Studying/reading strategies?

[ProfMoriarty]

During undergrad I would not do any note-taking while I read, just highlighting; when I was reading and writing for my thesis I copied exact phrases that were important to the topic I was researching, but obviously I knew what I was looking for.

 

For grad school (and because of my Uni's teaching/learning system), I want to be able to look back at everything I've read and have a good, or at least decent, grasp of what each text is about without having to re-read it.

 

I want to develop a good reading strategy to implement during my course... I've tried reading and taking notes as I go (and underlining key points), which was very inefficient since it took me twice as long to finish a chapter/section. I have also tried reading and underlining, and doing the note-taking at the end of the section. This is an OK strategy, but I'm struggling with making the notes short and concise, and not longer than the chapter itself! All the notes I've taken (by hand) are scanned into Evernote so I can search them with the handwritting-recognition feature. I find this convenient.

 

 

What strategies do you guys use?

[victorydance]

If the readings are article and book heavy (which all of my major is), I make annotated bibliographies in word docs. I really could care less about those little specific notes that really have no relevance to anything outside of context. 

 

The only thing I care about is the main arguments, the theoretical basis behind them, the methods they used, and the conclusion they came to. 

[jhefflol]

I personally don't do this because I don't take notes, but you could try writing one or two main ideas from each paragraph into a word document. Just make sure to cite what page you got the idea from so you don't plagiarize/have to go back and look for citations. And be very careful about using quotation marks if you copy exact phrases so that you know when you have paraphrased/summarized versus quoted. Even if you parenthetically cite the quote but leave off the quotation marks, that's considered plagiarism. Just be careful so you avoid a future headache.

[TakeruK]

I agree with victorydance! I've found that it is way too difficult to keep detailed notes on hundreds of papers, some of which only contain small amounts of directly useful information. So, my goal is to try to summarize the main arguments and results of each paper in a few (i.e. 3 to 5) bullet points (using a helpful box that Mendeley provides for this). For more important papers, I might take more notes (using Mendeley) that basically highlight certain parts of the papers, especially if it's something like an equation or value that I will keep coming back to.

 

Unlike espeletia, I don't mind rereading papers. I actually find that it's much easier for me to just know most of the papers at the surface level and then go back and skim a paper when I need to know the details. For the majority of the papers in my database, I mostly only know where to find what I want, but not always know exactly what the details are. I also have to admit that I have not fully read a good number of the papers in my library--I try to at least read the abstract, intro, and conclusion and skim the results/discussion. I only read the results/methods when I need to know exactly how something was done. I find that almost all of the papers use well established methods so I just need to categorize what type of analysis they used and understand that type of analysis once (and often, the best way to learn about the analysis is not through the very abbreviated forms discussed in the papers!).

[themmases]

I have been using a combination of Zotero and an Excel file for work, and I like it so much I think I'm going to do the same thing for my readings. Very often what sticks in my mind about an article is not what I wrote down, so I like having a lot of text-searchable notes or tags that I can use to quickly find what I'm thinking of. For example, in public health (and in life actually) we all know that exercise is good for you. So I would never bother to copy that down, but once I'm writing I might want to cite a particularly authoritative or well-written systematic review about just how good exercise is. Good thing I tagged it "CDC" and "exercise", then. And if I do have to reread something it helps me at least know what to reread, rather than fruitlessly opening a bunch of different articles.

 

My current Excel file has headings for date added, the project I got the article for, citation, DOI, date published, full-text y/n, systematic review y/n, objective, method, outcome measure, sample size, result, recommendation, quotes, and comments. I sort/filter by the first 7 columns and text search the others. When I read systematic reviews, I have a separate file where I keep track of how they measured the quality of included studies so I can use them as a checklist for my own study designs.

 

I do still take class notes by hand though. Physically writing stuff helps me remember it even if I don't reread. And my handwriting deteriorates quickly if I don't. 

[GeoDUDE!]

No amount of note taking will prevent you from rereading the important papers to your research. The one's tangentially related you will not reread because you will not have time. This is just something you have to accept: when doing academic writing you must be careful and thus your instinct will tell you to reread it just to make sure.

[ProfMoriarty]

I'm not saying I'm going to never ever again open up the books/articles I've read! What I expect is to know where to look for information I've already read without having to re-read entire texts... I figured if I took notes I could search later, then I'd have both a better grasp of the texts, and a source to which to turn later in order to quickly go straight to the source. 

 

I'm really impressed by themmases approach! I don't have the discipline to keep such a complete and complex database.

[victorydance]

Three ways to approach that:

 

1) Learn how to navigate academic texts. Most academic articles will have a section outlining briefly how the paper is laid out. Being able to find this section quickly, then use it to go to the most applicable section is a crucial skill for people who read a lot of material. Secondly, you should also learn how to use section headings and paragraphs to be able to find what you are looking for quickly. One can find out quite easily what someone is discussing just by paying attention to the key words in the sub-headings and in the paragraph introduction sentences.

 

2) Searching keywords. If what you are looking for has a specific keyword attached to it, use the ctrl + F or F3 command to search the entire article for those keywords.

 

3) Anything very important that you jot down for a note, reference the page number. If you have the page number beside the note you took it isn't difficult to go back and find where it came from.

[TakeruK]

I have been using a combination of Zotero and an Excel file for work, and I like it so much I think I'm going to do the same thing for my readings. Very often what sticks in my mind about an article is not what I wrote down, so I like having a lot of text-searchable notes or tags that I can use to quickly find what I'm thinking of.

...

 

My current Excel file has headings for date added, the project I got the article for, citation, DOI, date published, full-text y/n, systematic review y/n, objective, method, outcome measure, sample size, result, recommendation, quotes, and comments. I sort/filter by the first 7 columns and text search the others. When I read systematic reviews, I have a separate file where I keep track of how they measured the quality of included studies so I can use them as a checklist for my own study designs.

 

Does Zotero not already keep track of the citation, dates, DOI, etc already? Or do you just prefer Excel's method. I use Mendeley and usually it can self-populate all of these fields by just scanning the PDF (for newer articles). Sometimes it misses a few things or gets messed up by accents in authors names but if I just manually type in the DOI, Mendeley will correctly populate all of the relevant fields (including generating a citation automatically). And these fields are all searchable

 

I'm really impressed by themmases approach! I don't have the discipline to keep such a complete and complex database.

 

Me neither, which is why I make Mendeley do it for me

 

Three ways to approach that:

 

...

 

2) Searching keywords. If what you are looking for has a specific keyword attached to it, use the ctrl + F or F3 command to search the entire article for those keywords.

 

3) Anything very important that you jot down for a note, reference the page number. If you have the page number beside the note you took it isn't difficult to go back and find where it came from.

 

Might as well fully commit to this whole Mendeley advertising thing and say that for my journals, Mendeley picks up the subject keywords determined by the authors/journals automatically and allows me to, say, click on some keyword(s) and display only the papers that have those keyword(s). In addition, you can create your own "tags" for every paper that are searchable in the same way (e.g. you can create a tag for papers relevant to a particular project, or shows a particular result, or something like "authoritative reference" for a collection of papers that you pretty much always have to cite for particular methods etc).

 

And when you add a note, Mendeley automatically records it with the page number as well as the date and time of your note.

 

Mendeley is definitely not the only program that does this--I just use it because someone told me about it when I started my MSc and it was free and I've stayed on since then. I am sure other article databasing software are just as useful. My point here is mostly to say that there are a lot of software available to make our lives a lot easier than even just a decade ago. For example, in 2005, my freshman English professor was insistent that learning how to write MLA bibliographies is completely essential to our academic careers and that I would always be using by "Little Brown Handbook" to ensure I have my citations correct. However, since 2010, I have always used Mendeley's BiBTeX output to generate citations for me. I never have to remember whether it's a comma or a period after the title, or when to list all the authors, or what etc. I'd argue that nowadays, bibliography formatting only needs to be taught so that students understand the importance of ensuring the reader can access their sources, but the hours that was spent in teaching us the exact MLA style are no longer necessary!

 

So, likewise, having well indexed databases of the papers in your library doesn't have to be a lot of work anymore. I don't mean to say that everyone has to use these software--hey, if you have your own system that works for you, then great! But for new students, don't be intimidated by the vast amount of metadata on all the papers we need to read. Give some software a try, it might be easier than you think!

[lyrehc]

ReadCube is another (free) academic program you might look into.  I load PDFs of journal articles into and then make notes where I want to remember something.  Then when I go back to the article I can look at my notes to see whether that's enough information or if I need to give the article another skim or read.

Edited August 28, 2014 by lyrehc

[ProfMoriarty]

This seems particularly helpful! http://samanthalgrace.wordpress.com/2012/08/10/notetaking-rubric-for-comps-and-everything-else/

[themmases]

Does Zotero not already keep track of the citation, dates, DOI, etc already? Or do you just prefer Excel's method. I use Mendeley and usually it can self-populate all of these fields by just scanning the PDF (for newer articles). Sometimes it misses a few things or gets messed up by accents in authors names but if I just manually type in the DOI, Mendeley will correctly populate all of the relevant fields (including generating a citation automatically). And these fields are all searchable

 

Good point, it actually does! I pull this information from Zotero to Excel because I prefer to take notes in Excel-- I like having the fields of specific information I need to get out of it-- and I want to be able to filter those notes by citation, date, etc. I set it up this way initially because I was doing one part of a literature review and we wanted to make sure that other RAs pulled the same type of information for their topics. It's possible to take notes in Zotero from a tab within each parent item, and I've done that in the past.

 

Zotero also has the ability to index PDFs, pull metadata from PDFs, and sync them all across libraries. However, I find that having PDFs completely indexed makes it hard to search my library unless I remember a longer text string. Once I'm writing, I don't want to search the full text of all my PDFs at once-- I just want to search summaries and data fields. Then maybe I'll text search that one article, once I know it's the right one.

 

Also, after doing retrospective research for a non-profit (read: they will buy you nothing) for four years I just instinctively solve problems in Excel now. YMMV 

[Threeboysmom]

During undergrad I would not do any note-taking while I read, just highlighting; when I was reading and writing for my thesis I copied exact phrases that were important to the topic I was researching, but obviously I knew what I was looking for.

 

For grad school (and because of my Uni's teaching/learning system), I want to be able to look back at everything I've read and have a good, or at least decent, grasp of what each text is about without having to re-read it.

 

I want to develop a good reading strategy to implement during my course... I've tried reading and taking notes as I go (and underlining key points), which was very inefficient since it took me twice as long to finish a chapter/section. I have also tried reading and underlining, and doing the note-taking at the end of the section. This is an OK strategy, but I'm struggling with making the notes short and concise, and not longer than the chapter itself! All the notes I've taken (by hand) are scanned into Evernote so I can search them with the handwritting-recognition feature. I find this convenient.

 

 

What strategies do you guys use?

This is an excellent question and I am still tweaking my system. Like you I was reading while note taking and it's taking a long time. Now I am using OneNote to take my notes and I create a page for each chapter. Before I read I create an outline for the chapter. Then after I read I go back and fill in what the book has in bold or my summary of what's important.

I have not come up with a plan for peer review articles yet. I have downloaded both Mendeley and Zotero and have started researching for an upcoming paper I think I prefer Zotero I will make a final decision here soon as to which one I will keep.

On another note I know it's not possible to read all the assigned books and articles from beginning to end, however that requires a mind shift on my part. Somehow I feel that if I don't read every word I'm cheating myself.

[geographyrocks]

I'm another Mendeley fan. You can sync it across all of your devices so you always have the articles you need. You can highlight. You can take notes. I've found it to be much more useful than just using excel.