Do NOT just copy and paste the abstract of the article – that will not help you find it later! Add this summary to the “abstract” section of the article information in Zotero.May also use keywords or anything else that will help you find the article again later. Summarize main points of the article in 3-4 sentences.It took a bit to set up, but it’s smooth sailing now that I’ve got it. However, it has taken me almost an entire YEAR to come up with a workflow for creating these annotated bibs. Annotated BibliographyĮver since having to write an extensive literature review as part of my PhD Milestones for my program, I’ve become a huge fan of the annotated bibliography. I just absorb better when I’m handwriting my initial notes.

If it’s not a deep read, then I might just be jotting down some notes by hand in my notebook or in Evernote. At this point, if I’m seriously reading this article then I’m probably printing out a hardcopy and handwriting my notes in. Zotero entry for the article I am going to read. For the sake of this blog post, I will just use one of my own articles as found on Google Scholar. Suffice to say, there are lots of ways to find the literature you need and determine if its right for you, etc. To be fair, this step is a whole blog post in its own right and I really don’t have the time/space to do it here. I will go through this process step by step. Some of the tasks involved in the reading process include: finding articles, reading (like the actual work of reading the documents), summarizes the work and creating an annotated bibliography, and citing sources in my own work. And when I am reading, I am synthesizing the information in order to use it in my own research. One of my jobs as a graduate student is to read. This week I will be talking about reading and citations.

Last week, in Part 2, I discussed my general task management. As mentioned in Part 1, I am discussing my various workflow tools in order to have a more pleasant and efficient grad school experience.

Evernote tasks to todoist