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Going Paperless in Academia
Mike | Mar 8 2007
I was wondering if any academics out there have gone paperless, and how they might manage with the stack of journal articles I'm sure most of the rest of us have piled on their desk. My reasons for wanting to go paperless are rather obvious: I just have incredibly tall stacks of papers that I can't cross-reference very effectively, and filing is a nightmare (I could probably fill an entire drawer in under 6 months). Not to mention that I can never find what I'm looking for when it becomes critical. I've been using Papers (by mekentosj) to archive and organize my articles, and that has been working out pretty well (although I hope they add some robust tagging support soon). So my main question for those of you out there is how you keep track of any note-taking you do on papers? What I'd really like is an effective way to highlight - make text annotations - draw pretty arrows/circles - curse out my competitors - you know, smart people stuff. Ideally I could do this while reading it on screen, but there's also something romantic about pen and paper (my GTD system is analog) - so I may just annotate the pdf after the fact. Does anyone do this regularly as part of their workflow? Could you recommend a good tool for all these annotations (for os x)? Or worst case scenario - do you have a really great filing system for academic papers? Just about everyone I know uses the stack-it-until-it-falls-over method. Cheers. 13 Comments
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 A paperless story...Submitted by mdl on March 26, 2007 - 10:04am.
Sorry to jump into this discussion late. It's a treasure trove of helpful tips and advice. Especially learning that ScanR now accepts emailed jpegs. Wow! How do they do it for free? I did a bunch of research in historical archives in Europe in 2000. At that time, I used a digital camera to take pictures of archival sources. I used batch file renames to number them by their correct pages and organized them in folders by source. I had also used the camera to "photocopy" important secondary sources before heading to Europe; thus, I had immediate access to a lot of secondary literature on the computer. There was a lot of manual labor--but the pay-off was unbelievable. I took notes on the sources directly on my computer with FileMaker Pro. If only DevonThink had existed then... At that time, I felt a little ahead of the curve with digitized images. None of my fellow students were using a digital camera. Ironically, the relative success of my digital regime led me to become something of a digital pack rat, snapping up anything and everything I could. This habit grew worse with the arrival of DevonThink; I clipped anything and everything I could from the internet. The danger with such paperless solutions, however, is that they can tempt one to eliminate the all-important "processing" step--reading, thinking, writing. During a trip to the library, I might copy dozens of items without actually reading them. Yet alas, even DT, as powerful as it is, will not think for me. Interestingly, it was the hipster PDA and index cards that helped me establish a system for "processing" (i.e., digesting) new material. Rather than copying an article, I jotted down notes and a bibliographical reference on index cards. Then, the second step was to type these notes into my computer system. Even if I don't have time to read something, I try to garner a quick impression of its argument and/or value and note that on an index card. If I need it, I can always obtain the article later. Once I gave up the obsessive need to possess the whole article, I suddenly found myself with much more control of my material. It's more work up front. But my notes are much more accessible. The key is not just to have a system for storing material, but also a system for processing and digesting it. As a rule of thumb, I would recommend only digitizing/photocopying material that is either absolutely essential or that you will not have easy access to later (archival sources, difficult-to-obtain interlibrary loan articles, etc). » POSTED IN:
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