Peter Giger

The reference workflow is different depending on situation, but this is my workflow for the web based article mentioned in the previous post.

This is no tutorial. This is a description of my workflow in a particular situation. Some prior knowledge might be necessary to understand, or some effort of gaining information about the applications and web services I mention.

The article has been published in the swedish journal/magazine Ord & Bild. It has been translated to English and is republished in Eurozine. I use this version because it is the most available. Sometimes I get the feeling that some researchers refer to obscure, unavailable versions of an article instead of a version available on the web. Probably because they think it looks more serious or academic that way. Stupid isn’t it. Always use the most available version, if you can choose.

Step one: Getting the reference into CiteULike. CiteULike has a bookmarklet. I have to copy and paste the author, add the year and some small details. I also download the PDF version and upload it to CiteULike, to have my own copy to get back to. If there is no PDF to download, I create it from the web page and upload it. This is my backup-article. I also use CiteULike for social reasons, to find articles in the same way I use Flickr to view pictures or YouTube to watch videos.

Step two: Being on the Liedman post in CiteULike, I click on the icon at the right side in the URL filed to copy the reference into Zotero. In Zotero, I also choose Attachements / Add / Save a link to the current page. This works as a link to the place where the fulltext is located. Now, I can use the Zotero plugin in Open Office Writer to use the reference in an essay.

Step three: Well, you can stop here If you like, but recently I have added a step. I drag and drop the PDF in a notebook called “Articles” in Evernote. In this notebook I store all articles I use in my research. I also pickup the bibtex record from CiteULike and paste it above the PDF attachment. This is to always have a bibtex record together with the file in Evernote. To use attachments in Evernote, I think you might have to use the payed version – which is worth every penny… (update: some formats works with the free version, such as pdf & mp3, and of course the more ovious text, html, jpeg, gif, png, wav)

When I’m reading the article, or checking something out after I have read it, I double-click the aricle in Evernote. Adobe Acrobat opens and I can add comments and highlights. When I press sync in Evernote, the whole database is synched with the Evernote server and I can access all my articles from my account on the web. When I open Evernote one of my other computers, Evernote on this computer is synched with the Evernote server. The articles I just downloaded, read and commented on the previous computer also appears on this computer. The comments are visible on most PDF readers, I think, but if I am on my Mac or Windows I can use Adobe Acrobat to make comments. On a Linux machine I settle for reading.