Advice / Bibliographies

Reading is an important part of doing research.

Part of the problem is keeping track of what you've read. I stronly recommend that you keep a bibliography (database) of everything you read that is research/work related.

I recommend that you keep this as a bibtex file - that way you don't have to retype things when you need to put it into a paper.

At a bare minimum you should keep the full citation information (the more complete, the better - get page numbers, volume numbers, editor, and all those other BibTeX field that you probably don't really care about). I also keep the following information along with each record:

• from - what pointed me at this reference? (example: "searched google for terms 'psychophysics'" or "referenced in paper X")
• return - should I return to this paper? (example: "yes" it deserves re-examination, "cite" it should be cited)
• read - did I actually read it? (example: "yes", "skim")
• annote - some commentary on it. sometimes a short summary, but usually just enough to jog my memory as to what the paper was about, and any key bits I might need from it
• pdf - where to find it on the web? (this is a link - so maybe "html" would be a better field name)
• proj - which project does it pertain to?
• date - what date did I read it/enter it into the database?