Hi all. To set myself up for success in grad school, I've been doing a lot of exploration of digital research tools. Specifically, I'm trying to hone in on an ideal research workflow, involving:
gathering articles/other relevant materials
organizing the files (including renaming PDFs)
annotating materials
writing manuscripts
If anyone else is interested in this topic, I'd love to share experiences!
Currently, I'm teaching myself how to use two programs, Devonthink Pro Office, and Sente. In addition to Scrivener, which I already use, this seems like it might make up a good workflow, based on my needs. I am still in the process of figuring out how these 3 programs work best together.
For anyone interested, these are some of my perceived needs, and why I chose the three programs above:
I need all my materials to be fully searchable. Devonthink Pro Office includes an OCR tool.
I need my annotations (notes) to be easily exportable (and searchable), and include the original quote and citation. Sente's annotations are unique in that they include a title, your note, the original quote, and the citation. When put into Devonthink, the notes are easily searchable
When writing, I need lots of organizational flexibility (I think of things in lots of different ways, and tend to write short snippets that aren't directly related to each other). Scrivener has lots of different prewriting options.
How about you?