Researchers, how do you take notes on the papers which you read?

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2023-08-07T10:50:31Z

I've been struggling with finding a good workflow for taking notes on the journal articles which I read. I collate articles using Zotero, yet its in-built notetaking features (and comment scraping from PDFs) is quite poor. So, my alternative so far has been to write up notes by hand, but this is pretty cumbersome and makes it take some time to refer to my notes. My approach is clearly not effective!

How do you take notes on the papers which you read? Do you prefer to use written notes, or do you type your notes? In any case, what is your preferred means of storing and categorising your notes? And are there particular software which you use, if you opt for typed notes? (At present, I use an A5 notebook. Yet, this is not alphabetised or organised by topic, which compounds my struggles.)

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