Reading - electronically or on paper?

[ed2122]

I'm just about to start my grad program and one thing I'm not sure about is the best way to do readings - electronically or on paper? As an undergrad 7 years ago, I read everything on paper (undergrads got a certain number of pages to print free per week and it was always enough to print what I needed). Now, I'm not sure. I have a Kindle (Paperwhite) and have been using that to do some prepatory reading this summer, and it's kind of a pain. The PDFs are rarely converted well, so you have to jump around the page to skip over annotations, fonts are randomly different sizes, italics are lost, symbols are not converted properly (this has made reading theoretical/philosophical linguistics papers a HUGE pain), highlighting is clunky, and I can't imagine it would be easy to quickly skim through later to find what you need. I don't want to be buried in paper as a grad student, and paper copies are limiting. But I can't think of a good way to do a LOT of reading electronically. On my laptop would be weird, I can't imagine highlighting with a mouse and having the same retention. I also know I need to start thinking about using Endnote or similar for tracking citations, which is for some reason overwhelming to me, maybe since I can't even think of a good system for reading and storing the papers in the first place!

 

How have other people dealt with this?

[GeoDUDE!]

I read on my computer mostly: desktop and laptop. Its worthwhile to invest in a nice large screen for this type of reading, especially one that has a reading mode. 

 

The reason I do it electronically is because of Melendy, which organizes all my papers. Eventually, you will could have hundreds of papers that you will have to navigate through. 

 

There are very few papers in graduate school you need to read heavily, in my opinion. To be honest, with the exception of 5-10 papers that were vital to my thesis, I didn't know the ins and outs of the 50 or so I cited. I think this is fairly common.  If you are doing close readings of all the papers you read you will not have enough time to complete all your tasks, probably. I am willing to bet your advisor will give you the same advice. 

[TakeruK]

I do what GeoDUDE! does and use Mendeley for reading my papers. I mostly do this to use Mendeley's excellent methods for keeping track of citations (I export BibTeX files).

 

I understand what you mean about highlighting with a mouse though. My solution is actually I rarely mark up PDFs anymore. Instead, I just read them and don't make any annotations. This is obviously not a good way to retain information but I already have over 100 papers in my collection for my current project and I don't expect myself to know every detail of every single paper. Instead, I read the paper and I find that I do pretty good at remembering the main points. In the future, I just skim the abstract again and I remember what the paper was generally about. Mendeley has a box for you to type in whatever you want for each paper and I use this to make notes to myself, e.g. "Cite this for Method X!!" etc.

 

The above is for the lowest level of paper. For papers that are more critical to my work, I keep notes for them in a separate notebook. I read the paper on the screen and then I write summary notes for each one. Maybe summarize the paper in one page of notes or something (i.e. longer than I would want to store in the Mendeley text box). Because I can write on a physical piece of paper, this makes noting down important figures or equations much easier. Sometimes, I would sparingly use the Mendeley built-in highlighter tool so that when I skim through the PDF again in the future, I know where the *really* important stuff is. With the "Find" function, I never have to highlight or otherwise annotate lesser details though.

 

Finally, for the absolute critical papers to my work (i.e. <10 or so), I print out physical copies and keep them in my filing cabinet. These are the papers that I really want to know backwards and forwards and I write on them, draw things, take them with me while commuting etc. Since it's just a small number, having physical copies is very manageable.

 

So, actually, I think the clunkiness of an electronic highlighter tool is a blessing. It makes me want to use it less, which means I only highlight things I really really want to remember. Many of my articles do not even have highlighter marks at all. In the past, with paper copies, I might want to highlight smaller references to keywords but now I can just use Mendeley's "find" function to search for keywords in all of my papers at once! 

[biotechie]

I read on my computer mostly: desktop and laptop. Its worthwhile to invest in a nice large screen for this type of reading, especially one that has a reading mode. 

 

The reason I do it electronically is because of Melendy, which organizes all my papers. Eventually, you will could have hundreds of papers that you will have to navigate through. 

 

There are very few papers in graduate school you need to read heavily, in my opinion. To be honest, with the exception of 5-10 papers that were vital to my thesis, I didn't know the ins and outs of the 50 or so I cited. I think this is fairly common.  If you are doing close readings of all the papers you read you will not have enough time to complete all your tasks, probably. I am willing to bet your advisor will give you the same advice. 

 

FYI, he means Mendeley, which you can find for free at www.mendeley.com

 

I've probably read over 400 papers through since I started here a year ago, and 200 or so have been in the last month for my qualifying exam. Of those, I cited over 75. Add those to the papers I read for my MS thesis, and I've got well over 1000 papers in my library... still at the beginning of my PhD. I would have killed a lot of trees if I had printed all of them.

 

The nice thing about Mendeley is that it also acts like a reference manager like EndNote. If you're trying to cite a paper you read and don't remember the author OR the title, but remember a conclusion, you can search keywords from that the find your paper. In addition, you get some storage space on the cloud for your papers (1 GB, I think). I have it set up so I sync my new papers to the cloud so I can get them on Mendeley on my laptop at home as well as my lab computer.

 

There are other citations managers (like Zotero), but I like Mendeley.

[bsharpe269]

Like everyone else, I use Mendeley. Honestly, I think it would be nearly impossible to keep track of paper copies of everything. I also had to get used to highlighting with the mouse and reading on my laptop but spending the time to get used to this system will be worth it! I can highlight on the screen and write notes for later. It keeps track of the papers that you have and havent read and you can sort by author.

 

For just a normal paper that I read for fun or knowedge, I generally just use the highlight feature. I actually find it really useful for skimming back over papers later. Abstracts cover some of the main points but a lot of times I find something interesting and radom in a paper, even just a minor detail that I didnt know before. I like highlighting this sort of stuff along with main points. Like TakeruK, I also take notes on the more important papers I read. I don't do this on paper though, I use excel. I am pretty much in love with excel though and use it for everything.

Edited August 14, 2014 by bsharpe269

[ed2122]

I will have to check out Mendeley! Is there an app or iPad version available too? I don't have an iPad currently but am thinking about getting one so I don't always have to be tethered to my laptop. It's a Macbook air, so not exactly heavy, but I often like to get reading done outside or in places where a laptop would be less than ideal.

 

EDIT: I just went to their website and they do have an app. Should have just checked myself in the first place!

Edited August 14, 2014 by ed2122

[dr. t]

I was just told Mendeley is owned by Elsevier, i.e. The Great Satan, an assertion supported here: http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/when-the-rebel-alliance-sells-out . It has since been uninstalled from my computer.

 

For fast reading, I have found the relatively new Spritz (http://www.spritzinc.com/) incredibly helpful.

Edited August 14, 2014 by telkanuru

[victorydance]

For classes I just stick all of my papers in pdf form into a folder on my laptop.

 

For keeping track of papers for big projects I use Endnote. I used Endnote for my honours thesis and compiled over 200 articles, most of them I cited, with all their pdfs attached for future reference. Just make sure to use subcategories so you can organize it better and it's not just a clunky long list of papers.

 

I don't annotate or highlight anything. If I need to use it as a source I just open up a doc on word and put down some notes or key direct quotes and page numbers for a bunch of articles for a section of a paper or something. Or I make annotated bibliographies of a bunch of articles beforehand. I think making specific notes in each paper is inefficient and pointless.

[The Wayfarer]

I use Mendeley to organize my papers but before I add them to Mendeley I print them out and read them on paper -- probably not the most cost effective or environmentally conscious way to doing it but I have an incredibly hard time reading on a screen. I enjoy highlighting and marking up anything I read with notes that are in a shorthand I only understand.

[ProfMoriarty]

I read what I can on PDF. If what I need isn't available, then on paper. I want to go as paper-free as possible; it's both convenient and environmentally friendly. I mainly use my iPad to read PDFs because I find it uncomfortable to read on my computer.

 

There are many applications that help me keep organised. I use Mendeley synced with Dropbox, and annotate using PDF Expert

Edited August 14, 2014 by espeletia

[themmases]

I read on a computer for work and do more of a mix for my personal/class reading. I am a big Zotero fan, and recently got to start using it again after a 5-year break when my new job let me pick the citation software we would use. Zotero is free, can index your PDFs using an extremely easy to install add-on (i.e. you just click "install" in the settings pop-up), syncs across devices, and runs in your browser with a little non-intrusive icon that lets you know when it recognizes page metadata it can save. It can also retrieve metadata for many PDFs, and rename your files based on citation information so they're easy to browse. Zotero doesn't have a mobile app, but it does have a bookmarklet for most mobile browsers and a web version of your library.

 

I use Zotero to tag things and put them in multiple collections, and add brief notes; and an Excel file or notebook to take more detailed notes. iPads are great as a physical object for reading PDFs-- they're the right size and resolution if you otherwise would have printed the article. PDF readers vary a lot, though-- I personally don't annotate in them. Like TakeruK, I think this can be a good thing. I highlighted way too much stuff on printed journal articles. The slight inconvenience of typing or writing separately helps me keep my notes shorter and more relevant.

[ed2122]

Thanks for the additional info! I will check out the other software/programs mentioned too. Too bad that Mendeley turns out to have been bought by Elsevier (I also didn't know the extent of Elsevier's bad behavior... funny since I used to work for McGraw-Hill, but they're not in the academic journal business.) I checked it out last night and it seemed really great.

 

For those of you that read on a tablet, what tablet do you use? Do you prefer a larger or smaller tablet? I am considering an iPad or iPad mini, not sure if I would prefer a heavier device with a bigger screen or a lighter device with a smaller screen... the bigger screen of an iPad might be better for reading and writing (by hand or typing, even with a keyboard), but the portability of the mini is appealing. Though I hear academic papers on PDF don't always come out quite as well on the smaller mini.

 

I guess I should give reading on my laptop a shot too. I just have never done it that way, and it seems weird to me... but since finishing undergrad until now I've worked at jobs that were almost entirely at a computer, so staring at a screen for long periods should be something I'm comfortable with at this point!

[fuzzylogician]

I read PDFs almost exclusively. Annotations are saved to my BibDesk bibliography and it's easier to search. I don't really have issues with the highlighting function, even though the papers I read contain math symbols and diacritics. I don't use highlighting very often, though. I do make notes for myself with any thoughts or questions, so I can always go back and see what I was thinking. If I read something on paper, I try and obtain a PDF version and put my notes there electronically. It happens on occasion that I kind of vaguely remember having read something relevant to what I'm doing now some time in the past and having some thoughts about it, and going through physical copies of papers to find it is almost impossible. It's easier when everything is electronic. Also saves a ton of paper and makes life easier when moving. 

 

I do print and read my own papers in their final versions before submission, because things tend to look different on paper and it's a good way to spot formatting issues and typos. 

[bsharpe269]

While we are on this subject, does anyone have any way to actually write on the papers instead of having to use Mendeley's post-it feature for notes? I prefer to actually read them in Mendeley since I use it to organize papers that I want to read in the future so i am looking for something that I can use inside of it.

[TakeruK]

While we are on this subject, does anyone have any way to actually write on the papers instead of having to use Mendeley's post-it feature for notes? I prefer to actually read them in Mendeley since I use it to organize papers that I want to read in the future so i am looking for something that I can use inside of it.

 

I use Mendeley to both read and organize papers so I know what you mean! I think the Mendeley PDF reader tries to emulate Adobe Acrobat, however, Acrobat has the ability for you to just type text right onto PDF files instead of adding the post-it note type thing. I find that it's hard to fit notes in the margins of double column papers anyways, so I don't miss it too much. If absolutely necessary, I can open the PDF externally using Adobe Acrobat and add my annotations this way and they will still show up on Mendeley. However, my advisor leaves comments on my drafts using the post-it note like feature all the time so now I'm used to it I guess.

 

However, if you didn't know this, it might help to point out that on the right column, there are a few tabs. The first tab is "details" which shows the bibliographic information, but the second tab is "notes". Here, a collection of all the post-it style notes you make for that PDF is listed, ordered by page number. So, you can have all your notes on the right side of your screen and then read on the left side of your screen and just match up the little "note" symbols in the PDF with the actual notes written on the right side.

[Monochrome Spring]

While we are on this subject, does anyone have any way to actually write on the papers instead of having to use Mendeley's post-it feature for notes? I prefer to actually read them in Mendeley since I use it to organize papers that I want to read in the future so i am looking for something that I can use inside of it.

 

If you have a macbook, you can annotate your papers in Preview and then sync it to Mendeley. Annoying, but it works.

[danieleWrites]

Thanks for the link Telkanuru!

I'm kind of boring. I use a combination of zotero, dropbox/googledrive, and Adobe XI (freeware version). Adobe XI has a range of annotation tools and I store the annotated file on dropbox/google drive so I can access it from any device. I use zotero to organize my search. If there's a way to get annotated pdfs into zotero, that would rock, but I don't know how to do that if there is.

Edited August 17, 2014 by danieleWrites

[TakeruK]

I'm kind of boring. I use a combination of zotero, dropbox/googledrive, and Adobe XI (freeware version). Adobe XI has a range of annotation tools and I store the annotated file on dropbox/google drive so I can access it from any device. I use zotero to organize my search. If there's a way to get annotated pdfs into zotero, that would rock, but I don't know how to do that if there is.

 

Mendeley gives me 2GB of cloud storage so I use that instead of having to take up space in my Dropbox. If I import PDFs that are annotated (e.g. via Adobe) into Mendeley then the annotations appear in Mendeley too! 

[reinhard]

I've been happy with Acrobat. I can bookmark, extract, and create my own pdfs. But I like reading it on paper as well because I feel like our eyes get so adjusted on something, it's nice to change perspectives.

[Balleu]

In the past, I read almost exclusively on paper, but I know that won't work for graduate school for a variety of reasons. Do other students have advice on how to successfully make that transition? How do I retrain my brain to accept and incorporate information digitally, when I have so many years of associating learning with the tactile elements of reading on paper? 

 

[psstein]

2 hours ago, Balleu said:

In the past, I read almost exclusively on paper, but I know that won't work for graduate school for a variety of reasons. Do other students have advice on how to successfully make that transition? How do I retrain my brain to accept and incorporate information digitally, when I have so many years of associating learning with the tactile elements of reading on paper? 

 

Well, my strategy devolved into overusing my TA office supplies, but that's not a feasible strategy for everyone. In your case, I would recommend keeping a paper notebook/legal pad/whatever, while using the following approach (an acronym IPSO):

Issue: What is the research question?

Position: What is the thesis? How does it interact with other literature?

Support: What are the sources used? How does the author support his/her argument?

Outcome: Future avenues for research, assuming the author's argument is correct?

 

Edited September 22, 2019 by psstein

[Adelaide9216]

I read electronically. Otherwise, with the number of articles and papers I have to read, it would easily become non-manageable and non-effective (at least for me).