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15 Best Free Web Tools to Organize Your Research

How to stay organized when researching and writing papers

organise your research

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Organizing research is important not only for your own sanity, but because when it comes time to unfold the data and put it to use, you want the process to go as smoothly as possible. This is where research organizers come in.

There are lots of free web-based organizers that you can use for any purpose. Maybe you're collecting interviews for a news story, digging up newspaper archives for a history project, or writing a research paper over a science topic. Research organizers are also helpful for staying productive and preparing for tests.

Regardless of the topic, when you have multiple sources of information and lots to comb through later, optimizing your workflow with a dedicated organizer is essential.

Patrick Tomasso / Unsplash

Many of these tools provide unique features, so you might decide to use multiple resources simultaneously in whatever way suits your particular needs.

Research and Study

You need a place to gather the information you're finding. To avoid a cluttered space when collecting and organizing data, you can use a tool dedicated to research.

  • Pocket : Save web pages to your online account to reference them again later. It's much tidier than bookmarks, and it can all be retrieved from the web or the Pocket mobile app .
  • Mendeley : Organize papers and references, and generate citations and bibliographies.
  • Quizlet : Learn vocabulary with these free online flashcards .
  • Wikipedia : Find information on millions of different topics.
  • Quora : This is a question and answer website where you can ask the community for help with any question.
  • SparkNotes : Free online study guides on a wide variety of subjects, anything from famous literary works of the past century to the present day. 
  • Zotero : Collect, manage, and cite your research sources. Lets you organize data into collections and search through them by adding tags to every source. This is a computer program, but there's a browser extension that helps you send data to it.
  • Google Scholar : A simple way to search for scholarly literature on any subject.
  • Diigo : Collect, share, and interact with information from anywhere on the web. It's all accessible through the browser extension and saved to your online account.
  • GoConqr : Create flashcards, mind maps, notes, quizzes, and more to bridge the gap between your research and studying.

Writing Tools

Writing is the other half of a research paper, so you need somewhere useful to go to jot down notes, record information you might use in the final paper, create drafts, track sources, and finalize the paper.

  • Web Page Sticky Notes : For Chrome users, this tool lets you place sticky notes on any web page as you do your research. There are tons of settings you can customize, they're backed up to your Google Drive account, and they're visible not only on each page you created them on but also on a single page from the extension's settings.
  • Google Docs or Word Online : These are online word processors where you can write the entire research paper, organize lists, paste URLs, store off-hand notes, and more.
  • Google Keep : This note-taking app and website catalogs notes within labels that make sense for your research. Access them from the web on any computer or from your mobile device. It supports collaborations, custom colors, images, drawings, and reminders.
  • Yahoo Notepad : If you use Yahoo Mail , the notes area of your account is a great place to store text-based snippets for easy recall when you need them.
  • Notion : Workflows, notes, and more, in a space where you can collaborate with others.

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Proactive Grad

How to Organize Research Papers: A Cheat Sheet for Graduate Students

Aruna Kumarasiri

  • August 8, 2022
  • PRODUCTIVITY

how to organize research papers cover

It is crucial to organize research papers so that the literature survey process goes smoothly once the data has been gathered and analyzed. This is where a research organizer is useful.

It may be helpful to plan the structure of your writing before you start writing: organizing your ideas before you begin to write will help you decide what to write and how to write it.

It can be challenging to keep your research organized when writing an essay. The truth is, there’s no one “ best ” way to get organized, and there’s no one answer. Whatever system you choose, make sure it works for your learning style and writing habits.

As a graduate student, learning how to organize research papers is therefore essential.

This blog post will cover the basics of organizing research papers and the tools I use to organize my research. 

Before you start

The importance of organizing research papers.

No matter how good your paper management system is, even if you keep all your literature in places that are easy to find, you won’t be able to “create” anything unless you haven’t thought about organizing what you get from them.

The goal of the research is to publish your own work to society for the benefit of everyone in the field and, ultimately, humanity.

In your final year of your PhD, when you see all the papers you’ve stored over the years, imagine the frustration you might experience if you hadn’t gathered the information from those papers in a way that allows you to “create” something with i.

This is why organizing research papers is important when starting your research.

Research with your final product in mind

It is very important to have a clear idea of what your research’s outcome will be to collect the information you really need.

If you don’t yet have all your information, consider what “subheadings” or chunks you could write about.

Write a concept map if you need help identifying your topic chunks. As an introduction to concept mapping, it involves writing down a term or idea and then brainstorming other ideas within it.

To gather information like this, you can use a mind map.

When you find useful information.

Come up with a proper file management system.

Sort your literature with a file management system. There’s no need to come up with a very narrow filing system at this point. Try sorting your research into broader areas of your field. When you’re more familiar with your own research, you’ll be able to narrow down your filing system.

Start with these methods:

Don’t waste your time on stuff that’s interesting but not useful :  

In your own research, what’s the most important part of a particular paper? You won’t have to pay attention to other sections of that paper if you find that section first. 

What is the argument behind your research? Make notes on that information, and then throw everything else away.

Create multiple folders :

Create a file containing related topics if you’re using a computer. Bind the related articles together if you like to print out papers. In other words, keep related things together!

Color code your research papers:   

To organize notes and articles, assign different colors to each sub-topic and use highlighters, tabs, or font colors.

Organize your literature chronologically: 

Even in a short period of time, you might have missed overarching themes or arguments if you hadn’t read them previously. It’s best to organize your research papers chronologically.

If you want to do all this at once, I suggest using a reference manager like Zotero or Mendeley (more on reference managers later).

File renaming 

Make sure you rename your files on your computer according to your own renaming strategy. Taking this step will save you time and confusion as your research progresses.

My usual way of naming a pdf is to use the first author’s last name, followed by the first ten letters of the title and then the year of publication. As an example, For the paper “ Temperature-Dependent Infrared Refractive Index of Polymers from a Calibrated Attenuated Total Reflection Infrared Measurement ” by Azam et al., I renamed the file as “ Azam_Temperature-Dependent_2022.pdf “.

One thing to notice is that I don’t do this manually for all the papers I download. That wouldn’t be as productive, and I’d probably give up after some time renaming every single file. In my reference manager of choice (Zotero), I use a plugin called Zotfile to do this automatically. Zotfile automatically renames files and puts them in the folder I specify every time I add a new paper.

Organizing your research articles by the last names of the lead authors will simplify your citation and referencing process since you have to cite the names of the researchers everywhere. The articles will also be easier to find because they’ll be lined up alphabetically by any researcher’s name you can remember.

Use keywords wisely

Keywords are the most important part of sorting. It’s easy to forget to move a paper to a specific file sometimes because you’re overwhelmed. But you can tag a paper in seconds. 

When organizing research papers, don’t forget to develop a better keyword system, especially if you use a reference manager.

My reference manager, for instance, allows me to view all the keywords I have assigned in the main window, making life much easier.

Create annotations

When reading literature, it is very important to create your own annotations, as discussed in the blog post series, “ Bulletproof literature management system “.

This is the fourth post of the four-part blog series:  The Bulletproof Literature Management System . Follow the links below to read the other posts in the series:

  • How to How to find Research Papers
  • How to Manage Research Papers
  • How to Read Research Papers
  • How to Organize Research Papers (You are here)

The best thing to do is to summarize each section of the article/book you are reading that interests you. Don’t forget to include the key parts/arguments/quotes you liked.

Write your own notes

If you decide to read the whole paper, make sure you write your own summary. The reason is that 95% of the things you read will be forgotten after a certain period of time. When that happens, you may have to read the paper all over again if you do not take notes and write your own summary.

By writing your own summary, you will likely memorize the basic idea of the research paper. Additionally, you can link to other similar papers. In this way, you can benefit from the knowledge you gain from reading research papers.

After reading a paper, make sure to ask these questions:

  • Why is this source helpful for your essay?  
  • How does it support your thesis?  

Keep all the relevant information in one place so that you can refer to it when writing your own thesis.

Use an app like Obsidian to link your thinking if you keep all your files on a computer, making things much easier.

When you are ready to write

Write out of order .

Once you have all the necessary information, you can use your filing system, PDF renaming strategy, and keywords to draw the annotations and notes you need.

Now that you’re all set to write, don’t worry about writing the perfect paper or thesis right away.

Your introduction doesn’t have to come first.

If necessary, you can change your introduction at the end – sometimes, your essay takes a different direction. Nothing to worry about!

Write down ideas as they come to you

As you complete your research, many full-sentence paragraphs will come to your mind. Do not forget to write these down – even in your notes or annotations. Keep a notebook or your phone handy to jot down ideas as you get them. You can then find the information and revise it again to develop a better version if you’re working on the same project for a few days/weeks.

My toolbox to organize research papers

Stick with the free stuff.

Trying to be a productive grease monkey, I’ve tried many apps over the years. Here’s what I learned.

  • The simplest solution is always the best solution (the Occam razor principle always wins!).
  • The free solution is always the best (because they have the best communities to help you out and are more customizable).

As someone who used to believe that if something is free, you’re the product, I’ve learned that statement isn’t always true.

Ironically, open-source software tends to get better support than proprietary stuff. It’s better to have millions of enthusiasts working for free than ten paid support staff.

There are a lot of reviews out there, and EndNote usually comes out at the bottom. I used EndNote for five years – it worked fine, but other software improved faster. Now I use Zotero, which I like for its web integration. 

Obsidian, my note-taking app of choice, is also free software. Furthermore, you own your files; also, you’ve got a thriving community.

There are a lot of similarities between the software as they adopt each other’s features, and it’s just a matter of preference.

In any researcher’s toolbox, a reference manager is an essential tool.

A reference manager has two important features: the ability to get citation data into the app and the ability to use the citation data in your writing tool.

It should also work on Windows just as well as macOS or Linux, be free, and allow you to manage PDFs of papers or scanned book chapters.

Zotero , in my opinion, gives you all of this and more.

Zotero is one of the best free reference managers for collecting citation data. It includes a browser plugin that lets you save citation information on Google Scholar, journal pages, YouTube, Amazon, and many other websites, including news articles. It automatically downloads a PDF of the associated source when available for news articles, which is very convenient.

One of the things I really like about Zotero is that it has so many third-party plugins that we have almost complete control over how we use it.

With Zotero 6, you can also read and annotate PDFs, which is perfect for your needs.

My Research paper organizing workflow in Zotero :

  • Get References and PDF papers into Zotero : I use Zotero’s web plugin to import PDFs directly 
  • Filing and sorting : I save files from the web plugin into the file system I already have created in Zotero and assign tags as I do so.
  • File renaming : When I save the file, the Zotero plugin (Zotfile) automatically renames it and stores the pdf where I specified.
  • Extracting Annotations and taking notes : I use Zotero in the build pdf reader to take notes and annotate, and then I extract them and link them in Obsidian (next section).

You need to keep your notes organized and accessible once you’ve established a strong reading habit. For this purpose, I use Obsidian . I use Obsidian to manage everything related to my graduate studies, including notes, projects, and tasks. 

Using a plugin called mdnotes , Obsidian can also sync up with my reference manager of choice, Zotero. It automatically adds new papers to my Obsidian database whenever I add them to Zotero.

Obsidian may have a steep learning curve for those unfamiliar with bi-directional linking , but using similar software will make things much easier. Thus, you may be better off investing your time in devising a note-taking system that works for you.

You can also use a spreadsheet! Make a table with all the papers you read, whatever tool you choose. Include the paper’s status (e.g., whether you’ve read it) and any relevant projects. This is what mine looks like.

how to organize research papers

I keep all my notes on an associated page for each paper. In a spreadsheet, you can write your notes directly in the row or link to a Google document for each row. Zotero, for example, allows you to attach notes directly to reference files.

While it might seem like a lot of work, keeping a database of papers you’ve read helps with literature reviews, funding applications, and more. I can filter by keywords or relevant projects, so I don’t have to re-read anything.

The habit of reading papers and learning how to organize research papers has made me a better researcher. It takes me much less time to read now, and I use it to improve my experiments. I used this system a lot when putting together my PhD fellowship application and my candidacy exam. In the future, I will thank myself for having the foresight to take these steps today before starting to write my dissertation.

I am curious to know how others organize their research papers since there is no “ right ” way. Feel free to comment, and we will update the post with any interesting responses!

Images courtesy : Classified vector created by storyset – www.freepik.com

Aruna Kumarasiri

Aruna Kumarasiri

Founder at Proactive Grad, Materials Engineer, Researcher, and turned author. In 2019, he started his professional carrier as a materials engineer with the continuation of his research studies. His exposure to both academic and industrial worlds has provided many opportunities for him to give back to young professionals.

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9 Organizing Research: Taking and Keeping Effective Notes

Once you’ve located the right primary and secondary sources, it’s time to glean all the information you can from them. In this chapter, you’ll first get some tips on taking and organizing notes. The second part addresses how to approach the sort of intermediary assignments (such as book reviews) that are often part of a history course.

Honing your own strategy for organizing your primary and secondary research is a pathway to less stress and better paper success. Moreover, if you can find the method that helps you best organize your notes, these methods can be applied to research you do for any of your classes.

Before the personal computing revolution, most historians labored through archives and primary documents and wrote down their notes on index cards, and then found innovative ways to organize them for their purposes. When doing secondary research, historians often utilized (and many still do) pen and paper for taking notes on secondary sources. With the advent of digital photography and useful note-taking tools like OneNote, some of these older methods have been phased out – though some persist. And, most importantly, once you start using some of the newer techniques below, you may find that you are a little “old school,” and might opt to integrate some of the older techniques with newer technology.

Whether you choose to use a low-tech method of taking and organizing your notes or an app that will help you organize your research, here are a few pointers for good note-taking.

Principles of note-taking

  • If you are going low-tech, choose a method that prevents a loss of any notes. Perhaps use one spiral notebook, or an accordion folder, that will keep everything for your project in one space. If you end up taking notes away from your notebook or folder, replace them—or tape them onto blank pages if you are using a notebook—as soon as possible.
  • If you are going high-tech, pick one application and stick with it. Using a cloud-based app, including one that you can download to your smart phone, will allow you to keep adding to your notes even if you find yourself with time to take notes unexpectedly.
  • When taking notes, whether you’re using 3X5 note cards or using an app described below, write down the author and a shortened title for the publication, along with the page number on EVERY card. We can’t emphasize this point enough; writing down the bibliographic information the first time and repeatedly will save you loads of time later when you are writing your paper and must cite all key information.
  • Include keywords or “tags” that capture why you thought to take down this information in a consistent place on each note card (and when using the apps described below). If you are writing a paper about why Martin Luther King, Jr., became a successful Civil Rights movement leader, for example, you may have a few theories as you read his speeches or how those around him described his leadership. Those theories—religious beliefs, choice of lieutenants, understanding of Gandhi—might become the tags you put on each note card.
  • Note-taking applications can help organize tags for you, but if you are going low tech, a good idea is to put tags on the left side of a note card, and bibliographic info on the right side.

organise your research

Organizing research- applications that can help

Using images in research.

  • If you are in an archive: make your first picture one that includes the formal collection name, the box number, the folder name and call numbe r and anything else that would help you relocate this information if you or someone else needed to. Do this BEFORE you start taking photos of what is in the folder.
  • If you are photographing a book or something you may need to return to the library: take a picture of all the front matter (the title page, the page behind the title with all the publication information, maybe even the table of contents).

Once you have recorded where you find it, resist the urge to rename these photographs. By renaming them, they may be re-ordered and you might forget where you found them. Instead, use tags for your own purposes, and carefully name and date the folder into which the photographs were automatically sorted. There is one free, open-source program, Tropy , which is designed to help organize photos taken in archives, as well as tag, annotate, and organize them. It was developed and is supported by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It is free to download, and you can find it here: https://tropy.org/ ; it is not, however, cloud-based, so you should back up your photos. In other cases, if an archive doesn’t allow photography (this is highly unlikely if you’ve made the trip to the archive), you might have a laptop on hand so that you can transcribe crucial documents.

Using note or project-organizing apps

When you have the time to sit down and begin taking notes on your primary sources, you can annotate your photos in Tropy. Alternatively, OneNote, which is cloud-based, can serve as a way to organize your research. OneNote allows you to create separate “Notebooks” for various projects, but this doesn’t preclude you from searching for terms or tags across projects if the need ever arises. Within each project you can start new tabs, say, for each different collection that you have documents from, or you can start new tabs for different themes that you are investigating. Just as in Tropy, as you go through taking notes on your documents you can create your own “tags” and place them wherever you want in the notes.

Another powerful, free tool to help organize research, especially secondary research though not exclusively, is Zotero found @ https://www.zotero.org/ . Once downloaded, you can begin to save sources (and their URL) that you find on the internet to Zotero. You can create main folders for each major project that you have and then subfolders for various themes if you would like. Just like the other software mentioned, you can create notes and tags about each source, and Zotero can also be used to create bibliographies in the precise format that you will be using. Obviously, this function is super useful when doing a long-term, expansive project like a thesis or dissertation.

How History is Made: A Student’s Guide to Reading, Writing, and Thinking in the Discipline Copyright © 2022 by Stephanie Cole; Kimberly Breuer; Scott W. Palmer; and Brandon Blakeslee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Expert Commentary

Organizing your research: A scientist’s tips for journalists

Maya Gosztyla, a Ph.D. candidate in the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at the University of California San Diego, provides an overview of literature mapping tools, RSS feeds, research management software and databases to help journalists organize their research.

A colorful pile of papers.

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Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Naseem S. Miller, The Journalist's Resource March 21, 2023

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/home/organizing-your-research/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

Journalists collect a lot of stuff while reporting, especially for big stories and projects: interviews, documents, research papers, articles. It can be overwhelming at times.

Academics too must collect a large number of documents. They use a variety of tools to organize their work, some of which journalists can also use to organize materials. 

During a panel at the 2023 Association of Health Care Journalists conference in St. Louis, Missouri, Maya Gosztyla , a Ph.D. candidate in the Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program at the University of California San Diego, shared her organizational approach as a scientist, which journalists can easily adopt. She’s the authors of 2022 Nature career columns, “ How to Find, Read and Organize Papers ” and “ How to Manage Your Time as a Researcher .”

Below is a list of tips and tools that Gosztyla shared during the panel.

1. Find related research with literature mapping tools.

When journalists report on a new study, it’s important to consider where that study fits into the larger body of research.

Pubmed and Google Scholar are go-to research platforms to find academic research . But they’re not the most efficient tools for finding research related to a specific academic study.

A better approach is using literature mapping tools , which show the connection between research papers.

“Imagine papers like nodes in a network,” Gosztyla said. “Each paper will cite other papers, and what you can do is make a giant map of all the papers in a specific subject area. And then you can see the hubs — what are the papers that everyone cites that you should probably read.”

Some of the popular literature mapping tools, which offer free versions, include ResearchRabbit, Inciteful, Connected Papers and Litmaps .

2. Stay on top of current research with RSS feeds.

Many journalists, especially those who write about academic research, subscribe to journal email lists. But that may not be the best option for organizing research.

“It kind of overwhelms your inbox after a while,” said Gosztyla.

Another common method is setting up keyword email alerts. Both Pubmed and Google Scholar let you set up email alerts for specific keywords. But that too can crowd your email inbox.

Gosztyla’s solution is using an RSS feed reader .

RSS stands for “really simple syndication.” An RSS feed reader — or RSS feed aggregator — gets all the new articles or studies published on a website and brings them together in a timeline that you can quickly scroll through.

Many websites have RSS feeds. Once you have a link for the RSS feed, you can then add it to a free or paid RSS feed reader.

Here’s a good explainer by Lifewire on how to find RSS feeds and add it to a reader.

Gosztyla spends a few minutes every morning scrolling through her RSS feed reader — her favorite is Feedly — to check for new published research in her field.

This August 2022 article from Wired lists some of the more popular RSS feed readers.

3. Use research management software to file your research.

10 things we wish we’d known earlier about research: Tips from The Journalist’s Resource

There are several free online tools that can help you store what you find during your research instead having dozens of open tabs on your browser.

A popular tool developed by and for journalists is DocumentCloud , where you can upload documents, search the text, annotate, extract data , redact and edit.

Another option, popular among academics, is Zotero . It’s a free, open-source reference management tool and can store and organize your research material, including PDF files.

You can use Zotero in a browser, but for a more powerful experience, download it and install the Zotero plugin for your browser. When you come across a study or article that you want to save, click the plugin. It will save the item to your desired Zotero folder. You can create many folders and subfolders, and also share folders. You can also highlight and annotate PDFs.

“If you’re not using a reference manager, I highly, highly recommend them,” said Gosztyla.

You can integrate Zotero to several apps and programs, including, Word, Google Docs and literature mapping tools like ResearchRabbit.

Some of the alternatives to Zotero include, Mendeley , EndNote , RefWorks and Sciwheel .    

4. Routinely read your research pile.

To stay on top of what you’re collecting, Gosztyla offered this advice:

Block out a time each week, like two hours on Fridays, to read. If you have a big pile, maybe devote a couple of days to reading.

And decide how you’re going to spend that reading time: are you going to devote it to do a deep dive, or just scan what you’ve collected, take notes and decide what to keep and what to toss.

“Maybe it’s your routine that every week you buy yourself a nice cup of coffee. You go to a certain cafe and you just read,” Gosztyla said. “So find a routine that you really look forward to and it’s something you want to do.”

5. Don’t forget to take notes while reading documents .

“Don’t ever read without highlighting or taking notes,” Gosztyla said. “Otherwise, you will forget it. I guarantee it.”

Write a small note, a blurb, on the material you read to remind you of its main takeaways and where it fits into your project. Do you need to email or interview the author with follow-up questions? Or read the authors’ previous work? Make a note of those.

In the next step, you’ll learn about organizing those notes.

6. You have collected. You have read. Now organize your work in a database.

Research management software can help you organize your documents, but it’s helpful to create a database of what you’ve collected, your tasks for each item, and maybe a summary and key points. You can use Google Sheets of Microsoft Excel to create your list.

If you want something other than a classic spreadsheet, you can try web applications like Notion.

Notion is a powerful program, which Gosztyla described as a “multi-use database tool.” Notion describes itself as an all-in-one workspace. You can use it to organize your research, manage projects and tasks, note-taking and even your daily journals. You can also integrate Notion with many other apps and tools.

It has a steep learning curve. Give yourself time to learn to use it before integrating it into your workflow. Notion has tutorials on YouTube and a wiki page . Gosztyla recommended Thomas Frank Explains YouTube tutorials. Frank is an author, YouTuber, and Notion expert.

Some alternatives to Notion include Airtable , Trello and Coda .

7. Go one step further with automation tools.

If you want to go a step further in your Notion journey, you can link a Zotero folder to Notion with a tool called Notero . Every time you add an item to your Zotero folder, it populates your Notion database.

Notion has many templates you can choose from. Or you can use Gosztyla’s template .

You can automate and integrate other apps too, to create a better workflow for your work. Some of the popular options are IFTTT — Short for If This Then That — which integrates apps, devices and services to create automated workflows, and Zapier , which connects web applications and allows users to create automated workflows.

Keep in mind, you don’t have to use all the tools listed above.

“Take the pieces that work for you and apply them to your life,” advised Gosztyla.

If you want to share a tool that’s helped you organize your research, you can reach me at [email protected] . You can reach Gosztyla on Twitter @MayaGosztyla .

About The Author

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Naseem S. Miller

Kahana

How to Organize Research: Notes, PDF Files, & Documents

Topics covered ✅.

  • How to organize research papers and PDF files
  • How to organize research projects
  • Organizing research notes
  • Organizing research notes software
  • Organizing research tools
  • Research organizer template
  • How to organize research material

If you are a busy college student, creator, or blogger your life can get really cluttered. But the messiness in our lives can extend much farther than just a dorm room or office. As active researchers, we can often struggle to organize research in the form of copious amounts of articles, journals, academic writings, thesis, rough drafts, etc.

It gets pretty exhausting.

But where do you even begin?

What's the best way to organize research?

We believe we have created the best recipe for organizing your research and you will never go back to your old ways.

1. Note-taking and Mind mapping – How to Hack Your Mind

First, start by organizing your notes into categories. You can do this on a sticky note or on a mind map.

Even though you may feel like a middle school kid using colorful sticky paper, sticky notes are proven to be one of the most effective ways to organize research.

You'll want to do some research before you begin writing.

Use sticky notes to organize the information you find, and write down any thoughts or ideas that come up as you read or listen.

Also, sticky notes are great if you want to jot down quick notes during a lecture or discussion with friends about the topic at hand.

You can write down important points and make connections between them on sticky notes.

An option similar to this is creating a mind map.

If you are a very visual learner, this style of research may appeal to you because you can visually see where you will be taking this research into categories and subcategories.

Plus it’s fun making them!

organise your research

2. The Hard Part – Research & Writing

You should be familiar with the different types of sources that you can use when writing a research paper.

5 Examples of Sources

Here are a few examples of sources:

  • Primary sources (original documents like letters or speeches)
  • Secondary sources (articles, books, etc.)
  • Audio files (podcasts, interviews, etc.)
  • Online databases (Academic Search Complete, JSTOR, LexisNexis)
  • Tertiary sources (reviews of other people's research and analysis of your topics

organise your research

Bibliographies

When conducting research for your essay, be sure to use academic sources only!

Academic sources are those written by experts in their field who have been published in peer-reviewed journals or books and are therefore considered credible resources for learning more about any given topic.

Academic sources will always include citations at the end of each paragraph (or chapter) so that readers can easily identify where they can go if they'd like to learn more about the topic being discussed in each section of the text.

You can use secondary sources for information about your topic, but make sure that they are academically-reputable sources.

Primary sources are also great for finding information, but they provide only one side of the story and should be used with caution.

Overall, try to use a variety of sources as this will strengthen the argument you are defending.

We recommend putting a lot of emphasis on option five (tertiary sources) because it is something that we were not previously familiar with and we believe it should become more known as it is super helpful.

Tertiary sources are those that have been compiled by other people, such as academic journals and published books.

They can be great resources for getting more background information on a topic, but they aren't original works of scholarship—so be sure to cite them accordingly!

organise your research

Quick Bibliographies

As you organize research, there’s no need to get bogged down in how you structure or create your bibliography.

For starters, here’s a simple list of tools for quick bibliographies:

  • Bibliography.com

3. Putting Your Thoughts On Paper

One of the hardest parts is the beginning of the writing process. You should always keep in mind your thesis statement when you write.

It's easy to get carried away with details and forget what you're trying to say—but if you can keep your thesis statement in mind, it will help you stay focused on the main point of your work.

The writing process is a great way to get started with your research because it helps you organize your thoughts before writing them down into sentences and paragraphs.

You'll be able to take notes faster because everything is already written down for you!

Moving on, an excellent strategy that works best for me is just word vomiting onto a page to get a basis of everything you want to say, and then after that is done, organize and clean up what was written.

This is especially useful if you have collected all the data and you just don't know how to put your thoughts into actual words.

organise your research

Claim My Free Research Organizer Template

This free research organizer template comes pre-built with folders, subfolders, aesthetic formatting, and much more.

4. The Finishing Touches

If there is anything you should take away from this, it’s to use a reference manager.

Reference managers help ensure that all your citations are correct and up-to-date.

When choosing one, make sure it's compatible with whatever citation style is required by your instructor or institution.

Research doesn't have to be something that you dread or bores you out of your mind.

Being organized can make this process fun and exciting.

So now it's time to put on your thinking cap and get to work.

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Google for Research: Organizing Your Research

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  • Troubleshooting Google Scholar
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Social Network Citing

While communication as a result of social networking hasn't quite become the norm in academia, it's being considered and used by some. Be prepared to properly cite these communications just as you would any other information. For more about this in APA Style (although you may need to make changes to adjust the format to your own citation style), read this post from the APA Style Blog.

Biblio-what?

EndNote, Zotero, RefWorks, ProCite, Reference Manager are all examples of Bibliographic Management Tools . These tools provide the capability to store and organize your research materials. You can export citations from databases and web sites, annotate, create bibliographies, and footnote from these tools. To learn more about these tools and to figure out which one is right for you and your research needs, visit the Wikipedia reference management comparison chart — it's the most up-to-date!

Yale Library offers workshops on how to use these tools. Check here for available dates and times.

Bibliographic Management Tools

  • EndNote Software (available from the Yale Software Library here ) designed to collect and organize research (among other things); compatible with EndNote Web. Yale University has EndNote available to students, faculty, and staff for free.
  • Mendeley Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research.
  • RefWorks Web-based tool available through the Yale University Library databases; free access to all Yale affiliates; ability to work off-line as well.
  • Zotero Free, web-based tool that works as a plug-in within Firefox. Zotero also has a desktop client that works well on all platforms.

Citation Style & Formats

Citation of traditional & online materials.

Journals, professors, and disciplines often have their own methods for formatting citations. Citation styles include the  Chicago Manual of Style ,  Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), and the  Modern Language Association  (MLA) style.

Undergraduates: Ask your professor which citation style you should use. The most common ones for you are MLA, Chicago Manual of Style, or APA.

Graduate students: Different journals often have their own ways of managing citations. Information should be available on the citation style. If it isn't, E-mail your subject librarian and ask for help identifying how you should cite material for your submission. You can also talk to your adviser. We get these questions all the time.

Faculty: Undergraduates often know MLA, APA, and Chicago Manual of Style the best. If they have questions about citing information properly, direct them to the Yale Center for Teaching and Learning's guide to using sources  or to Purdue's OWL resource . Make sure they know that they need to cite images and multimedia materials as well as journal articles and books (if they use these kinds of materials at all, most likely in presentations).

Data Citation

There is no one standard for data citation. Generally, when using a data source, see if there is a standard data use policy that provides guidance on citation practices (i.e., grant references, format, authorship). If no citation policy can be found, please familiarize yourself with common data citation practices as detailed in  this guide from DataOne .

Kayleigh Bohémier 203.432.9519 [email protected] http://guides.library.yale.edu/prf.php?account_id=54485

Gwyneth Crowley 203.432.3213 [email protected] http://guides.library.yale.edu/profile.php?uid=4110

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  • Law Library

Researching for a Scholarly Article or Seminar (SAW) Paper

Organizing your research.

  • Introduction and Things to Know

Research Plans and Logs

Citation and file management tools.

  • Selecting a Topic
  • Preemption Checking
  • Searching for Scholarly Legal Articles
  • Searching for Non-Legal Articles
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  • Publishing Your Article
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Good research involves running multiple searches of multiple databases and sorting through large numbers of books and articles. 

To avoid unnecessarily retracing your steps, figure out a system in advance to track what databases you've checked and what searches you've run and to record and organize useful sources.

Each researcher has their own tools and methods. This page provides some popular methods and tools, so you can find what works for you!

  • Research Plan and Log Templates Five (5) template options designed to help keep you organized and on track. Choose one or adapt and modify them to fit your project.

Several tools allow you to save and organize citations and associated files. Often, you can save articles citations and text directly from databases' search results pages, simply by clicking a button and checking the articles that you want. (However, note that citations will usually require some manual clean up and citation managers typically do not work with Lexis and Westlaw.)

Here are some starting points for exploring citation and file management tools:

  • UCLA Library Guide to EndNote Guide created by the UCLA library, providing an overview of the popular EndNote citation and file management tool.
  • UCLA Library Guide to Zotero Guide created by the UCLA library, providing an overview of the popular Zotero citation and file management tool.
  • Oregon State University Library Guide to Zotero Guide created by the Oregon State University library, providing detailed informaiton on the popular Zotero citation and file management tool, including a step-by-step walkthrough of how to drag PDFs you've already saved on your computer into Zotero .
  • Zotero Plugins Advanced plugins for Zotero that allow you to import already organized folders of PDFs into Zotero, look up how many times articles you saved to Zotero have been cited, convert images scans to OCR text, and more.
  • Oregon State University Library Guide to Mendeley Guide created by the Oregon State University library, providing detailed information on the popular Mendeley citation and file management tool
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How to stay focused and organise your research

Avoid the lure of rabbit holes.

LAST UPDATED August 29, 2023 | FIRST PUBLISHED October 6, 2020 | BY Marwa Saleh

How to stay focused and organise your research

After I typed my search terms in the search bar, thousands of results appeared.

“How could I possibly get through all this material?” I panicked. Needless to say, I felt overwhelmed and shied away. “I’m not up for this,” I thought.

I took a long break before bringing myself to write once more, that time on a smaller writing project.

I realized that I had to befriend research if I were to write anything of value.

I gradually learned to narrow my search results and focus on the most relevant material. But I still fell into those rabbit holes and I knew that it was affecting my productivity.

In this post, I share tips to help you organise your research, stay focused and productive, and avoid the lure of rabbit holes.

Research: a skill that takes time

The best thing about any skill is that it can get better by practice, whether it’s research or even learning to focus. Each of these skills can be acquired and perfected. But first, you need to have the right mindset. Research is time-consuming; it would only hurt you if you expected otherwise because you wouldn’t be feeling the progress you want.

Sheridan Henness , a senior medical writer with 14 years of experience, says that outlining and researching a narrative literature review can take 25 hours.

Remember that research may take up the biggest bulk of your writing time.

How do you organise your research?

1. start broadly.

Sheridan’s top tip for organising your research is to start broadly, especially if it’s a topic you’re not familiar with.

“Obtaining 2-3 recent (published within the last 2 years, preferably) review papers on the topic is the best way to get a quick handle on the issues of the area, because reviews are all about putting things in context,” Sheridan explains.

2. Try using a mind-map

Write your topic (it can be broad at this point) in the center of the page, and then, for a set amount of time (10 minutes or so until your ideas stop flowing), add on any other subtopics that come in mind surrounding the main topic.

Looking at the relations between the subtopics you chose can help you come up with new ideas.

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3. Narrow your focus

“The best way to stay focused during your research is to have a well-developed research question. Every search strategy stems from the research question. Using a framework like PICO and others will help you focus in on the terms you are trying to isolate in your searches,” says RaeAnna Jeffers BSN, MS-IS, a health sciences librarian at University of Texas Arlington.

This advice isn’t limited to academic writing; In order to organise your research, Henneke Duistermaat , a copywriter and the owner of Enchanting Marketing, says, “the most important thing is to be clear about the question you want to answer … Otherwise, it’s too easy to follow myriad interesting ideas and you risk feeling overwhelmed by too much information.”

Tip: Try writing your research question on a sticky note and keep it in front of you while researching to help you come back to your main point of research.

4. Create a search strategy

Write a plan about how you will perform your search, the search engines or databases you’ll use, and which search terms you’ll look for. Sheridan says that she always keeps a record of her search strategy to refer to later on if needed.

5. Write a rough outline

Don’t worry; your first outline isn’t set in stone. You will alter it as you delve deeper into the research. It will help guide you through your work.

6. Break your work into segments

Document your findings and track your time. If you have a list of 30 articles you have to go through, start spreading them across your schedule and write down how much time you need to go through one article to help plan a work schedule.

7. Use the Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique, a method designed by Francesco Cirillo , is an effective technique that can help you focus during work. The idea is to work for 25 minutes and take a 5-minute break and that would be one Pomodoro. You can repeat this up to 4 times then take a longer break.

8. Take notes

Taking notes is essential while doing research. If you don’t take notes, you would forget a lot of what you read and possibly end up forgetting the source of your evidence.

9. Use a reference manager

Sheridan recommends using a reference manager to organise your work because using one helps you “see what you’ve got and group them into topics so you can more easily find what you need to. That can also help you see if there’s anything missing that you need to do more searching for.”

How do you stay focused?

1. cut off distractions.

Distractions are the bane of focusing. Whether you feel thirsty or can’t resist checking that notification, distractions pull you away and slow you down. In addition to the time wasted during distractions, research shows that interruptions lengthen the time needed to finish your task. Here’s how to avoid unwanted distractions.

  • Declutter your workspace – try to maintain a clear desk and desktop because clutter can interrupt your ability to think clearly and prevent you from getting into a work flow.
  • Close your phone while working  – but if you can’t, you can turn off all notifications. You can make use of apps like Forest or Freedom which can block websites for periods of time while you’re working.
  • Keep a paper to write reminders for later – when you sit down to write, it’s easy to wander off to remember every important task you should do besides your writing. Make a habit of keeping a paper by your side and writing down those random thoughts that distract you so you remember to check on them later and stop thinking about them.

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2. Choose your most productive time to work

We usually don’t have the same level of productivity throughout the day, so choose a time you’re able to focus to do your research.

3. Take breaks

Researchers in the university of Illinois found that taking short breaks has a beneficial effect on the ability to focus.

4. Stay healthy

A healthy brain lies in a healthy body. Remember to sleep well, eat healthy and exercise regularly to boost your ability to focus.

5. Focus on your process

If all you’re thinking about while you research is “when shall this end?”, research will feel like punishment. Instead, remind yourself of why you’re doing the research, to educate yourself and others through your writing about the topic.

How to manoeuvre research rabbit holes

I was researching this article and I found myself reading the copy on a motivational speaker’s website wondering what got me there. I retraced my steps and realized when exactly I’d wandered off.

But why do you we up down rabbit holes?

Possibly, two reasons: following our curiosity, and fear of missing out.

In our desire to make our writing project as comprehensive as possible, we fear that we miss out on any important piece of information.

Well, you don’t have to cover everything under the sun! As long as the idea is clearly explained and you don’t miss out on the crucial information, you’re good to go.

To avoid straying away while you do your research, RaeAnna advises us to “create a folder for things that you come across that you may want to read but are not necessarily relevant to the immediate search needs. That way, you’ll have it for a later time and can direct your attention back to the original point of your research.”

Sheridan has a similar tip: “Set a time limit on yourself – no more than 5-10 minutes of looking at other things. If you need to, use an actual timer, and be strict with yourself.”

Research can be an overwhelming process, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Decide exactly what you’re looking for, plan it out, then organise your time and practice staying focused. Everything will fall in place.

But most importantly, you just have to stop procrastinating and start writing.

As J. R. R. Tolkien wrote: “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.”

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About Marwa Saleh

Marwa Saleh is a physician and a health writer who uses her medical experience and writing skills to spread health literacy through writing. She is a member of AMWA and AHCJ. You can connect with her on Linkedin or through her website .

Marwa is a member of the Health Writer Hub Alumni .

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Work hack: How to organize your research literature – and make it sharable

A must-have strategy for fieldwork.

organise your research

Credit: cifotart/Getty Images

17 July 2020

organise your research

cifotart/Getty Images

The amount of literature researchers are expected to stay abreast of can be overwhelming so it’s vital to have a system that allows documents and images to be stored, recalled, and easily shared.

This is particularly true for researchers who conduct fieldwork and need to access information on the fly.

For PhD candidate, Yi-Kai Tea, a taxonomist and systematist at the University of Sydney in Australia, setting up a cloud-based system early on in his career was one of the most important things he did.

“The more you read, the more familiar you are with the field and the groups you’re working with,” says Tea. “I keep my literature very well sorted because it’s so important.”

Tea specializes in describing and naming new species of coral reef fishes. He’s particularly interested in fairy wrasses, and was responsible for naming a new species last year , Cirrhilabrus wakanda , inspired by the Marvel film Black Panther .

“It’s hard to do this kind of work by yourself because of the sheer number of species out there. I work collaboratively with a lot of fish enthusiasts, scientists, and collectors who go out in the field and send information to me,” says Tea.

How do your Google Drive and Dropbox systems work?

I have an account where I put in everything that’s related to fairy wrasses: every single species description that’s been written about them since the 1800s, every single colour photo, distribution map, vectors, diagrams - everything you can think of that might be relevant to this group. I maintain a well-curated folder that can be accessed online.

I’ve also have decked it out so I can access the most important files offline.

I share it with any collaborators that I’m working with now or might be working with in the future, so they can access it in the field. It helps with my research as well, to have all these papers at my disposal. It’s my own personal library.

How did you set it up?

I’ve been filling it in over a number of years. Some of the literature is hard to find – a lot of the original descriptions are in manuscript form, and some of them haven’t been published, so to get these, you need to go to the museums and libraries and photocopy them, scan them, make pdfs, and upload them.

It took a while to track down all the literature and species descriptions, but once you have it, you have it forever and can keep curating it. I save every PDF that I download. I keep it in a folder, name it, and order it by author and by date. I follow this system quite religiously.

What web resources do you use to source your literature?

Some of the old manuscripts I need to access are archived in online repositories such as the Biodiversity Heritage Library , so having this link saved in my tabs is a really useful tool.

Other important web resources I use a lot are Eshmeyer's Catalogue of Fishes hosted by the California Academy of Sciences, and iNaturalist , a catalogue that keeps a pretty up-to-date record of all species, complete with references.

iNaturalist is a fantastic resource to search for in-situ photos of whatever taxon you might be interested in. I often seek out photographers from iNaturalist who are willing to contribute photos I may need for my research. Many of them are very willing, or may already have photos up that are free for use.

How do you organize your own data in the field?

I have ready-made excel spreadsheets with standardized columns containing anatomical features that I need to measure. I then modify it slightly to accommodate whatever taxon I happen to be working on.

I do same for manuscripts – I have a basic skeleton written for diagnoses and descriptions, with placeholder symbols where values would eventually go.

A lot of taxonomic papers follow a consistent and ‘tried and tested’ formula, so this works very well, especially for fairy wrasses, where most of the methodology and description follow previous papers that I've published.

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How to code and organize research notes for analysis like a pro

organise your research

15 Minute Read

organise your research

Conducting high quality, rigorous research is tough, regardless of how seasoned you are, because each research project is completely unique. In addition to actually doing the research itself, aggregating and organizing research notes can be overwhelming. 

Making sense of research data during synthesis and writing up a research report takes a lot of time. And if you don't organize your research notes and set yourself up for success early on, it will take even longer. You’ll miss out on important observations that will slow down your analysis and impact the quality of your research findings.

Taking the time to code and organize your research notes is key to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data. In this article, we’ll share some practical tips to set you up for doing high quality analysis and synthesis. 

Re-Organize, Re-Group, Re-Compile: A method for making meaning out of mess.

You must be wondering - organize, group and compile make sense. But what does the 'Re' mean? This is a recursive approach to research. You cast a wide net to gather as many ideas and data points as you can when conducting your research. Don’t filter the data or try to make sense of it prematurely.  

This data-gathering stage is where you pull in qualitative data, like interview transcripts with direct quotes from a user interview analysis and/or observations from a user researcher’s notes. Only once you’ve collected all of your data do you start analysis.

It’s useful to timebox synthesis to a day or two, depending on the size of your study. Because of how fresh the data needs to be in your mind, it isn’t the type of thing you can span over weeks. Ideally, this process can be done with a teammate, but it can also be a solo activity. 

Break down information into smaller pieces of data that might become sub-topics, and then cluster that data into groups that display likeness or tension. Group and regroup that data to sharpen it and you’ll start to recognize recurring patterns or themes using a grounded theory approach. 

Don’t think about it too much, these groups aren’t set it stone, so just go with your gut. Later on, we’ll talk about how color coding and tags can augment you here.

 Once the initial cluster analysis is done, you begin to dive deeper into the data. Your research hasn't quite crossed the chasm to become anything meaningful quite yet, but you might start to sense emerging insights. During this messy middle stage of analysis, data still appears to be a bunch of disparate observations, anecdotes, and verbatims bunched into subtopics.

You may feel the need to do additional research as some points need to be elaborated further, or you want to add additional points. Continue to follow the above method again if you do bring in more data. 

Using physical or digital research notes

This process can be done with physical sticky notes or digital sticky notes . Some researchers prefer working outside of the physical limitations of a screen and to manipulate and marinade with the data in person. I’m a big fan of the physical war room, but there are a lot of upsides to working data digitally. Using tools designed specifically for this process, you won’t lose track of where data came from and will save time otherwise wasted writing and manually coding sticky notes.

Whether you opt for physical or digital notes, continue to regroup your data into sub-topics and then topics, until you feel confident with the higher level themes that are emerging.  

Applying meaning to research notes with color and tags

Coloring and tagging, otherwise known as “coding” in research, are effective ways to organize research notes and assign meaning to pieces of data. They are helpful as you start to pull apart and apply different lenses to your data during the synthesis process. 

Color as a visual cue

Color can be a powerful visual cue to see how patterns distribute across your themes. For example, using a unique color for each participant or persona type can reveal an interesting visual that becomes a nugget of an emerging insight. 

How heavily are you influencing one theme by a certain persona type or participant?

You can also assign a color to sentiment and see how positive or negative emotions are distributed across or concentrated in a particular product experience or workflow. This too can be done with either physical or digital sticky notes. 

Global versus project tags

You can think of tags in two buckets: global or project-based. Some tags will be universally applicable to any research, while others will surface during analysis and be completely unique to that dataset. 

For example, you may decide to code data across all research projects with persona type, like “Parent” or “Teacher.” Or you may get more specific and assign it to a participant as well, like “P1” or “T2.” You might also decide as a research organization to adopt tags like “Pain Point”, “Motivation”, “Goal”, or “Need.”

An example of a tag that might organically reveal itself in the data would be “Inequity”, “Age appropriateness”, or “Student interaction.” Notice that these are much more specific.

You can code data physically on sticky notes by simply writing the tag in the bottom of each note. However, there are constraints to this method, like if one note should be coded by several different tags and fits into multiple themes. In this scenario, you can duplicate the note.

If this process of coding data sounds tedious and time consuming, it certainly can be. But it’s also important. Turning over every stone and marinating in the data is important to fully immerse yourself into the synthesis process. 

organise your research

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organise your research

The top 10 things Notably shipped in 2023 and themes for 2024.

Using notably to code and organize research notes.

Notably is designed specifically for a research workflow, so you can speed up the tedious parts of coding and slow down to find meaningful insights.  

Notably has four sections in a research project: Info, Data, Analysis, and Insights. 

The Info tab serves as a space to document your research plan and goals. It can also be where you document the global and project tags used along with their meaning. This helps the team stay on track and on the same page, as well as orient any stakeholders or coworkers to the project. 

The Data tab is where you organize your raw research data, including written observations, video and audio recordings, photos, and more. This is where you start the process of coding data, highlighting important parts and tagging them with your global or project tags. Each highlight turns into digital sticky notes on the canvas and a row in a table in the analysis section.  

The Analysis tab is where you begin making sense of your notes. This is where you apply the method we discussed earlier of re-organizing, re-grouping, and re-compiling your notes. In this workspace you can group your data into “themes”, recolor your data by different criteria, as well as use AI to run a sentiment analysis from your notes. As you continue grouping and regrouping your data, patterns will start to emerge which will inform your research insights.

In the Insights tab, you can begin to develop thematic takeaways from your research.  What does the data mean, and why does it matter? Each insight allows you to add evidence from your data to support your conclusions. This is especially helpful once you begin to button up your research into a report, to then share with your team and stakeholders. The thematic takeaways you discover through your research allow you to know what future research needs to be done to expand on topics, which direction you may need to pivot to, and most importantly to develop a plan to better benefit your users and customers.  

With best research practices already baked into the foundation of Notably, you and your team can speed up your research process, and develop better, stronger insights to share. Find out more about Notably here: https://www.notably.ai/

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Research Tips and Infromation

How to Effectively Organize your Research Articles on your System

organise your research

Importance of Organizing Research Articles

Brief overview of the article, create a folder structure, use file naming conventions, utilize metadata and tags, backup and sync files, use a reference management software, regularly review and update folder structure, keep related articles together, adding meta description, introduction.

In today’s fast-paced environment, research and knowledge are constantly produced at an exponential rate. When there is so much information to keep track of, the organization may be a challenge. A system for efficiently managing, storing, and retrieving academics’ and researchers’ papers and research materials is essential. By doing this, you not only save time but also ensure that you never lose track of important information and discoveries.

This article will discuss how to organize your research papers on a computer, providing you with step-by-step instructions and suggestions to keep everything organized and easy to discover.

This article’s information and suggestions will give you the methods and tools you need to efficiently manage and arrange your research articles, whether you’re a student, academician or researcher. So let’s get going.

The organization of the research articles is a critical phase in the study procedure. A well-organized research library guarantees that you never overlook important findings or miss important information in addition to saving you time and effort. Research articles are the cornerstones of your career and the source of original ideas and discoveries. When your articles are arranged correctly, you can quickly and easily retrieve the information you need, utilize it as a source in your writing, and expand on it in future pieces.

In this post, you will learn in detail how to arrange your research articles on your desktop. You will learn how to back up and sync your files, use metadata and tags, use file naming conventions, and organize your files into folders. We’ll also cover how to use reference management software and regularly update your folder structure as well as how to keep your research papers organized. By the time you finish reading this article, you will be familiar with all the techniques and resources needed to effectively organize and manage your research papers.

Steps to Organize Research Articles on Desktop

organise your research

  • Main Folder for All Research Articles : Start by creating a main folder that will serve as the home for all your research articles. You can name this folder something like “Research Articles” or “My Library.” This will provide a centralized location for all of your research materials, making it easy to find what you need.
  • Sub-Folders for Each Topic or Project : Next, create sub-folders within the main folder to categorize your research articles by topic or project. For example, you might have sub-folders for “My Papers” as “2010, 2011 etc ” or “Author1, Author2.” This helps to keep related articles together and makes it easier to find what you’re looking for.
  • Identical and Detailed File Names : Utilizing a standardized and informative file naming strategy is crucial when archiving your research publications. Use a format like “Author Last Name – Article Title,” for instance. This helps to guarantee that the file names are distinctive and descriptive while also making it simpler to find the items you need quickly.
  • Make use of keywords in file names : It’s beneficial to add pertinent keywords to the file names in addition to using descriptive file names. You might include “Machine Learning” in the file name if the article is on machine learning, for instance. This makes it simpler to look up and locate particular articles based on the subjects they cover.

organise your research

  • Add Relevant Information to the File Properties : Adding relevant information to the file properties, such as the author, date, and publication information, can help you quickly identify and categorize your research articles. This information is often included in the metadata of the file, which can be accessed by right-clicking on the file and selecting “Properties.”
  • Use Tags to Categorize and Search for Articles Easily : Using tags to categorize and search for your research articles can also be a helpful tool. For example, you might add tags like “Computer Science,” “Machine Learning,” or “History.” This allows you to quickly find articles based on the topics they cover, even if they are stored in different folders.
  • Importance of Backup : Backing up your research articles is an important step in the process of organizing your files. This ensures that you will not lose your research materials in the event of a technical issue, such as a computer crash or data loss.
  • Options for Backup and Syncing (e.g. Cloud Storage) : There are several options for backing up and syncing your research articles, including cloud storage services like Google Drive or Dropbox. These services allow you to store your files in the cloud and access them from anywhere, providing an extra layer of protection and ensuring that your research materials are always safe and accessible.

organise your research

Tips for Keeping Research Articles Organized

  • Reference management software is a tool that can help you manage and organize your research articles and citations. These programs provide a centralized location for your research materials, making it easy to store, manage, and retrieve your articles and information.
  • One popular example of reference management software is Mendeley . Mendeley allows you to store and organize your research articles, add notes and annotations, and create bibliographies in a variety of formats. It also includes a desktop application and a web-based interface, allowing you to access your research materials from anywhere.

You can visit my article on How Mendeley Reference Management Software makes Researcher’s Life Easy? . The article will help you in organizing your research articles in an optimal way.

  • It’s important to regularly review and update your folder structure to ensure that your research articles are properly organized and easily accessible. This will help you identify any areas where your folder structure may be lacking, or where additional sub-folders may be needed.
  • A good practice is to review your folder structure at least once a quarter, or as needed. During this review, you can assess your folder structure and make any necessary updates to ensure that your research articles are properly categorized and organized. You may also want to consider regularly reviewing the metadata and tags associated with your files to ensure that they are up-to-date and relevant.
  • Project-wise : Let’s say you are working on a research project about the impacts of climate change on coastal ecosystems. To organize your papers project-wise, you could create a folder for your climate change project and sub-folders for each aspect of the research, such as “Sea Level Rise,” “Ocean Acidification,” and “Coastal Ecosystems.” Within each sub-folder, you can store your research articles, notes, and any other related materials.
  • Methodology-wise : If you are interested in exploring different research methods, you could create a folder for each method, such as “Quantitative Research,” “Qualitative Research,” and “Mixed Methods.” Within each folder, you can store papers that discuss or use that particular method, making it easy to compare and contrast the different approaches.
  • Keyword-wise : If you are exploring a specific topic, such as “Artificial Intelligence,” you could create a folder with that keyword and store all of the articles, papers, and other materials related to the topic. This method allows you to quickly find all of the information you have related to a particular topic, making it easier to stay informed and up-to-date with the latest developments in the field.
  • Format-wise : If you have a mix of different types of research materials, such as articles, conference papers, and book chapters, you could create folders for each format and store your materials accordingly. For example, you could create folders for “Articles,” “Conference Papers,” and “Book Chapters,” and store your materials in the appropriate folder. This method allows you to quickly find the type of information you need, regardless of the format in which it is stored.

These are just a few examples of the different methods for organizing research papers. The best method for you will depend on your research needs and preferences, and you may find it useful to use a combination of methods, depending on your research needs.

Adding meta descriptions to your folders can help you quickly understand what each folder contains and why it is important. Here’s how to add a meta description to a folder:

  • Create a text file or Excel file: In the same folder, you want to add a description, create a new text file or Excel file. You can name this file “Description” or “Meta Description.”
  • Write a brief summary: In the text/Excel file, write a brief summary of the contents of the folder and its purpose. For example, if you have a folder for “Articles” you might write “This folder contains all of my research articles on the topic of X.”
  • Save the file: Save the text/Excel file with the description in the same folder that you want to describe.

organise your research

Note: The process for adding a meta description will vary depending on the operating system and file management software you are using. However, the general principle of creating a text/Excel file with a brief summary remains the same.

By adding meta descriptions to your folders, you can quickly understand the contents of each folder and why it is important. This can save you time and help you stay organized as you work on your research.

To remain effective and productive as a researcher, it’s crucial to organize research articles on your desktop computer. You may quickly discover the information you need by using one of the various organizing techniques covered in this article, whether your search is project-, methodology-, keyword-, or format-based. Additionally, by including meta descriptions in your folders, you can save time and stay organized by understanding quickly what each folder includes and why it’s important. Organizing your research articles is crucial for staying on top of your work and making the most of your research efforts, whether you are a student, academic, or professional.

By taking the time to organize your research articles, you can streamline your workflow, stay informed about the latest developments in your field, and ultimately, make the most of your research efforts.

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Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

  • Reading Research Effectively
  • Purpose of Guide
  • Design Flaws to Avoid
  • Independent and Dependent Variables
  • Glossary of Research Terms
  • Narrowing a Topic Idea
  • Broadening a Topic Idea
  • Extending the Timeliness of a Topic Idea
  • Academic Writing Style
  • Choosing a Title
  • Making an Outline
  • Paragraph Development
  • Research Process Video Series
  • Executive Summary
  • The C.A.R.S. Model
  • Background Information
  • The Research Problem/Question
  • Theoretical Framework
  • Citation Tracking
  • Content Alert Services
  • Evaluating Sources
  • Primary Sources
  • Secondary Sources
  • Tiertiary Sources
  • Scholarly vs. Popular Publications
  • Qualitative Methods
  • Quantitative Methods
  • Insiderness
  • Using Non-Textual Elements
  • Limitations of the Study
  • Common Grammar Mistakes
  • Writing Concisely
  • Avoiding Plagiarism
  • Footnotes or Endnotes?
  • Further Readings
  • Generative AI and Writing
  • USC Libraries Tutorials and Other Guides
  • Bibliography

Reading a Scholarly Article or Research Paper

Identifying a research problem to investigate usually requires a preliminary search for and critical review of the literature in order to gain an understanding about how scholars have examined a topic. Scholars rarely structure research studies in a way that can be followed like a story; they are complex and detail-intensive and often written in a descriptive and conclusive narrative form. However, in the social and behavioral sciences, journal articles and stand-alone research reports are generally organized in a consistent format that makes it easier to compare and contrast studies and to interpret their contents.

General Reading Strategies

W hen you first read an article or research paper, focus on asking specific questions about each section. This strategy can help with overall comprehension and with understanding how the content relates [or does not relate] to the problem you want to investigate. As you review more and more studies, the process of understanding and critically evaluating the research will become easier because the content of what you review will begin to coalescence around common themes and patterns of analysis. Below are recommendations on how to read each section of a research paper effectively. Note that the sections to read are out of order from how you will find them organized in a journal article or research paper.

1.  Abstract

The abstract summarizes the background, methods, results, discussion, and conclusions of a scholarly article or research paper. Use the abstract to filter out sources that may have appeared useful when you began searching for information but, in reality, are not relevant. Questions to consider when reading the abstract are:

  • Is this study related to my question or area of research?
  • What is this study about and why is it being done ?
  • What is the working hypothesis or underlying thesis?
  • What is the primary finding of the study?
  • Are there words or terminology that I can use to either narrow or broaden the parameters of my search for more information?

2.  Introduction

If, after reading the abstract, you believe the paper may be useful, focus on examining the research problem and identifying the questions the author is trying to address. This information is usually located within the first few paragraphs of the introduction or in the concluding paragraph. Look for information about how and in what way this relates to what you are investigating. In addition to the research problem, the introduction should provide the main argument and theoretical framework of the study and, in the last paragraphs of the introduction, describe what the author(s) intend to accomplish. Questions to consider when reading the introduction include:

  • What is this study trying to prove or disprove?
  • What is the author(s) trying to test or demonstrate?
  • What do we already know about this topic and what gaps does this study try to fill or contribute a new understanding to the research problem?
  • Why should I care about what is being investigated?
  • Will this study tell me anything new related to the research problem I am investigating?

3.  Literature Review

The literature review describes and critically evaluates what is already known about a topic. Read the literature review to obtain a big picture perspective about how the topic has been studied and to begin the process of seeing where your potential study fits within the domain of prior research. Questions to consider when reading the literature review include:

  • W hat other research has been conducted about this topic and what are the main themes that have emerged?
  • What does prior research reveal about what is already known about the topic and what remains to be discovered?
  • What have been the most important past findings about the research problem?
  • How has prior research led the author(s) to conduct this particular study?
  • Is there any prior research that is unique or groundbreaking?
  • Are there any studies I could use as a model for designing and organizing my own study?

4.  Discussion/Conclusion

The discussion and conclusion are usually the last two sections of text in a scholarly article or research report. They reveal how the author(s) interpreted the findings of their research and presented recommendations or courses of action based on those findings. Often in the conclusion, the author(s) highlight recommendations for further research that can be used to develop your own study. Questions to consider when reading the discussion and conclusion sections include:

  • What is the overall meaning of the study and why is this important? [i.e., how have the author(s) addressed the " So What? " question].
  • What do you find to be the most important ways that the findings have been interpreted?
  • What are the weaknesses in their argument?
  • Do you believe conclusions about the significance of the study and its findings are valid?
  • What limitations of the study do the author(s) describe and how might this help formulate my own research?
  • Does the conclusion contain any recommendations for future research?

5.  Methods/Methodology

The methods section describes the materials, techniques, and procedures for gathering information used to examine the research problem. If what you have read so far closely supports your understanding of the topic, then move on to examining how the author(s) gathered information during the research process. Questions to consider when reading the methods section include:

  • Did the study use qualitative [based on interviews, observations, content analysis], quantitative [based on statistical analysis], or a mixed-methods approach to examining the research problem?
  • What was the type of information or data used?
  • Could this method of analysis be repeated and can I adopt the same approach?
  • Is enough information available to repeat the study or should new data be found to expand or improve understanding of the research problem?

6.  Results

After reading the above sections, you should have a clear understanding of the general findings of the study. Therefore, read the results section to identify how key findings were discussed in relation to the research problem. If any non-textual elements [e.g., graphs, charts, tables, etc.] are confusing, focus on the explanations about them in the text. Questions to consider when reading the results section include:

  • W hat did the author(s) find and how did they find it?
  • Does the author(s) highlight any findings as most significant?
  • Are the results presented in a factual and unbiased way?
  • Does the analysis of results in the discussion section agree with how the results are presented?
  • Is all the data present and did the author(s) adequately address gaps?
  • What conclusions do you formulate from this data and does it match with the author's conclusions?

7.  References

The references list the sources used by the author(s) to document what prior research and information was used when conducting the study. After reviewing the article or research paper, use the references to identify additional sources of information on the topic and to examine critically how these sources supported the overall research agenda. Questions to consider when reading the references include:

  • Do the sources cited by the author(s) reflect a diversity of disciplinary viewpoints, i.e., are the sources all from a particular field of study or do the sources reflect multiple areas of study?
  • Are there any unique or interesting sources that could be incorporated into my study?
  • What other authors are respected in this field, i.e., who has multiple works cited or is cited most often by others?
  • What other research should I review to clarify any remaining issues or that I need more information about?

NOTE :  A final strategy in reviewing research is to copy and paste the title of the source [journal article, book, research report] into Google Scholar . If it appears, look for a "cited by" followed by a hyperlinked number [e.g., Cited by 45]. This number indicates how many times the study has been subsequently cited in other, more recently published works. This strategy, known as citation tracking, can be an effective means of expanding your review of pertinent literature based on a study you have found useful and how scholars have cited it. The same strategies described above can be applied to reading articles you find in the list of cited by references.

Reading Tip

Specific Reading Strategies

Effectively reading scholarly research is an acquired skill that involves attention to detail and an ability to comprehend complex ideas, data, and theoretical concepts in a way that applies logically to the research problem you are investigating. Here are some specific reading strategies to consider.

As You are Reading

  • Focus on information that is most relevant to the research problem; skim over the other parts.
  • As noted above, read content out of order! This isn't a novel; you want to start with the spoiler to quickly assess the relevance of the study.
  • Think critically about what you read and seek to build your own arguments; not everything may be entirely valid, examined effectively, or thoroughly investigated.
  • Look up the definitions of unfamiliar words, concepts, or terminology. A good scholarly source is Credo Reference .

Taking notes as you read will save time when you go back to examine your sources. Here are some suggestions:

  • Mark or highlight important text as you read [e.g., you can use the highlight text  feature in a PDF document]
  • Take notes in the margins [e.g., Adobe Reader offers pop-up sticky notes].
  • Highlight important quotations; consider using different colors to differentiate between quotes and other types of important text.
  • Summarize key points about the study at the end of the paper. To save time, these can be in the form of a concise bulleted list of statements [e.g., intro has provides historical background; lit review has important sources; good conclusions].

Write down thoughts that come to mind that may help clarify your understanding of the research problem. Here are some examples of questions to ask yourself:

  • Do I understand all of the terminology and key concepts?
  • Do I understand the parts of this study most relevant to my topic?
  • What specific problem does the research address and why is it important?
  • Are there any issues or perspectives the author(s) did not consider?
  • Do I have any reason to question the validity or reliability of this research?
  • How do the findings relate to my research interests and to other works which I have read?

Adapted from text originally created by Holly Burt, Behavioral Sciences Librarian, USC Libraries, April 2018.

Another Reading Tip

When is it Important to Read the Entire Article or Research Paper

Laubepin argues, "Very few articles in a field are so important that every word needs to be read carefully." However, this implies that some studies are worth reading carefully. As painful and time-consuming as it may seem, there are valid reasons for reading a study in its entirety from beginning to end. Here are some examples:

  • Studies Published Very Recently .  The author(s) of a recent, well written study will provide a survey of the most important or impactful prior research in the literature review section. This can establish an understanding of how scholars in the past addressed the research problem. In addition, the most recently published sources will highlight what is currently known and what gaps in understanding currently exist about a topic, usually in the form of the need for further research in the conclusion .
  • Surveys of the Research Problem .  Some papers provide a comprehensive analytical overview of the research problem. Reading this type of study can help you understand underlying issues and discover why scholars have chosen to investigate the topic. This is particularly important if the study was published very recently because the author(s) should cite all or most of the key prior research on the topic. Note that, if it is a long-standing problem, there may be studies that specifically review the literature to identify gaps that remain. These studies often include the word review in their title [e.g., Hügel, Stephan, and Anna R. Davies. "Public Participation, Engagement, and Climate Change Adaptation: A Review of the Research Literature." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 11 (July-August 2020): https://doi.org/10.1002/ wcc.645].
  • Highly Cited .  If you keep coming across the same citation to a study while you are reviewing the literature, this implies it was foundational in establishing an understanding of the research problem or the study had a significant impact within the literature [positive or negative]. Carefully reading a highly cited source can help you understand how the topic emerged and motivated scholars to further investigate the problem. It also could be a study you need to cite as foundational in your own paper to demonstrate to the reader that you understand the roots of the problem.
  • Historical Overview .  Knowing the historical background of a research problem may not be the focus of your analysis. Nevertheless, carefully reading a study that provides a thorough description and analysis of the history behind an event, issue, or phenomenon can add important context to understanding the topic and what aspect of the problem you may want to examine further.
  • Innovative Methodological Design .  Some studies are significant and worth reading in their entirety because the author(s) designed a unique or innovative approach to researching the problem. This may justify reading the entire study because it can motivate you to think creatively about pursuing an alternative or non-traditional approach to examining your topic of interest. These types of studies are generally easy to identify because they are often cited in others works because of their unique approach to studying the research problem.
  • Cross-disciplinary Approach .  R eviewing studies produced outside of your discipline is an essential component of investigating research problems in the social and behavioral sciences. Consider reading a study that was conducted by author(s) based in a different discipline [e.g., an anthropologist studying political cultures; a study of hiring practices in companies published in a sociology journal]. This approach can generate a new understanding or a unique perspective about the topic . If you are not sure how to search for studies published in a discipline outside of your major or of the course you are taking, contact a librarian for assistance.

Laubepin, Frederique. How to Read (and Understand) a Social Science Journal Article . Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ISPSR), 2013; Shon, Phillip Chong Ho. How to Read Journal Articles in the Social Sciences: A Very Practical Guide for Students . 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2015; Lockhart, Tara, and Mary Soliday. "The Critical Place of Reading in Writing Transfer (and Beyond): A Report of Student Experiences." Pedagogy 16 (2016): 23-37; Maguire, Moira, Ann Everitt Reynolds, and Brid Delahunt. "Reading to Be: The Role of Academic Reading in Emergent Academic and Professional Student Identities." Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice 17 (2020): 5-12.

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The Research Paper Process

  • Is my topic too new?
  • 2. Locate Background Information
  • 3. Formulate a Research Question
  • 4. Create Search Terms
  • Evaluate Your Search Results
  • 6. Develop a Thesis
  • 7. Organize Your Research
  • Integrating Your Sources
  • 9. Finalize Format and Citations

Helpful Guides for Citation Management

Citation & Research Management Tools :  Includes apps and websites to help organize and cite your research sources.

Refworks : A detailed guide on how to set up and use Refworks, a citation management tool.

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Step 7. organize your research.

Organize your sources and ideas.

Create an outline:

  • This helps you develop themes and continuity.
  • Also will show if you need more sources.
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Essay Writing Part 2: How to Organise Your Research

Introduction

Often students fail to make the proper connection between their research stage and writing their first draft. They may not have completed a research stage correctly, so when they sit down to write their essay, they may feel as if they are starting from scratch. Or they may not have recorded their research correctly, resulting in them needing to repeat work in order to write or properly reference their essay. Or they may have conducted and recorded their research but not organised it correctly, which again serves to make the writing stage more difficult than it needs to be.

This guide will explain how to use a research document to organise your research. This is one Word document in which all your research is recorded and organised following the structure of your essay plan.

Using this method will ensure that you will not need to repeat any work unnecessarily, you will be able to easily distinguish between your own notes and direct quotations, and you will have already collected the information needed for your referencing. Further, this method means that you are not just recording what you are reading, you are analysing it and organising it into themes or topics as you go, the way you will discuss it in your essay. This allows you to make all the decisions required in order to write your essay before you begin writing the first draft, making the transition between research and writing easier and smoother, and helping to eliminate feelings of writer’s block. Remember, you can also learn about how to organise your research by watching the video on Capstone Editing's YouTube channel .

Using a research document

The basis of your research document is your rough essay plan. Turn each section of your plan into a heading under which you can record your research. For example, in the essay plan above, Topic 1 is ‘Disease and demographic impact’. This will be a heading in your research document. As you research this topic, you will be able to separate the information you gather on ‘disease and demographic impact’ into additional subheadings, such as ‘types of diseases’, as in the example below. Subheadings are important for helping you organise your notes and navigate your research document. 

Example entry in a research file:

Topic X: Name of topic The subject of the paragraph ‘The exact wording of the source goes here, using punctuation marks so you can see that you are quoting.’ (Put the reference information here.) [Your notes and ideas go here. Your own words go in square brackets and do not have punctuation marks.]   Topic 1: Disease and demographic impact Types of diseases ‘Epidemic disease introduced from Europe and Africa repeatedly swept through Latin America, beginning before the fall of Tenochtitlan. Smallpox, measles, typhus, influenza, pneumonic plague, and pestilential fevers were the most prominent killers.’ (Burkholder & Johnson 2012, p. 267.) [This is important introductory information that I should put at the beginning of the discussion.]

You should record both direct quotations from the sources you read and your own notes, in your own words, but you must make it clear which is which. You can do this by putting quotation marks around direct quotations, or putting your own words in brackets, or by using different colours or fonts. The example above uses quotation marks for direct quotations and puts the student’s own words in square brackets.

You should begin compiling your bibliography (or reference list) in your research document as soon as you begin your research. When you start reading a source, add the reference to your list. This way, you will have the reference already completed when you use that material in your essay. Also be sure to include the full reference information, including page numbers, for all the information you record in your research document at every instance where you record it, especially direct quotations. Using good research practices means there is no such thing as ‘doing your referencing at the end’.

How a research document helps you research and write your essay

The most common (and ineffective) ways of note-taking while researching an essay are 1) highlighting source documents and taking notes in comment boxes or margins and 2) typing notes into a Word document arranged by source. Both of these methods have problems, including not being able to remember where you read a certain piece of information, accidentally thinking that an idea is your own when it is actually from a source, and spending too much time researching one topic at the expense of others. Correctly using a research document overcomes these problems. 

By critically arranging and organising material in a Word document as you research and adding your own notes (clearly marked as different from the words of others), you will have an easy-to-navigate collection of all the most important information you have gathered during your research, making it quick to find any information you are looking for. You will have clearly marked your own words as distinct from the words of others, reducing the chance of accidental plagiarism. You will also be able to see at a glance which topics you have plenty of information for and which topics you need to focus on more. 

Moreover, through the process of compiling a research document, you will be thinking more clearly about 1) the argument you will make in your essay, 2) the most directly relevant supporting points to make, and 3) the relative importance of those points (which determines how many words you will spend on them, and in turn how much research time you should spend on them). 

The advantages of working in this way are:  

  • You will minimise wasted research effort.
  • You will develop your essay plan as you research.
  • You will have all the information you need to move seamlessly into the essay writing stage. 

How your research document helps you to refine your essay plan

Using a research document, all decisions about what will go into your essay and in what order will be made during the research stage, before you even start writing. A common mistake made by students is to think that the research and writing stage are distinct steps, without important and necessary connections. 

As you research, you may find that your rough essay plan needs to be adapted to fit the information you are finding. For example, you might find that one topic area is broader and more important than others, perhaps requiring a few subheadings. These subheadings will become paragraphs in your essay. You might find that a topic you think is going to be important is not, but that another topic you have not thought of is commonly mentioned in the literature. You will therefore decide to discuss this topic rather than the other. You will also be thinking about the relative importance of the topics to supporting your argument. You must order your topics from most to least important. 

As the final step in the research stage, you will need to decide which information from your research document should be included in the essay, and what you can leave out. You will now have a document that shows:

  • the topics and subheadings (i.e. the sections and paragraphs) that will comprise your essay, with all information to be included organised under these headings
  • the order in which you will write about your topics
  • all necessary referencing information, to help you write a plagiarism-free essay.

The result will be a clear map, containing all necessary information and referencing details, to writing your essay. Using this method, you will never again start the writing phase feeling you are starting from scratch. You are now ready to follow the process detailed in the next article in this series, ‘How to Finalise Your Essay Plan’.

Related Guides

Essay writing: everything you need to know and nothing you don&rsquo;t&mdash;part 1: how to begin.

This guide will explain everything you need to know about how to organise, research and write an argumentative essay.

Essay Writing Part 3: How to Finalise Your Essay Plan

The key to successful essay writing is to finalise a detailed essay plan, carefully refined during the research stage, before beginning to write your essay.

How to Write the First Draft

By this stage, you will have a clear plan and all the information you need to write a well-structured essay, in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take.

Part 5: How to Finalise and Polish Your Essay

Before handing in any assignment, you must take the time to carefully edit and proofread it. This article explains exactly how to do so effectively.

organise your research

organise your research

CCI Research Foundation

Advancing the quality of patient care and contributing to the science of perioperative nursing practice through research.

organise your research

8 Tips For Keeping Your Research Project Organized

The art of organization is essential in many facets of life, but especially important when planning a research project. It doesn’t take long to learn a lack of organization can quickly hinder the research process, along with creating unnecessary stress. Research projects are born on the basis of innovation and discovery; many start their initiatives thinking of the vision and end goal rather than the processes that are productive in getting them there. If you are like most, the initial intention to stay organized is there, but implementing these strategies proves to be more difficult than planned. To aid in this process, here are eight tips to help keep your project organized and help you achieve your research goals.

1. Choose an Outline Method 

An outline acts as a road map for your project. It helps you organize and prioritize your thoughts and information. Fortunately, there is no right or wrong way to design your outline and there are various commonly used methods. However, with much creative liberty on how to slice and dice information, one can experience choice fatigue. But do not worry! The best, most informative outline methods are those that fit with your own personal work style! For those who are more visual, utilizing a chart with boxes and connecting lines may be beneficial. Another common avenue is using bullet points in more of a linear format. The method that you choose can vary, but it is essential to stay consistent throughout your project so all information stays organized.

2. Create Goals and Deadlines

Procrastination can easily sneak up on anyone. To combat this behavior, create goals and hard deadlines that are attainable and ensure you adhere to them. To successfully implement this strategy, create a hierarchy of goals and then determine a target completion date for each goal. Estimating the time commitment of each task can be difficult, but regularly reviewing these timelines can help ensure you stay on track. 

3. Use a Calendar 

Calendars are excellent for recording significant dates on the horizon, such as mid-project reports and goal deadlines. Each researcher should utilize the calendar method that works best for them, regardless if it’s in a digital or physical format. If you are using a digital calendar, we recommend turning on your notifications so you get alerts on your approaching deadlines. For this strategy to be successful, it is important to record the relevant dates ahead of time and refer to the calendar regularly. 

4. Research Notebook

A research notebook, digital or physical, is a tool to keep all pertinent information relating to your project in one place. Dating each entry guarantees you can quickly locate necessary documents within your notebook. Most research projects occur over several months and up to several years, so you are likely to have an abundance of papers and information. Dating and consolidating documents makes your research notebook an effective and efficient tool.

5. Weekly Progress Reports 

Weekly progress reports are a simple yet useful tool for keeping your project on track and holding yourself accountable to your goals. At the end of each week, you should check and record the progress you have made and consider how it contributes to your project. Weekly reports are a great opportunity to reference the calendar, so you are prepared for what is to come.

6. Proofread

Writing is a big component of developing a research project. Organizing your project also means organizing your words and thoughts. It is important to ensure your findings are accurately represented in terms of not only your data, but grammar, spelling, and punctuation, as well. It is easy to skim over your writing and miss little mistakes here and there, which is why having attention to detail while proofreading is essential. Reading your words out loud is a great way to catch tiny errors. Also, in our digital age, downloading and using an AI-generated grammar and spelling machine is a great resource!

7. Keep a Works Cited Page for Your Research

Developing a research project not only involves experimentation and recording your findings but also seeking out information on what has been done before and exploring the impacts of similar studies. In using others’ research to supplement your project, it is important to have a citation page where you record the resources you have sought out. When you have a lot of sources, it can be easy to lose track of which ones you have recorded, which ones you want to keep, and so on. We recommend that you add your sources as you go. Doing so will allow you to maintain an organized system of information for your research project and ensure that you are giving credit where credit is due to avoid plagiarizing.

8. Backup Your Research Documents

The information you compile and the experimentations you conduct are valuable findings that are critical for your research project. With the majority of our information being digital nowadays, it is important to back up your documents – whether that be saving your information every time you update, having several copies of your work, or employing an auto-saving/cloud-based system. Making sure your research documents are backed up is a form of organization that keeps you protected against accidental deletion, technical difficulties with your device, or any other scenarios regarding the loss or damage of your work. 

Overall, research projects benefit from robust organization; utilizing these techniques will help you stay focused and on track to meeting your end goals! There are a variety of strategies you can utilize to keep your research project organized, so use what works best for you and the parameters of your work style.

Are you looking for funding for your project? The CCI Research Foundation offers funding for perioperative nursing research! Sign up to receive a reminder email when applications open. 

McLean, S. (2012). Managing Your Research Project . In Writing for Success v. 1.0. Saylor Academy .

Shaw, K. A. (2014, June). Organizing Your Research and Developing Your Research Skills . IEEE Potentials, vol. 33, issue 3, pp. 17-22 .

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Amy Isaman

Follow this step-by-step guide to learn the modern process of organizing research in Milanote, a free tool used by top creatives.

How to organize your research in 7 easy steps

Whether you're writing a sci-fi thriller or historical fiction, research is a crucial step in the early writing process. It's a springboard for new ideas and can add substance and authenticity to your story. As author Robert McKee says "when you do enough research, the story almost writes itself. Lines of development spring loose and you'll have choices galore."

But collecting research can be messy. It's often scattered between emails, notes, documents, and even photos on your phone making it hard to see the full picture. When you bring your research into one place and see things side-by-side, new ideas and perspectives start to emerge.

In this guide, you'll learn the modern approach to collecting and organizing research for your novel using Milanote. Remember, the creative process is non-linear, so you may find yourself moving back and forth between the steps as you go.

1. First, add any existing notes

You probably know a lot about your chosen topic or location already. Start by getting the known facts and knowledge out of your head. Even if these topics seem obvious to you, they can serve as a bridge to the rest of your research. You might include facts about the location, period, fashion or events that take place in your story.

Novel research board with known facts

Create a new board to collect your research.

Create a new board

Drag a board out from the toolbar. Give it a name, then double click to open it.

Add a note to capture your existing knowledge on the topic.

Drag a note card onto your board

Start typing then use the formatting tools in the left hand toolbar.

2. Save links to articles & news

Wikipedia, blogs, and news websites are a goldmine for researchers. It's here you'll find historical events and records, data, and opinions about your topic. We're in the 'collecting' phase so just save links to any relevant information you stumble across. You can return and read the details at a later stage.

Collecting articles and news clippings for novel research

Drag a link card onto your board to save a website.

Install the  Milanote Web Clipper

Save websites and articles straight to your board. 

Save content from the web

With the Web Clipper installed, save a website, image or text. Choose the destination in Milanote. Return to your board and find the content in the "Unsorted" column on the right.

3. Save quotes & data

Quotes are a great way to add credibility and bring personality to your topic. They're also a handy source of inspiration for character development, especially if you're trying to match the language used in past periods. Remember to keep the source of the quote in case you need to back it up.

Collect data and quotes for novel research

Add a note to capture a quote.

4. Collect video & audio

Video and movie clips can help you understand a mood or feeling in a way that words sometimes can't. Try searching for your topic or era on Vimeo , or Youtube . Podcasts are another great reference. Find conversations about your topic on Spotify or any podcast platform and add them into the mix.

Collecting video research for a novel

Embed Youtube videos or audio in a board. 

Embed Youtube videos or audio tracks in a board

Copy the share link from Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud or many other services. Drag a link card onto your board, paste your link and press enter.

5. Collect important images

Sometimes the quickest way to understand a topic is with an image. They can transport you to another time or place and can help you describe things in much more detail. They're also easier to scan when you return to your research. Try saving images from Google Images , Pinterest , or Milanote's built-in image library.

Writers research guide step05

Use the built-in image library. 

Use the built-in image library

Search over 500,000 beautiful photos powered by Unsplash then drag images straight onto your board.

Save images from other websites straight to your board. 

Roll over an image (or highlight text), click Save, then choose the destination in Milanote. Return to your board and find the content in the "Unsorted" column on the right.

Allow yourself the time to explore every corner of your topic. As author A.S. Byatt says "the more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free".

6. Collect research on the go

You never know where or when you'll find inspiration—it could strike you in the shower, or as you're strolling the aisles of the grocery store. So make sure you have an easy way to capture things on the go. As creative director Grace Coddington said, "Always keep your eyes open. Keep watching. Because whatever you see can inspire you."

Writers research guide step06

Download the  Milanote mobile app

Save photos straight to your Research board. 

Take photos on the go

Shoot or upload photos directly to your board. When you return to a bigger screen you'll find them in the "Unsorted" column of the board.

7. Connect the dots

Now that you have all your research in one place, it's time to start drawing insights and conclusions. Laying out your notes side-by-side is the best way to do this. You might see how a quote from an interviewee adds a personal touch to some data you discovered earlier. This is the part of the process where you turn a collection of disparate information into your unique perspective on the topic.

Writers research guide step07

That's a great start!

Research is an ongoing process and you'll probably continue learning about your topic throughout your writing journey. Reference your research as you go to add a unique perspective to your story. Use the template below to start your research or read our full guide on how to plan a novel .

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Start your research

Get started for free with one of Milanote's beautiful templates.

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IMAGES

  1. How to Develop a Strong Research Question

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  2. How To Organise Your Research

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  3. HOW I ORGANIZE MY STUDIES

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  4. How to stay focused, organise your research and avoid rabbit holes

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  5. How to organise your study sessions

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  6. 7 Simple Tips To Organise Your Research

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VIDEO

  1. Choosing a Research Topic

  2. What is research

  3. What is Research??

  4. WHAT IS RESEARCH?

  5. Research basics

  6. Introduction to Research

COMMENTS

  1. 15 Best Free Web Tools to Organize Your Research

    Google Keep: This note-taking app and website catalogs notes within labels that make sense for your research. Access them from the web on any computer or from your mobile device. It supports collaborations, custom colors, images, drawings, and reminders. Yahoo Notepad: If you use Yahoo Mail, the notes area of your account is a great place to ...

  2. How to Organize Research Papers: A Cheat Sheet for Graduate Students

    Write your own notes. If you decide to read the whole paper, make sure you write your own summary. The reason is that 95% of the things you read will be forgotten after a certain period of time. When that happens, you may have to read the paper all over again if you do not take notes and write your own summary.

  3. How to Organize Your Research Projects: Tips and Tools

    6 Use online tools and resources. Organizing your research projects can be easier and more efficient if you use online tools and resources. For example, Google Scholar is a search engine that ...

  4. 9 Organizing Research: Taking and Keeping Effective Notes

    When you have the time to sit down and begin taking notes on your primary sources, you can annotate your photos in Tropy. Alternatively, OneNote, which is cloud-based, can serve as a way to organize your research. OneNote allows you to create separate "Notebooks" for various projects, but this doesn't preclude you from searching for terms or tags across projects if the need ever arises.

  5. Organizing your research: A scientist's tips for journalists

    2. Stay on top of current research with RSS feeds. Many journalists, especially those who write about academic research, subscribe to journal email lists. But that may not be the best option for organizing research. "It kind of overwhelms your inbox after a while," said Gosztyla.

  6. How to Organize Research: Notes, PDF Files, & Documents

    First, start by organizing your notes into categories. You can do this on a sticky note or on a mind map. Even though you may feel like a middle school kid using colorful sticky paper, sticky notes are proven to be one of the most effective ways to organize research. You'll want to do some research before you begin writing.

  7. Organizing Your Research

    Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research. RefWorks Web-based tool available through the Yale University Library databases; free access to all Yale affiliates; ability to work off-line as well.

  8. Organizing Your Research

    Organizing Your Research Good research involves running multiple searches of multiple databases and sorting through large numbers of books and articles. To avoid unnecessarily retracing your steps, figure out a system in advance to track what databases you've checked and what searches you've run and to record and organize useful sources.

  9. How to stay focused and organise your research

    Take breaks. Researchers in the university of Illinois found that taking short breaks has a beneficial effect on the ability to focus. 4. Stay healthy. A healthy brain lies in a healthy body. Remember to sleep well, eat healthy and exercise regularly to boost your ability to focus. 5. Focus on your process.

  10. Work hack: How to organize your research literature

    A must-have strategy for fieldwork. The amount of literature researchers are expected to stay abreast of can be overwhelming so it's vital to have a system that allows documents and images to be ...

  11. Organizing your Research Stuff

    Large research projects generate a ton of "stuff" such as notes, sources, files, articles, books, data, statistics, images, PDFs, and more. Tracking all of this can get overwhelming (or disastrous if your computer crashes) if you don't plan ahead. Staying organized from the beginning will save you a lot of stress.

  12. How to Organize and Save Your Research

    How to Organize and Save Your Research. It's happened to all of us. You read the perfect article for your research, but now you can't find it! Step one, get in touch with the University of Arizona Global Campus Library, and we'll help you find what you're looking for. Step two, read on to learn how to organize and save your research for ...

  13. Best Way to Organize Your Research Notes

    Applying meaning to research notes with color and tags. Coloring and tagging, otherwise known as "coding" in research, are effective ways to organize research notes and assign meaning to pieces of data. They are helpful as you start to pull apart and apply different lenses to your data during the synthesis process.

  14. Effectively Organize your Research Articles on your System

    Organizing your research articles is crucial for staying on top of your work and making the most of your research efforts, whether you are a student, academic, or professional. By taking the time to organize your research articles, you can streamline your workflow, stay informed about the latest developments in your field, and ultimately, make ...

  15. Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper

    R eviewing studies produced outside of your discipline is an essential component of investigating research problems in the social and behavioral sciences. Consider reading a study that was conducted by author(s) based in a different discipline [e.g., an anthropologist studying political cultures; a study of hiring practices in companies ...

  16. 4. Organizing Your Research

    As you progress in your research and start to collect relevant books, articles, and more, you may want to use a citation and research management tool to help you organize your research. The Hunt Library provides access to an institutional subscription to RefWorks, but there are also other free tools available.

  17. 7. Organize Your Research

    Step 7. Organize Your Research. Organize your sources and ideas. Create an outline: This helps you develop themes and continuity. This shows where to insert your sources. Also will show if you need more sources. <<

  18. Essay Writing: How to Organise Your Research

    The basis of your research document is your rough essay plan. Turn each section of your plan into a heading under which you can record your research. For example, in the essay plan above, Topic 1 is 'Disease and demographic impact'. This will be a heading in your research document. As you research this topic, you will be able to separate ...

  19. 8 Tips For Keeping Your Research Project Organized

    To aid in this process, here are eight tips to help keep your project organized and help you achieve your research goals. 1. Choose an Outline Method. An outline acts as a road map for your project. It helps you organize and prioritize your thoughts and information. Fortunately, there is no right or wrong way to design your outline and there ...

  20. How to Organize Research for Your Book

    Step #2 - Set up your system. The first step is to set up your folders. These can be digital folders on your computer, paper file folders, or sections in a binder. First, decide how you will sort your folders. You can organize them by topic/sub-topic, by date/chronology, OR by type of research such as article, interview, photo, map etc.

  21. Boundless Writing

    Organizing Your Research Plan To save time and effort, decide on a research plan before you begin. Learning Objectives Outline the steps of the research process Key Takeaways Key Points Your research plan will specify the kinds of sources you want to gather. These may include scholarly publications, journal articles, primary sources, textbooks, encyclopedias, and

  22. How To Organize Research for a Novel: 2024 Step-By-Step Guide

    Create a new board. Drag a board out from the toolbar. Give it a name, then double click to open it. Add a note to capture your existing knowledge on the topic. Show me how. Close. Drag a note card onto your board. Start typing then use the formatting tools in the left hand toolbar. 2.

  23. How to Organize Technical Research?

    64 million scientific papers have been published since 1996 [1]. Assuming you can actually find the information you want in the first place—how can you organize your findings to be able to recall and use them later?. It's not a trifling question. Discoveries often come from uniting different obscure pieces of information in a new way, possibly from very disparate sources.

  24. All Your Research in One Place

    Easily organize, search and share your scientific data in a powerful electronic lab notebook trusted by the world's leading research organizations. ... Centralize all your research activity on one secure and accessible platform that makes it easy to record, organize, analyze, and share experiments and data wherever you are. ...