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How to organize my papers and notes from the beginning of my PhD? [duplicate]

This question already has an answer here: asked 4 years, 2 months ago
Should I use reference manager software? 6 answers viewed 31,880 times
16 active 2 years, 1 month ago
I'm a first year PhD student.

I'm in my first stage (doing a literature review) but I face problem in organizing the papers I read
and the notes I take for all papers. Should I put all that in one MS Word file for example, or different
MS word files, or maybe use a different software?
12
I don't want to come after month from now and get confused about the way I organize my papers
and notes in.

So, any helpful ideas?

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 phd

share improve this question edited Sep 15 '13 at 13:41 asked Sep 15 '13 at 0:05
F'x sali
55.9k 16 209 348 394 2 3 9

marked as duplicate by EnergyNumbers, StrongBad ♦, UV-D, Joel Reyes Noche, Ben Norris Sep
28 '13 at 17:28
This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your
question, please ask a new question.

3 Evernote + Mendeley works for me. – Shion Sep 15 '13 at 0:09

1 There is also some mind map software that lets you create nice graphs/trees so you can nicely group ideas
and notes from papers. I never used those though. I use Evernote where I tag every post I make. Then I
search through the tags to retrieve stuff. – Rabbit Sep 15 '13 at 0:31 Get the weekly newsletter! In it, you'll get:

1 I use FreeMind for mind mapping – user7130 Sep 15 '13 at 0:40 The week's top questions and answers
Important community announcements
1 You might want to take a look at this question – Rabbit Sep 15 '13 at 0:43
Questions that need answers
1 Very broad and subjective/open-ended. There are lots of different ways of organizing papers and notes, but
we can hardly know what is best for you. – F'x Sep 15 '13 at 13:40
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4 Answers active oldest votes

Linked

First of all, a graduate school is a learning process so finding what is perfect from you from the start 15 Should I use reference manager software?
is a valiant endeavour but not necessarily sure fire.
64 Is there any efficient non-linear note-taking
18 You should start to use a data base system, some (mentioned in comments) that come to mind are software?
Mendeley (free), EndNote (commercial), RefBase (free) to mention a few. If you consider going into
LateX (which many of us swear by) then I can recommend JabRef (free; BibTeX format). There is 38 How to manage theorist's “labbook”?
also a Wikipedia comparison page that can be of assistance.

Related
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 To sort your references concerns managing some form of structure where you group or "mind map Related
your articles. In the old days you simply kept them in piles. With a data base software you can start
25 How to write a good PhD literature review?
providing key words in the data base and also keep some short notes for each paper which makes
everything searchable and ready for sorting. I think the process or sorting articles is one that
changes with different tasks and also persons so you are best of taking some advice from others 11 How to write a technical paper of a not so
significant idea?
and looking into it. Hopefully you also have peers around who can provide their insights. In the end
you will develop your own set of tools that suit your needs and to keep trying different ones at an
4 software to organize (1) research questions (2)
early stage, and discarding many of them, is far better than trying to do it later when the mass of secondary literature (3) own notes
information is much larger. Another option is to simply start using something and sticking with it
regardless of weaknesses. 12 Is it a good idea to take a break from studying
a mathematics PhD and then considering
The bottom line is that with experience you will rely less and less on note-taking and be more revisiting academia at a later stage?
efficient at seeing structure in what you read and so keeping a reference database is the main tool
you will use. Even if this may not sound very constructive, I also say that the time you spend now 2 Leave of Absence from PHD
on testing different solutions will pay back later, putting it off is only pushing problems forward.
6 Time management and organization for PhD
A final personal note. If you want a free, platform independent, and completely versatile way to Student in first year?
author documents you should look into LaTeX-writing (for example through TeX.stackexchange). I
recommend it to everyone unless you are in a complete Word-environment, being alone with a 2 How to include an unpublished work other than
different system can be hard. You should nevertheless look into it. a preprint site (i.e.arXiv) in CS PhD Application

share improve this answer edited Apr 13 at 12:34 answered Sep 15 '13 at 8:53 6 How can I know if I’m working through my PhD
correctly?
Community ♦ Peter Jansson
1 64.5k 7 164 298
5 How honest should one be in a PhD exit
interview?
Love the LaTeX recommendation. – Penguin_Knight Sep 20 '13 at 17:59
10 Lack of passion from the beginning of my PhD
add a comment

Hot Network Questions

I used to use a journal to keep track of my readings as I could take the journal to the library with Benchmark between Home computers? What can
me. If I were doing a similar thing today, I'd use a wiki to keep track of my notes and research as be a valid parameter for that?
that would let me re-organize things as needed, host PDFs of the journal articles when available
2 and allow for searching.
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I'm a first year myself, so I can't say "this works" so much as "this is what I'm trying"... But what I'm
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I electronically highlight and comment my papers in the program Xournal. I used to then organize
them somewhat in a program called Zotero (in some ways similar to the Mendeley mentioned more hot questions
above I believe). However, I recently stopped using Zotero because it was an additional hassle.
0
So currently I just mark up papers in Xournal and then organize them into different directories
within my Dropbox account. I'm happy with this, and have been doing it for about 4 years now.

share improve this answer answered Sep 17 '13 at 17:27

gammapoint
433 3 8

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