Taking notes on research papers or books

Now that I’m working on my dissertation prospectus I decided to get serious about taking notes on all of the relevant literature I’m reading. I try to do this for all of my research projects of course, but something about the “d” word (dissertation) got me more motivated. My first instinct was to set up a system of some kind, perhaps a spreadsheet or some other kind of productivity software. I would love to have a prefect system, but I realized that the real purpose was just to save myself from re-reading (not re-reading to get new insight, but re-reading because I forgot if the author’s point was X or Y). My notes don’t have to conform to a standard format as much as they have to capture what I got from reading. If I have to go back and figure out the N of each study later that’s fine, because if I had to do that (and 10 other things) each time I read something it would seem like extra work not something that was saving me time.

I do try to put down something about the methods and the main findings at minimum. It also helps to write it as if you were explaining it to a classmate so that you don’t use shorthand that won’t make sense to you later.

I couldn’t resist using a new software tool. I’m using Scrivener, a Mac-only application for writers. I like that it is designed for re-organizing and tagging which is what I’ll do when I have a better handle on how I want to organize the project. For now I can just write whatever comes to mind. Well-organized text files would probably work just as well.