Keeping Notes of What You Are Reading

One thing academics do a lot (most of them anyway) is reading. No matter whether you read in the library, on the train, or seated in front of the fire, keeping notes of what you read is a good idea. Let’s face it, nobody is going to remember all the papers they read. Here are three tools you might want to try: Docear (free, open source), Mendeley (free), Zotero (free, open source, possibly together with Zotfile, also free and open source). Which one is best? Try them all for a while and see what works best for you, what fits best with your workflow. Irrespective of the system you end up using, you should take systematic notes for greater efficiency/reduced frustration when trying to pin down that paper you’re looking for. And if there are really important bits, store them in your brain because no search will be better than that…