How I Use EverNote for Academic Research

Questions/Points to Address

• trying to come up with an easty to use system for doing things like keeping notes about articles, general thoughts and ideas, brainstorming new research ideas, etc...in EverNote
• using EverNote to keep track of references, including a template for all of the bibliography-type detail

Caveats:

(1) I do my writing in LaTeX and keep my bibliography information in bibtex. For this, I use a program called JabRef (java, open source). My main reason for doing this is because JabRef is very good at letting me know exactly what fields need to be filled in for particular kinds of references, and, if I keep all of my references in one .bib file, Jabref will tell me if I'm trying to use the same key more than once. That's and it's great program for dealing with bibtex databases.

(2) I make serious use of keywords. Keywords that start with @ tend to be actions, or really important to me, like @get, @print. Keywords that start with # are like tags for particular topics that I want to gather later.

Using EN as a Tool for Academic Research

Keeping these caveats in mind, here is my two cents on using EverNote as a tool for academic research. I thought that it might be easier to show you a smaple of my EverNote database, to give you an idea of what my working system looks like. I'm attaching a png of part of my database. (I've pulled out a bunch of categories and stuck them under Example.)(Click on the image to see it full size.)

Reading Articles and Taking Notes

Now, here's the process that I go through with respect to reading articles:

1. First, I find the name of an article that I want to read. This might be from me surfing the web, or reading another article, or being sent something in an email, etc.

2. I'll make a plain text note, something like "Find A Survey of Program Slicing Techniques by Tip." In that note, I will put a keyword @get[ ]. If this note wasn't created as part of something else that I've already been working on in EverNote, e.g., let's say I got an email suggesting this paper, then I need a category for it. Temporarily, I will manually assign it to the @Get category, even though it's been automatically assigned to that category already because of the keyword. I do the manual assignment because I absolutely hate having uncategorized notes. It will get moved later.

3. I'll probably ignore this note now for a while. Go to work on something else, and then eventually decide that it's time to do some surfing to see if I can find anything on my @get list.

4. So, let's say that I'm looking for this article now. Surf away. Find a link to it. Copy any relevant information, say full bibliographic info, like where it was published, into the same note as before. That note is like a draft for me - I keep stuffing things into until I get my hands on the paper itself.

5. If I'm lucky enough to find the pdf of the article online, I then mark the note. The keywords will now be @get[x] pdf @print[ ] @readphd[ ]. The second tag is just to tell me that I have a pdf (this is new, and I don't know if I'll keep it.) The third tag tells me I need to print the article (usually at school). The fourth tag tells me I want to read it for my phd. (As opposed to another project, or general reading.) I'm playing with whether I mark @readphd[ ] before or after I actually print the note. So far, I'm happy with this way.

6. If I'm not able to find the pdf online, I'll look at the school library. If I find an entry in the catalogue, I'll past that into the note and then add @library[ ] as a tag. Next time I'm at school, I can look up all my @library[ ] notes to see what I have to go find and photocopy. When I have the article, I can mark the article @library[x] or just delete the tag.

7. If it's not in the library, then I'll try ordering it. There are two systems I can access, and each gets its own keyword. If I'm able to order the article, then I tag the note (still the same one) with @cisti or @racer. I can use the keyword categories @CISTI and @Racer to see if I'm waiting for anything. When the article comes in, I can remove the tag, or I usually just put a space between @ and the tag, so that it's not captured by the autocategory anymore.

8. At this point, I have exactly one note for the article, a draft note with all sorts of stuff in it. And it has @get[x] and @readphd[ ] as tags. Plus @print[x] or @library[x], etc. I also have a hard copy of the article. And often, a soft copy of the pdf, filed in a very loose filing system on my hard drive. (I depend on Copernic Desktop Search to find stuff for me. By the way, when I save it to my hard drive at the beginning, I save it with the title as the file name.)

9. Now, let's say that it's time for me to do some reading. What shall I read? Well, goto the @readphd[ ] category to see what's there. Or, go to the stack of hard copy papers and just pick one. Doesn't matter either way. Read the paper. Previously, I would highlight an article, then type notes into another program. Right now, I'm trying out writing notes in a hard notebook, and then type the relevent (not all) notes into EN. I find that the act of writing helps me understand/remember better. And it's too easy to highlight entire paragraphs. And, it's nice to have a nice notebook because you can flip through it and get a sense of accomplishment.

10. Okay, I've read the article and made notes in my notebook. Turns out that this is a good article for me. If it wasn't, I would just file it (alphabetically by author), and be done with it. Oh, I would mark the original note @readphd[x] and manually assign it to the @readphd[x] category. Now it's filed that I've read it, but I won't do anything else with it.

11. Let's say that the article is a good one and I'm probably going to want to refer to it later. First things first, it needs a unique key so that I can refer to it. Instead of calling it "Tip's article on Slicing Techniques", I can just call it [Tip95]. This is the first three letters of the sole author's last name, plus the year it was published. If there were more than one author, it would be something like [KPMG02]. This numbering scheme is based on how BibTex assigns keyes for alphanumeric references. Use whatever scheme you like, even plain numerical, but it's important to have exactly one identifier for each article. That way, if want to know every note in your database that's influenced by a particular article, you can just search for the key.

12. So, I go into JabRef and input this article into my bibliographic database. JabRef lets me know if the key I've chosen has already been used by another article in my collection (If so, I would just add a letter, say a, to the end of the key.) You could also keep your database in something like Excel, or even EN itself, but you'll just have to be careful about duplicating keys.

13. Now that I have a unique key identifier for the article, I write this on the article itself. I put it so that when I file the article, I can see the key, i.e., turn the article to landscape mode, and write the key at the top right corner. It will be filed alphabetically by this key.

14. I'll also update my notebook so that I can find the article's notes later. I should have said earlier that I use the first few pages of my notebook as an index.

15. The last thing I update is the pdf on my hard drive. Use Copernic Desktop Search to find the article by its title. Add the key at the beginning of the file name.

16. Now it's time for EverNote. Every time I read an article that I find useful, I give it its own category. So, I create a category called "[Tip95] A Survey of Program Slicing Techniques" and put it under "Notes on Reading". I manually assign this category to the draft note I was working from earlier. I also create a new note, based on a Reading template that I've tweaked. You can see it in the image. Basically, it has fields for Title, Author, When I read it, etc., I don't actually use most of the fields but I've been too lazy to update the template.

17. If you were going to use EN itself as your reference database, I would use a template like this. Then you could enter all of the relevant information in a standard form. The advantage of using a template is that you can create a category just for these templates and easily find all of the references that you've got in your system.

18. So, my new category has two notes in it right now. I also drag a shortcut to the pdf into this category, so I have an easy link to it from EN.

19. Now, time for my actual notes. I tend to break the notes into logical chunks, say a definition, a theory, an example, some general motivation, related work, whatever. The key for me is that each note shouldn't be too long - I'm resistant to reading long notes.

20. At the beginning of each note, I create a title in bold, which is followed by the unique key for this article. I have to do this latter step because EN won't let me search for a particular category, and I want to be very sure that I can find all the notes that relate to a particular article.

21. Write my notes in this new note. I often find that something in the article makes me thinks, so I'll add a @deep thought, sometimes in italics, to the note. I might also find a definition, which I'll tag with @glossary. Or even some concept that I might want to pull out later, like #motivation#, #analysis#, etc. These keywords just get thrown in the note where they fit. Sometimes at the end of a bullet point. Sometimes just at the end of the note. Sometimes in the title, whatever.

22. I keep a separate category for my keywords. Each new keyword gets its own category. I use shortcuts to these keywords in my projects. For instance, a project for my research proposal might have links to #motivation# #background#, etc.

23. And that's about it for how I deal with references.

Research (i.e., PhD) Projects

Now, how about projects, etc? Well, this is a bit more complicated, and still in flux. It all really depends on how your work flows. From the image, you can see that I've included one major category called PhD Research. In there, I keep thoughts, brainstorming, etc. I have a category called Deep Thoughts - it's an automatic category on the @deep keyword. There's also automatic categories for @random thoughts, @thesis, @implementation, etc. You may find different categories work better for you.

I also have a major category called PhD SubProjects. I kind of think of this as little subprojects for my actual dissertation. Each topic that interests me, or each topic I think could be a chapter, gets its own category. In that category, I have subcategories, say one for web clippings for that topic, one for draft writing, etc. I also bring in shortcuts to the # keyword categories that relate to it.

Summary

I think the beauty of EN is that you have so much flexibility with it. If you combine automatic keywords, the keyword intersection panel, and shortcut categories, you can make a very complex interweaving of all of your notes, writing, references, and thought. It's definitely changed how I keep track of my research now. I'm no longer worried about losing track of information. In my old system, I found that I was never referring to my old notes because I didn't know what was there. Now, I can write notes in the now, adding keywords as I go, and be comfortable with the fact that the next time I want to think about #analysis#, I can just find all of my notes on #analysis# and have nothing missing. I don't have to remember that some arcane article that I read a year ago had something useful in it.