Organising literature - Peter9192/MAQ_PhD GitHub Wiki

During your (MSc or PhD) research you will collect a large amount of papers, reports and other useful media from your field of research. All these media are meant to help you find out what is already known, what methodologies are commonly used or recently developed, where are knowledge gaps that you could try to fill in, et cetera. But how will you organise all this information without getting lost? Here are some useful tips that could get you started.

###Tip 1: Save and search Whether you like to read your articles on paper or from your screen, you want to be able to find your literature back quickly. Research papers are easily stored in a folder using filenames like [last_name_first_author][journal][year_of_publication].pdf (e.g. Breon_ACP_2015.pdf). In this way you can always find your papers quickly. If you print your articles, put them in a binder and label them similarly as you would the digital papers. Other media can in principle also be stored digitally, although e.g. useful webpages require a different strategy (such as a file which lists these URLs in alphabetic order of their topic or use ‘Favourites’ in your Internet browser). The most important is that you always give good descriptive names to whatever you’re storing! Moreover, when you store media on your computer or print them, add them to your reference manager instantly and you will always be up-to-date. More information on reference managers can be found elsewhere on this Wiki.

###Tip 2: To-read-folder
It is very convenient to make a separate folder with articles that still need to be read. For example, if you get an interesting suggesting through your RSS feeds but don’t have time to read the paper at that moment, save it in a separate folder. In this way you make a read-pile and you can take a paper from that pile when you have the time.

###Tip 3: Select topics
Your research will probably involve several different topics that require their own literature review. Sorting your literature according to these topics will help you to find the most relevant literature at a certain moment. For example, you can separate literature about the model you use from literature about observations. In that case, if you are writing your methodology section on the model framework, you know where to find papers on that topic that could provide useful references. You can simply make this division by creating one folder per topic (or add tabs to your binder). Also consider adding a file to each folder that lists the papers in that folder and in one or two sentences the most important findings of that paper, in case you don’t know exactly which paper you could use best.

###Tip 4: Make notes
When you’re reading an article you will look for certain information. But sometimes you also think of a relationship with something you read in another paper or with your own research. It is important to write these down, otherwise you’ll forget about them soon! So always highlight useful facts in the text (e.g. what is the best model configuration) or make notes about your thoughts. This is very easy on paper, but also with Adobe Reader there are options to mark text (option ‘Highlighted Text’) or to add comments (option ‘Add Sticky Note’). If you put this information in the file that lists all the papers in the folder, you can easily find these thoughts and ideas back. Or when you’re stuck with your research, you might find some inspiring ideas here.

##RSS feeds
Subscribing to RSS feeds is a useful way to stay updated on the latest papers in your field of research. One of the easiest ways to set RSS feeds is through Scopus. Enter your search terms in the ‘Document Search’ field and click ‘Search’. At the top of the page, where you also find the ‘Export’ option to add a paper to your reference manager, there is a button with ‘Set feed’. Click on it and give a (descriptive) name to this feed. If you click continue Scopus will give you a URL that you can add to Outlook. In Outlook click on the ‘File’ tab (upper left), then select ‘Account Settings’ and go to the tab ‘RSS feeds’. Click on ‘New...’ and copy the URL from Scopus to this field. Select your preferences and a new folder will be created under ‘RSS feeds’ in which articles that contain the specified search terms will appear as soon as they are indexed by Scopus. Choose your search terms wisely!