Source
r/math•
lliiffee

How do you organize research?

I was wondering if anyone had any unusual systems for organizing their research. I find that research is kind of a crazy branching process of trying various things, giving up, finding connections elsewhere, etc. that makes a linear organization of ideas fairly problematic.

I'd be interested in either physical solutions. (Something clever with notebooks? Index cards? a combination?) Or software. (Evernote? A personal wiki?) Or specialized hardware (an e-ink tablet? a whiteboard that can record images of itself?)

One of the best things I've seen is software like "notational velocity" where you can maintain a big set of small documents and quickly search and link between them. The problem is that notational velocity doesn't handle math, which makes it useless!

One thing that has been a huge win for me with reading papers is using the "zotero" software where I can save all my .pdfs and quickly search them add notes, etc. But this doesn't get you much past the stage of reading.

I find it a little strange that people don't seem to discuss this "craft" of research very much. I'm sure different strategies here could make a big difference...

Posted Feb 10, 2018, 12:37 AM UTC

2115
waivek•

https://i.imgur.com/VD7kGzY.jpg

31
singdawg•

Needs more coffee mugs

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notadoctor123Control Theory/Optimization•

He's transcended coffee and uses a modified insulin pump to regulate his blood caffeine levels.

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jam11249PDE•

I do everything digitally, I use paper for rough work but write up every result (however trivial) digitally so i have a record somewhere. I have at any given moment a separate latex document for each project, and a miscellaneous one for random bits that may or may not become projects. Because bibtex is so simple I can use it for decent bibliographic records too. Plus when it comes to writing papers I can often just lift big chunks from these and the process is way less painful.

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japonymAlgebraic Topology•

When I started my PhD, I tried to be very organized. I had a research diary I would update daily, and organized my research problems into separate folders.

At this point it has been two years since I updated the diary and all my remaining research problems (the ones that weren't discarded or suspended) are in a single folder, and I have a single binder containing notebook pages of half-formed ideas. Still I have everything organized in my head, so it is not an issue.

It seems to me that the most important piece of advice I can give is to always write things down on paper and digitally, even if your idea doesn't work. That way you don't have to rediscover solutions or dead ends if you come back to a problem after leaving it for a while.

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TissueReligion•

This is a great question that I also wonder about a lot, and have always found strange that more people don't discuss. I think most people, or researchers, just don't think on a process-level about things they could tweak to improve their productivity.

What I've started doing is trying to keep a running flowchart in excel of various dependencies or potential project routes. I find that helps me better manage the landscape when I'm zooming between different levels of detail on a project.

I also have a skill acquisition doc where I make a note whenever I notice something that I could improve at. (Eg my work is very applied, so if I notice I'm being too axiomatic or general in my work I make a note on trying to pay more attention to making judicious simplifications/approximations, etc). I don't have a good strategy yet for actually following up on the notes, but I'm still a first year, so eh.

Yeah, cal newport writes about this kind of stuff, but not as much anymore.

What's your field?

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lliiffeeOP•

Thanks for the comments! I'm fascinated by your idea of an excel flowchart. Would you mind sharing an example of what that looks like? (Feel free to anonymize in any way you feel is appropriate, I'm just having trouble seeing it). I work in algorithms and statistics; I wonder if applied folks more drawn toward process...

1
SecretsAndPies•

I've thought about this myself, though I don't have a good answer. What I'd really like to do is maintain a database of results (without proofs), suitably tagged for easy searching, along with reference information (i.e. where first proved + more modern treatments etc.). I guess I could do this to some extent with a Wiki, or even just a big pdf.

At the moment I have a very primitive filing system. I just have a folder full of pdfs named by author list + year of publication + paper title. I use jabref for bibliography, but I only store reference information, so I don't link to papers from there. To find papers I use a third party search tool called Agent Ransack.

I bought I surface pro last year, and I've been experimenting with one note. It's good for creating and organizing 'hand written' material, but it doesn't handle pdfs well. What I'm going with at the moment is using a reader to actually read papers, but keeping organized notes on them in one note.

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lliiffeeOP•

Have you looked at zotero? I used to use Jabref, but I've pretty happily switched to zotero. For me, it stores all my .pdfs and they are easily searchable and linked to the references, which is great. It also has some facilities for note taking, though I find them fairly clunky and don't use them much.

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SecretsAndPies•

I looked at it. I'll give it a try. Honestly though, as clunky as my system sounds it works pretty well. I think if I were starting again from nothing I'd use a better system, but now I already have a large number of papers, so anything that requires me to invest significant effort in any manual reorganizing of what I already have is probably not going to happen.

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lliiffeeOP•

A file directory can be a great way to organize things! Lots of advantages. I personally prefer "search" type systems to "sort" but that's just me.

The "killer features" of zotero in my opinion are having the .pdf files synced with the references, and its magical citation extraction stuff. If you don't care about those, its definitely not worth it.

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SecretsAndPies•

I think having files synced with references would be better (though jabref does that too), but not better enough that I can justify going back and doing it manually for the files I already have.

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cornish_beaver•
  • I organize my article collection with Zotero. (It's like i-Tunes for pdfs.)
  • I manage my library with jabref.
  • I (try) to keep an updated list of interesting open problems

The rest I keep basically in my head. I know of some people writing down key ideas in notebooks.

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selfintersectionComplex Analysis•

I'm like u/jam11249.

I have a big folder called "Problems", and each problem/project/idea/note gets its own folder in there. In each of those folders I generally have several latex documents, some mathematica notebooks, and whatever papers I downloaded that are relevant (often organized in subfolders depending on their purpose).

I use JabRef to maintain my citations but don't link it to the pdfs since I can just find them in the relevant subfolder.

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agguy12•

I have an emacs org-mode document for every project, but mostly I just type up notes in tex files as I go, one folder per project. I do all my work on loose scratch sheets, and the ones worth keeping I run through a scanner so I don't forget them. I also tend to keep a few Sage files for every project working out details and examples.

I also find version control to be helpful. If I think I can generalize a result in a paper, I create a new branch and try to work it out. If it ends up being a dead end, I just delete the branch and the older version is still clean. If only I could get coauthors to do this instead of the nightmare that is trying to collaborate in Dropbox...

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bunn_ie•

I always use this chrome extension Weava to organize my research for my papers and essays. It’s free and has made my research/writing process so much faster and more organized. https://www.weavatools.com/?r=bz_rd_rs_2

I make different folders and subfolders based on topics, and then use a few colours to highlight different types of sources, annotate and organize my research into the folders. Weava also lets you share my notes with other people to collaborate and export into Google Docs or Word. It’s just so easy to use because all my research is organized in one place, and it links you right back to the source/original document if you need to check, instead of having to waste time copying and pasting and into one long unorganized word document or having to cross reference between many documents.

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