So you’ve followed the System of Research Reading to the T.
You’ve identified your “Why“.
You’ve read the right sections using the 4-Step Funnel Method.
You’ve extracted insights from the text using double-entry notes.
You’ve collated those double-entry journals into a publishable scientific poster to be published at the next medical conference in Abu Dhabi.
It has been a solid 3 months of sweat and tears.
But now you catch a glimpse of the shimmering light at the end of the long, dark tunnel.
You are about to wrap things up, send your poster’s Photoshop file to the printing firm, and purchase your ticket to Abu Dhabi.
Then you see this:
You see your cursor blinking at the top of the supposed reference list.
You feel a sense of dread weighing down on your chest.
You are as if watching your mind go blank, wiped clean of the fulfillment, excitement, and relief it was experiencing just a moment ago.
Your hand shakes, your pulse races, and cold sweat dribbles down your temples.
You gulp nervously because now you have to re-read the entire abstract, find where you have quoted references, comb through your Google search history for those references, and type them out in APA format.
Then you have to repeat the process for the remaining 27 references.
Sure, you are frustrated by generating this reference list because it is such tedious work.
But mostly you are just angry with yourself for putting yourself in this same situation over and over again.
Your high school science coursework, your medical school systematic review, and now your poster when you’re already an actual doctor.
Come on, you’ve got to be kidding me.
You are not alone.
Yes, I was describing myself.
I’ve forgotten to organize my bibliography while reading for an assignment no less than 13 times.
And I hope that 13 times is the magic number when I will stop avoiding this essential yet irritating task in research reading.
My salvation came in the form of Zotero.
It is a free research management system that helps you collect, organize, cite, and generate a bibliography.
And no, that was not an affiliate link even though I would not hesitate one second to become an affiliate because their solution is that good.
This is how it works:
Head over to the official Zotero website and install the software.
Fire up the app and create an account to sign in.
Every article that you collect, read, mark, and comment on will be synced across your devices from now on.
Next, install the Chrome extension Zotero Connector (or the respective plugin on the browser of your choice).
This plugin is to link the article you’re reading on the web browser directly to your local Zotero database.
Now, we can get down to business.
I’m looking at this intriguing paper on OVID comparing the treatment effects between endovascular thrombectomy with best medical treatment versus best medical treatment alone for patients with acute ischemic stroke.
To save this paper to Zotero, I click on the Zotero Connector plugin icon at the top right corner of Chrome.
The PDF of the article is downloaded straight to Zotero, and I can read and annotate the document as I wish.
Say I have read a bunch of related articles on endovascular thrombectomy for acute ischemic stroke, and consolidated my double-entry notes into a systematic review.
To generate the bibliography, all I have to do is right-click on the collection of articles in Zotero, pick the option “Create bibliography from collection”, choose your preferred citation style and output method as “Copy to clipboard”, and finally paste it to your reference list.
WAH LAAH!!
Finally a sense of inner peace seeing a populated reference list!
All built up from the daily little good practices of research reading and free from the stress of last-minute squeeze.
I hope that you see the common theme going on here with our System.
This is why great researchers are so productive while others struggle.
Your whole research reading approach is a system and once it works in harmony then you actually will get the rainbows and singing birds.
Okay.
Well, that was a lot.
But are we done here?
One last thing…
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