Beginning and Organizing your Research

Organizing Your Research

The most important thing to keep in mind as you determine how you will organize your research is figuring out what works for you. Some people like to work with printed articles and writing notes on them, while others are comfortable with using online tools. Try paper and online methods and figure out what works for you. 

If you choose to print out articles and/or make copies of pages from books I recommend getting a 3 ring binder to organize everything. 

Note-taking Recommendations

• Get rid of your highlighters. They do nothing but make you page really pretty and colorful. Find a really great pen that you love and use that to underline and write notes in the margins.
• Any notes you write down make sure to write down the citation and any page numbers if it's a print source.
• There are a number of methods for note taking. CalPoly has a great website detailing several methods.

Online Tools for Organizing Research

Evernote: Create folders, notes, to-do lists, and tags. Share with collaborators.

EasyBib: Bibliography tool. Save citations and create notes for citations.

Mendeley: Organize citations and upload documents. 

Google Drive: Cloud storage; create new documents, folders, and notes. 

Zotero: Bibliography tool