✅ Research management: keeping track of literature and building knowledge

Research management software is ripe for disruption

Almost two years into my doctoral studies, I have found tracking all the material I’ve reviewed increasingly tricky. It’s partly age but mainly the sheer volume of material.
I took this photo of academic papers spread over the kitchen floor during a recent writing-up session.

Research management software is a sector ripe for disruption. Applications such as EndNote, Mendeley and Zotero are static libraries of records rather than relational or knowledge-based systems that can be used to build knowledge.

I've deconstructed and rebuilt the process to support my PhD research using a low-cost tool called Notion with help from Bruno Amaral.

We built a Kanban board to mimic the process of sourcing, reviewing and recording a paper. Each book or research paper has its own record. This includes a synopsis and summary of the research method and key arguments. We’ve also linked to the paper, uploaded a copy for future reference and extracted metadata.

I then add notes related to my own study. Notion creates a useful summary using AI. Filters and search tools are already enabling me to spot patterns, extract themes and search for information.

There may be a legacy application beyond the lifetime of the project. Using Notion, I can publish a wiki of my bibliography and research notes, although copyright laws may mean this isn’t possible. At a minimum, it’s a neat way to build and share a data extraction table.

A future task is figuring out how to link the data in Notion to a reference management system for when I’m writing up a dissertation or paper. Alternatively, there may be a way to use the references stored in Notion to generate a bibliography.

Please let me know if you’ve any information about the integration reference management tools (I use Mendeley) and Notion.

Thanks to Bruno, Andrew Bruce Smith, and Antony Mayfield for their inspiration and support in this process.

There are a lot of shiny new tools that provide solutions that are looking for problems. A more intelligent approach is to break workflow down into tasks and look for tools to help you work smarter and more effectively.

If research management interests you, I’ve written a complete version of this project on my company blog.