for all writing, apart for the final formatting. I made this choice after trying several tools, including Zoot, UltraRecall, Endnote and Maxthink among others; I liked many of them, but most were redundant or even bothersome in my workflow. This included Endnote; it was for me much more convenient to maintain bibliographies in Brainstorm (even though they were in plain text) as I could link them to quotes and reuse them without disturbing the workflow.
Surfulater is focused on capturing and organising web content, so I grabbed most of my references including articles in HTML form, also linking to the PDF versions in my file system. Highlighting and copying content is far more seamless with HTML than PDFs (e.g. no carriage returns to remove), articles can be included in multiple categories as clones or via tags if one prefers. Linking to the original article from other applications, e.g. Word, is easy via the sulkb:// tag, etc.
Brainstorm is excellent for developing textual content bottom-up or top-down complementarily. It also supports cloning (namesakes) and can identify identical text automatically. I note that it now looks rather dated (it started life as a DOS application after all) and it may have some trouble dealing with huge amounts of multi-cross-referenced text, but I have found nothing as powerful. Nevertheless, I’m now using mostly Sense for top-down writing, as it provides a better overview of the content and is actively developed.
*It’s been a year since I last did any academic writing, though I should be getting back to it soon.
Posted by critStock
Mar 17, 2011 at 03:25 AM
One man’s “ridiculously over-the-top implementation” is another’s “just right,” I suppose. Citavi integrates several stages of my research-to-writing workflow and eliminates several other separate applications. It captures references as well as any other ref manager; allows me to embed references in multiple places in my own “knowledge tree”; and allows me to create quotations and notes that remain linked to their sources and which can themselves become part of the knowledge tree (one branch of which might be my current project, or one down the line; a single item can exist simultaneously in as many nodes as you like). It also has a nice task manager feature. It is an extraordinarily robust solution and, given its extensive capabilities, remarkably simple to use. If this is the kind of work you need to do, I highly recommend giving it a try. In my years of looking for something like this, nothing has ever come close.
I generally use it for everything up to the writing stage, including pre-writing outlining, with the exception of quick grabs into Evernote. Evernote is great for collecting stuff, but you can’t do much with that stuff afterwards, except search it. When I clip something especially important, I generally email it to myself and use gmail + activeinbox + todoist to turn it into a task attached to a project so it will come under my nose when I’m working on that project.
I’m still fiddling around with various writing programs—WritingOutliner, Scrivener for Win, etc. I’ll need to make a commitment in May, when I’ll be getting back to writing full-time. However, at this point, I’m not sure I need much more than a word-processor once I’ve organized and outline my notes and quotes in Citavi. More on that piece later….
Cheers,
David