Lately I have been reading a lot of articles for my master thesis project. I donāt know about you, but after a week of literature review I am not able to remember what each of the articles were about or if they had any relevant piece of information. Thatās why I developed my ākeep track of what you readā system.Ā
STEP 1 - organize your folders
Create a subfolder inside your project folder and give it a catchy name. I call mine āarticlesā, nice, huh? Then create a subfolder inside that folder and call it āto_readā. Now, every time you get a new article, you will put it into the āto_readā folder.
STEP 2 - give your PDFs a nice name
The default file name when you download an article is something ugly like ā1-s2.0-S0140674607612379-main.pdfā. Change this for something that will allow youĀ identify the article easily. I try to stick to the system āfirst_author (year)ā.
I have all my stuff stored inĀ DropboxĀ orĀ Google Drive. Itās the best if you are going to work from more than one device as it will keep your stuff synced and always accesible.
STEP 4 - create a reading log
My master thesis project is about auditory verbal hallucinations, language, and dynamic causal modelling, so I have to read articles about these three topics. To keep track of what Iām reading, I created an excel documentĀ in Google Drive with 3 different spread sheets, one for each of the topics. Now, every time I start reading an article, I open this document, I go to the spread sheet that fits, and I write down its title.Ā
STEP 5 - read the article and take notes
I am a color coder, so I highlight the articles as I read them. Something interesting? Yellow. Hypotheses? Green. Relevant results? Blue. Then I take some notes of the important stuff, either in my research notebook or in a Word document, depends on my mood. Once you are done reading, move the article from the āto_readā subfolder to the main āarticlesā folder. At this step, you could also consider to use a reference manager like Mendeley or EndNote, but thatās a topic for another time.
STEP 6 - update the reading log
Now write in your log a couple of sentences (or more!) about the article you just read, just to jog your memory in the future. You can also copy some quotes you think will be usefull in the future or references to other articles cited in the text that you might want to check later. Itās up to you.
If you have everything stored in the cloud, you can add hyperlinks from your reading log to the articles and/or to the notes you took on them. If you took notes on a paper notebook, write down which notebook it is and the page number where you can find those notes (numbering the pages of your notebook is a must!).
Now, remember that everybody works differently and this is only the system I use, but I strongly recommend keeping a reading log. I might seem like an overkill when you only have to read a couple of articles for class, but youāll be gratefull for it when you have to use something you know you have read aboutā¦ and you canāt remember where you read it.
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