management, these are things that are out there on the fringes of my
system, stuff I'm still tinkering with.
--
* My someday/maybe reading list was getting too long and intimidating, so
I started putting in a fake entry at the end of every month to divide it
into manageable monthly chunks. So may just passed, I created a new blank
reference in there with the title "2008 MAY" so all references I added
between the start of may (designated by "2008 APRIL") are nicely
delineated.
* My physical paper management system, which predates my general filing
system, was breaking down. I keep papers in hanging files by topic area.
If I were starting all over again I might use Jim's system of putting them
in manila folders by first author name in alphabetical order, but it's
nice to be able to scoop up a whole handful of a particular type of paper,
and hanging folders are much more sturdy. That's the problem though,
some are bulging. (though like with my manila folders, I make sure to have
plenty of empty ones within arms reach, so I can create a new one on the
spot) A couple of embarassing incidents of not being able to find a paper
made it clear I need to do better in indexing my printed-out papers.
I created a new field called Filed under, where I enter in the heading on
the tab for the hanging file it's in. What really makes this work, makes
it quite practical to (eventually) go through all my hanging files and
enter the Filed under in the corresponding citation entry in my Read
database, is a neat feature of endnote called Term lists. With just a
few minutes poking around in help and menu items, I figured out how to
make it so I would only have to type the first letter of a hanging file
name, and the rest of it would pop up in the field, just like it works for
author names in endnote.
So now whenever I have a few minutes when I have absolutely nothing else I
could be doing, I grab a couple of my hanging files and make sure all the
papers have entries in my databases and have their Filed unders filled in.
I also sort the papers in each hanging file by first author. So now (for
the ones I've done anyway), it's a snap to go from the citation entry to
the physical paper.
* Sometimes in doing a lit search I run across papers that are completely
irrelevant to my research but have too good titles to let slip away
forever: "A triangular theory of love" "Does Aerobic Exercise Decrease
Brain Activation?" I can stop myself from reading them on the spot by
throwing them into a new database I made called Interesting.
* By painful experience, I can easily read a paper and then have
absolutely no recollection of it just a couple of months later. Therefore
though it's cumbersome, I *must* keep notes on the papers I read, at least
if I'm ever going to go back to them. I tried many different ways to do
it, some electronic, some paper, but the best thing so far involves using
endnote again. In the Research Notes field, I type in what I call the
Gist. This is as few words as I can type to encompass everything I would
want to refer to this paper for. Sometimes that's a lot, including lots of
experiment details. Sometimes it's one sentence. However it almost never
looks anything like the abstract: first of all its in my own language
("...therefore, they say, feature integration theory is whack.") and
second it's what I got from the paper that was new and semi-surprising,
not everything that was in there. So it's customized to me and my
interests.
This takes effort for each paper that I read (though it doesn't mean I
have to read at the computer: I tend to jot brief notes at the bottom of
pages with a pen that I can then mindlessly transcribe into the system
later) but ultimately it saves a great deal of tiresome effort. Recently I
had to review an area (rapid visual categorization) and I was almost shed
tears of gratitude realizing I had filled in the gists for all 3 of the
key papers, and so would not have to even glance at the originals, let
alone read them through. A job that could have taken 2 hours (assuming
total amnesia, which is far from impossible) instead took 15 minutes.
Of course this means my endnote Read database is even more precious and
needing of being backed up.
* Somethign that goes great with entering gists in EndNote is creating
custom output styles to help generate neat reports on groups of papers.
It's easy to make a bibliographic list in APA format, just by selecting
multiple citations and choosing Copy formatted. But now imagine the power
of being able to create an output file with all those citations *plus
their abstracts*. This is easy to do: just make a copy of say APA 5th
style, go to Output styles -> open reference manager (this is all EndNote
X specific), click to edit your style, go to Layout under Bibliography,
and in "End each reference with" click Insert Field and add the Abstract.
I created another one based on APA 5th called Gist Output, which lets me
see the gist info that I've entered. It's particularly great for seeing
output in the preview pane when I select a reference in the window. Rather
than using the Layout mechanism, I changed the Bibliography templates
directly. So it looks like (this is for the Journal Article entry)
Author. (Year). Title. Journal.
Research Notes
(with title in boldface, and journal in italics) The disadvantage is that
you have to repeat those changes for all the different reference types you
might want to use.
Hacking output styles is great, because it lets you quickly and easily
output sheets of info, including gists/abstracts, for any subset of papers
you want. You could print out pages with all the abstracts from Trends in
Cognitive Science for a year, a great way to skim the literature. You
could choose two or 3 to have in gist form for an important meeting. Etc.
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