Quite a few people have asked me how I organize my literature reading, so hereās a walkthrough of how I do it. This is a method that works for me right now, and Iāve been consistent with doing it this way since I started reading more seriously for my oral qualifying exam.
Printed copy at 85% (for space to write in the margin)
Black pen (for summaries, writing things in my own words, writing things to keep in mind, etc.)
Blue pen (for notes on experiment ideas, how these experiments/findings are relevant to what we study, things to take notes of, things to look up, etc.)
Yellow highlighter for general highlighting
I used to read on my iPad using Notability. I liked that option because it gives me more colors to work with, but I was also getting too distracted with what colors to use, all the apps on my iPad, and such. These are dry academic papers with a lot to process, and itās really hard to compete with apps like FB and Reddit with their endless scrolls and easy to understand posts.Ā I find that with my current set up of having just the bare necessity and no distraction means Iām more likely to read my paper and stay reading. Photo above was taken when I was summarizing, so I had both my phone and my laptop and took 2x as long to summarizeā¦
Digital organization set up:
There is a āPaperā section within my OneNote lab notebook
Under this section, each tab has its own topic
Sometimes there are overlaps (interneuron deficit leading Tourette) would have a main section in Tourette, and that just gets copy/pasted to the Interneuron with a note saying,Ā āduplicate from Touretteā
In each tab has aĀ āTable of Content,ā which is a summary table of all the papers Iāve read on that topic
ToC is subdivided into several categories: paper, summary & conclusions, *something specific to this section, and notes & additional questions
Paper: contains title, *first authorās last name* et al., ### (*PIās last name*)
Summary & Conclusions: things Iāve written in black or highlighted from the paper
*Specific to this section*: I donāt really know how to describe this section besides giving examples. For my Tourette tab, this section is Area ImplicatedĀ since weāre interested in the regions of the brain associated with Tourette. For my protein of interest (PoI) tab, this section is PoIās Condition since I want to distinguish the effect seen with heterozygous KO, homozygous KO, conditional KO, and point mutations, to piece out the function of the various domains.Ā
Notes & Additional Questions:Ā everything I wrote in blue will go here. This section makes notes of the experiments I came up with while I read, lists questions I have during reading that can guide
This serves as a summary of all the papers Iāve read with enough information to know the paper without having to reread it. In my experience, itās immensely helpful as I write my qualifying proposal. Having everything about one topic in one place allows me to quickly compare and contrast the different papers and see what has or hasnāt been done before and how to possibly fill the knowledge gap.
Physical organization set up:
My implementation ofĀ @cancerbiophdāās method:
I currently have 1-1.5 inch binders containing 2-3 topics per binder
Each topic is distinguished from the other in the same binder via color coding tags
Each tag is labeled withĀ *first authorās last name* et al., ### (*PIās last name*)
Papers are stored in plastic sheet protectors to protect all parts of notes from hole punching, and this plastic sheet protector is flagged with the label above
The order of the paper is not really organized. Right now I have it by the order I read it in, but if I come up with a better way of sorting papers, I will adopt that instead
These photos are a bit outdated. Iāve switched my CELSR3/Tourette/Interneuron papers into the 1.5 binder since my research focuses on this particular area, and thereās a lot of papers that Iām reading that pertains to these topics.
When writing, I have theĀ ātable of contentā side by side and read through that for a quick summary. If further info is needed, I can go through physical copy for more information, and since itās organized in a way that makes sense to me, I can find it easily instead of leafing through all of my papers, some with very similar titles and authors.
Hopefully this is helpful to you! If you have any suggestions on how to make this process more efficient or comments on how you personally keep track of your literature reading, please let me know!Ā
