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Organizing papers to read / reading lists?

In our May “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

I’m coming to the realization that I need to build a system to organize papers I’d like to read if I’m actually going to find the time to read them. Would love to hear from PhilCocoon readers about what kind of infrastructures they’ve designed for themselves/their reading lists. What does your reading list look like? Do you plan what to read in advance or do you read on a whim?

Good questions! I don’t have any system beyond this: When I come across a random paper that I want to read, then I download it to my desktop and read it. If I find it of interest but don’t presently have any writing project related to it, I have a folder labeled “Readings”, with subfolders organized by topic–so I’ll throw it in there. But this isn’t the typical case. Far more often, I organize what I read around papers that I am currently writing or paper ideas that I have formed in my head and plan to write. In this case, I have a folder labeled “Papers in Progress” organized by paper title/idea. Then, as I read on that topic, I throw the readings in the relevant folder. That’s it for me!

What do readers do?

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5 responses to “Organizing papers to read / reading lists?”

  1. Anonymous

    I have a similar, maybe slightly more involved, system to Marcus.

    I have a folder called ARTICLES with many sub-folders by general area. For areas I research and history, the subfolders are broken down into topics or figures. When I find something I want to read, I put it in the “to-read” subfolder. If it’s connected to a current project, I save it with an asterisk or other symbol at the front, so I can keep track of it more easily. I save everything as Surname – Brief title; so if it’s for a project it looks like *Surname – Brief title. Once it’s read, I move it to the appropriate topical folder.

    Sometimes I also make weekly to-read lists. Especially in the summer. I put the list wherever I’m keeping track of my work on the project. This could be the notebook where I’m writing down preliminary thoughts or processing feedback or it could be my planner or it could be an e-mail to a co-author.

    For me, the trickier thing is actually keeping track of the readings and what I took from them. Plus, sometimes my fun reading ends up being relevant to teaching or research. I tried using the notes feature on Zotero, but that didn’t work well for me. Personally, I benefit from pen and paper (this also helps me avoid feeling like “I didn’t do anything today” – yes I did, I wrote it down! Digitally, stuff just disappears into everything else). So, I have a bunch of ways to keep track of that. One is I bought a weekly paper planner, with the weekdays in blocks on one side and a notes page on the right side. On the days of the week, I note what I’m reading – I color code a little, based on the project. On the notes page, I write down my thoughts about what I read and how I want to connect it to current projects, questions I have, whatever.

    I bought a fancy Moleskine one as an end-of-semester present to myself (also, because I am an aesthetician and we need aesthetic treats), but this is a format that is widely available. Your campus bookstore almost certainly has one on sale. There are also cheaper Moleskine ones than the one I bought!

    This is a little complicated written out, but it’s not the complicated in practice, and like I said, I benefit from writing some stuff by hand and having physical objects to manipulate.

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  2. Anonymous

    Whenever I download a paper, I also use my browser plugin to create an entry in Zotero. Then I just have a Zotero folder “to-read.”

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  3. Anonymous

    I also have folders on my computer for different topics too, with subdivisions inside them, and even more subdivisions inside those. I always comment with the sticky notes feature on Adobe Acrobat. I like that it can pinpoint passages and that it is searchable. When I have a criticism or something original to say, I make the comment with a ~ first so it’ll be distinguishable and so I can search just for my own ideas if I want.

    I usually don’t do much to signal to myself what I didn’t read yet because it’ll be obvious to me when I open the pdf and there are no comments, but sometimes if there’s something I want to read soon and not later, I’ll leave it in the downloads folder of my computer and only move it to the readings folder later.

    Reply
  4. Michel

    I used to divide things by area, but gave that up because it was a lot of work and made it harder to find stuff (especially as Microsoft’s folder search became increasingly useless after Windows 7; it’s better in 11, but still not what it was).

    Now I have two folders: a library folder which contains everything, ordered alphabetically by author (all my file names are author-title), and a folder for things I’m interested in reading sooner rather than later.

    Particular paper projects get their own sources folder where I send anything related to the project which I download; when the paper is finished, I empty that folder into the library.

    This is not the best system by any stretch, but it’s at least workable. The sub-division system was not. At least, not for me.

    Reply
  5. Daniel

    For organizing papers I do what Marcus, the first anonymous commenter, etc. all do. Since taking notes came up, I’ll mention that I use Hypernomicon: https://hypernomicon.org. I also use it for managing the PDFs while/after I read them: when I move them out of the “to read” folder I move them into my Hypernomicon database, and that renames and further organizes them based on whether they are papers, books, etc.

    Reply

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