I really hate organizing papers. I love Zotero, a program that manages references. It syncs across multiple devices and interfaces very nicely with LaTeX. I have used it for a long time, so I have a lot of references saved in it.
Unfortunately, I've never mastered organizing references beyond putting them in Zotero. I made "collections", but not in a way that has been helpful or useful. For instance, I made a subfolder in the collection (folder) that corresponds to my main research topic. I called this folder "recent", because at one point those were new papers on the topic... a few years ago.
But beyond the references is the issue of the papers themselves. In graduate school, I typically printed the most important papers. This was especially useful for making notes by hand, my preferred method. But, how do I organize those printed papers? How do I remember if I printed it already? And do I really want to take those big binders with me when I travel...
When I graduated I ran into a new problem: I could no longer access journals. I didn't save many papers, because I could always go back to the online journal and access them there. But I had that access through Stanford! While Agnes Scott has access to some journals, I cannot directly access the majority of papers that I need for my research. The library is able to get the papers for me, but there is a delay and a cost associated with it.
Now that I am at a major research institution, I have been able to access most papers that I need. I've downloaded all of them, so that I could access them later. But how do I organize them on my computer so that I can ever find them again? The papers I already had typically ended up in many different places and I could rarely find what I needed.
The obvious solution is to create some sort of folder structure and then associate each file with the Zotero reference item. This way I can use Zotero to search and organize, but then I still have a copy of the paper when I lose journal access. Perfect!... except that at the hospital, my laptop cannot access the internet. This means that I've been using other computers there.
While I've read (in many cases, skimmed) well-over 100 papers, I haven't saved any of them to Zotero. Oops! I have 5 days at the hospital left, so I really need to make good use of the journal access right now. But it turns out, I hate this step.
I'm going through all of the PDFs that I have saved and am pulling up the journal website on my computer to save the reference to Zotero and then associate the file. I have to do this at home, where I have internet. But I'm also trying to look for the important references that I already have in Zotero that I don't have a file for and then getting the file. But this has to happen at the hospital. So while these two tasks are related, I can't do them in the same place.
I've sunk many hours of work into this already, and I am maybe not half-way done. There are entire topics that I've forgone creating Zotero references for since the papers aren't associated with my current projects (but are important for a future project). I really dislike this task and wish it wasn't needed. Viva open access publishing!
Unfortunately, I've never mastered organizing references beyond putting them in Zotero. I made "collections", but not in a way that has been helpful or useful. For instance, I made a subfolder in the collection (folder) that corresponds to my main research topic. I called this folder "recent", because at one point those were new papers on the topic... a few years ago.
But beyond the references is the issue of the papers themselves. In graduate school, I typically printed the most important papers. This was especially useful for making notes by hand, my preferred method. But, how do I organize those printed papers? How do I remember if I printed it already? And do I really want to take those big binders with me when I travel...
When I graduated I ran into a new problem: I could no longer access journals. I didn't save many papers, because I could always go back to the online journal and access them there. But I had that access through Stanford! While Agnes Scott has access to some journals, I cannot directly access the majority of papers that I need for my research. The library is able to get the papers for me, but there is a delay and a cost associated with it.
Now that I am at a major research institution, I have been able to access most papers that I need. I've downloaded all of them, so that I could access them later. But how do I organize them on my computer so that I can ever find them again? The papers I already had typically ended up in many different places and I could rarely find what I needed.
The obvious solution is to create some sort of folder structure and then associate each file with the Zotero reference item. This way I can use Zotero to search and organize, but then I still have a copy of the paper when I lose journal access. Perfect!... except that at the hospital, my laptop cannot access the internet. This means that I've been using other computers there.
While I've read (in many cases, skimmed) well-over 100 papers, I haven't saved any of them to Zotero. Oops! I have 5 days at the hospital left, so I really need to make good use of the journal access right now. But it turns out, I hate this step.
I'm going through all of the PDFs that I have saved and am pulling up the journal website on my computer to save the reference to Zotero and then associate the file. I have to do this at home, where I have internet. But I'm also trying to look for the important references that I already have in Zotero that I don't have a file for and then getting the file. But this has to happen at the hospital. So while these two tasks are related, I can't do them in the same place.
I've sunk many hours of work into this already, and I am maybe not half-way done. There are entire topics that I've forgone creating Zotero references for since the papers aren't associated with my current projects (but are important for a future project). I really dislike this task and wish it wasn't needed. Viva open access publishing!
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