Links to studies
Hi everyone, first of all I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to this forum. I've been here for a while now reading all sorts of posts, but only now did I need to create an account for the sake of joining the discussion.
I'll just briefly introduce myself, my name is Petr and I'm 20 years old, I love fitness, biohacking and anything that improves a person's mental/physical performance and especially health in general. I guess that's about me.
Now for the interesting stuff. This is probably going to be a very direct question, but how do I include in a permanent note the studies that the text or some statement in it discusses? I was thinking of putting a letter or number at the end of a sentence the normal way, but then I wonder if that would interfere with the note itself. Or should I leave the references to the literature note?
Example from today:
Today I extracted info from a blog post where there was only one paragraph that discussed the result of a study. I figured I should not ignore the study because of that statement and make a note of it.
How do you guys approach this?
My goal is to create content on social media as well as developing my knowledge.
I apologize for the probably vague question, I still have a lot to learn.
Thank you!
Petr
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Lit Note (I call source note) is a good place to put a one-line summary of a study that is mentioned.
For the main note, I have found that Author's name and 1-2 keywords from the title of how I saved the study link or file -is plenty of info for me to find it again (and doubles as a reminder of what the study is about). So, in the main note I might write, 'See MrBeast, audience retention'
Also, I number my source notes with a corresponding source ID, so, if I want to refer to the source note in the main note, I could also write, 'See MrBeast, audience retention, 0049-2'
I' ve in my main (permanent) notes, at the bottom, a section called 'reference' in which I put an ordered list of links to the sources if needed.
A single link can refer to an internal Source Note (my term for literature note), a link to an external site or a line of text in which I describe where it came the idea of the note.
When is useful, into the textual parts of the note I can refer to a specific link in the reference section using something like "as cited in (1)", if 1 is the number of the link. Often the source that give the birth is numbe 1 and annotated with '@birth:'
Sometimes, where I find useful, I have an "origin" section in the note, where I describe with more details where the note come from, but I tend to put links in the reference section even in this case.
Hi @Mácaczech,
If I understand your question, I'd suggest going directly to the study and capturing it, skipping the blog post. I usually place an "Origination" link in the reference section of the note indicating where the idea originated from.
I don't get what you mean by "putting a letter or number at the end of a sentence the normal way."
Maybe I'm completely off base here. If so, please help me understand your question.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
Nice! Happy for you, that you have some good interests at 20.
With a normal citation:
The above is multimarkdown. For social media, you'd just manually put numbers behind the claims in your post which would look like this.(1)
(1): Fast (2024), Use Footnotes or Die Trying, zettelkasten.de
However, if you didn't read and processed the study yourself, you can't quote or refer to the study with integrity, because you didn't get your info from the study but from the blogpost.
The whole point about citing is transparency and scrutiny.
I am a Zettler
Echoing Sascha's advice: cite everything that does not originate in your head. It pays off quickly.
Example: 12 sources that "inspired" a note of your cannot be used productively. You cannot just take one very important sentence, or select a part of the claims in the note . Where are the ones you selected from?
An obviously bad and exaggerated example would be to have 1 file with inspiring quotes, then instead of putting the names next to the quote, you'd have a backmatter list of names. Now you want to send a quote to someone, and this results in you having to either guess, look it up again (extra work you already did once), or just YOLO and mention all the sources from the note:
→ Annotate each and every claim properly. By 'proper', we mean upholding to academic standards, which sounds fancy but is actually not that much work.
See this part in the ZK intro: https://zettelkasten.de/introduction/#reference
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
Thank you for your answer,
I want to ask what do you mean by main note? So Source note is a literature note for you?
My workflow is still somewhat undeveloped and I've been struggling with it quite a bit the last few days.
I'll give you an example: I'm reading a web article on the internet and a few things catch my eye - I'll rewrite these things in my own words in a literature note + add something, maybe an idea that comes to mind. I got the template of my note from Mr. Edmund Gröpl (you probably know who it is). I'll link the source (internet article) and the author (biblio note) in lit note, add terms to the note that are new to me and possibly other questions that come to mind after I finish writing the note. This is basically the worlflow of my literary notes.
I don't know what you mean by referring in the main note to the study that is in the source note or is the source note if I understand correctly.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for your answer. Exactly this is how i have my permanent notes.
Can you give an example please on when it would be useful to put (1) into textual part of permanent note? I can only think of the link to the study for now.
Interesting, I have something similar - I have a "source" section where I put the sources - where I got the info from - (that would be what you call the origin I suppose) and then a "reference" section where I would link to other permanent notes that have some connection. There it depends if I don't have those perma notes in the text ( [[ ID | text ]] ). Could you give me your opinion if it's bad or good and maybe a suggestion for a change?
I'm struggling a lot with this.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you!
Okay, got you. Can you explain me what is multimarkdown please?
Thank you for clarification. That make sense. So only way is refer to the blog post or look at the study and processed it myself.
Thanks!
Hello, thank you for your answer!
Can I just link to the page I got the information from? Because I find it unrealistic to link to every statement unless it is word for word the same (quotes). I haven't seen this anywhere, people have always only linked to the page where the claim is found or the information in general from which the claim was made.
What if I take info from ig posts for example? How do you link to those then? And is it necessary to link in the reels description to the blog, for example? Or the posts of the people from whom I was "inspired"?
Thanks so much for the info and I'll definitely go check out that link.
I do paper index cards and have two note types, source note (literature note) and main note (permanent note).
I use a text file to list sources and another text file to make a searchable list of most main cards.
Because I do hybrid, I am probably not a good example of what to follow for your digital set up, so my comments are not as relevant to you, so can just read this for interest.
In any case, I assign an ID number to each source, so for example, 0049 for Atomic Habits, or 1400 for a blog post so that I can use that source ID to number my source notes and also use that source ID to make a reference in my main note.
So, my Atomic Habits source note cards are
0049 Atomic Habits Source Note 1
0049-1 Source Note 2
0049-2 Source Note 2
If on a main note, I want to refer to an Atomic Habit source note, I write "See 0049-2". If I want to refer to the source page number - say page 25, I write on the main card "See 0049.25"; if I want to refer to a video or audiobook timestamp, I'll write "see 0049 14:15".
The value of this approach is that I do not have to rewrite everything in a main note and can try to be more selective/atomic.
Cheers and good luck! have fun creating a system that works for you.
Hello sir, thanks for answer. I mean what @Sasha said:
"For social media, you'd just manually put numbers behind the claims in your post which would look like this.(1)
(1): Fast (2024), Use Footnotes or Die Trying, zettelkasten.de."
What if I only wanted to take information from the statement on the blog? Would that be a problem or? Let's say I pay for a monthly membership where the studies are summarized and only the highlights are listed. How would you approach this example?
And the picture is it a permanent note or literature note?
Thanks again and sorry for the confusion.
Well if you rephrase a 3-point article as 3 bullet points, you could start with:
That's clear enough in context. For the moment.
In some cases, I found other sources with more details years later, and extend the list to 4+ points, so I'd end up with:
About The Topic, you can say: 1. One thing,(<Foo McBar citation here>) - There are counter-arguments bla bla(<Jane Doe citation here>) 2. Thing two,(<Foo McBar and Jane Doe citations here>) 3. Third thing,(<Foo McBar citation here>) 4. Fourth aspect.(<Jane Doe citation here>)There's no way to interleave these things without distinguishing sources that will prove equally flexible in the future. I can take everything from author Foo McBar from the list, I can focus on Jane Doe's points, I can add a third source any time, too.
This would be useless in comparison:
About The Topic, you can say: 1. One thing, - There are counter-arguments bla bla 2. Thing two, 3. Third thing, 4. Fourth aspect. via Foo McBar and Jane Doe.I wanted to reply here but can you show examples to discuss their concrete virtues and shortcomings? That's better than assuming I know what you mean
As direct as possible. Any indirect mention can potentially render the whole useless.
Can you provide Instagram examples?
I would link to YouTube comments with their permalink instead of just to the video. If possible. If a platform doesn't have permalinks, I'd disambiguate the comment's source by mentioning author and date/time as the platform reports it.
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
>
And this all is on permanent note? It would probably be pointless to search for the original lit note and add new detail in, no?
So this adding sources to all the claims is mainly for future reference if I could find a counter argument I would know who said the original info? But how to deal with text that is arranged in paragraphs and not bulleted?
So example above is useless in comparison to:
- There are counter-arguments bla bla()
>
Of course, here it is:
"An example of such a gene is the PER 2 gene, where people who have a specific variant of this gene have reduced sensitivity to blue light (and thus reduced CR). On the other hand, there are people with a specific variant of the circadian gene PER 3, which in turn makes them more sensitive to blue light and also to a reduction in melatonin. (R),(R),(R)"
This is not all the text but the main point here is the person made claims and just reference the study (R)/website.
>
Here it is sir:
This is czech language but i you can see the numbers that person claims are "best" for this and that. In the bottom (1) and (2) these are not references but their meaning is this - "first of all x and secondly y." And I'm guessing these numbers (0,3 - 0,4) are also based on some studies and not the invention of his head. So this is the example without references.
And this is the example of having claims but only referencing the whole study:
I am sorry in advance, my english isnt so good and ia am maybe lost in this citation thing so maybe it is obvious to someone like you, but for me it is really hard lol.
Thank you for answers btw!
It's very simple, this is an example of a fake note containing the basics:
In "Riferimenti" section of the note I put links to source. The first two are external links, the third is a link to a source (literature) note.
The first link is the source that, when I've readed it, I've created the note, and has the pseudo-tag birth that annotate this.
I can use Riferimenti section and stop, or I also can put pointers to a specific link into In Breve and Dettaglio, using numbers.
If needed, I can also have a detailed origin text into the subsection "origine" (this is an optional section in my notes).
We are friends here; there is no need to refer to me as "sir."
It is a mixed bag of answers to your question. It depends.
I was responding to your original question:
If the study is your target of interest, go for it. If the commentary on a study sparks an idea, is it fair to capture the idea without looking at the actual research? Maybe, but in most cases, this would lead to disaster in your understanding of your study domain.
What I'm trying to say is that you have to be strict in your study domains.
The example zettel posted in my first reply is a zettel. I'm confused by the terms "Literature Note" and "Permanent Note". (And, yes, I've read Ahrens.) My workflow is that I capture ideas in a rough first draft, keeping them corraled from my main herd of notes until I've refactored them based on a series of prompts in my note templates. The notes are edited and polished to a degree until I feel comfortable releasing them. They are still editable. In fact, I made some changes in the reference section of this note yesterday.
I develop every note, which is a proxy for an idea, this way. The only real distinction is with structure notes.
Will Simpson
My zettelkasten is for my ideas, not the ideas of others. I don’t want to waste my time tinkering with my ZK; I’d rather dive into the work itself. My peak cognition is behind me. One day soon, I will read my last book, write my last note, eat my last meal, and kiss my sweetie for the last time.
kestrelcreek.com
@andang76 provided a good example to add (1), (2), ... marks for citations in-line with the full reference at the end 👍
This denotes 3 references for 1 claim in a publication.
Now you might need a higher resolution in your notes, as the building blocks of publications. For example this last sentence:
That could be a combination of (I'm making up percentage claims):
All these could be potentially interesting 'atoms'.
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
@Mácaczech My recommendation is to pick up a generic introduction to the scientific method or on how to write a scientific essay. There you find everything you need to know about how to cite. (It is pretty much what you learn during the first semester in university unless you study law or few other subjects)
I am a Zettler
so as far as the "Riferimenti" section is concerned, there you have the source/sources from which the note was created as well as a link to the source (note literature notes for me) from which you extracted the info. That's how I understand it.
I list the source in the "perma" notes as the note from which I drew the information (i.e. in my case it would be a literary note), on the other hand you list the source as the original one (web/book...)?
And you list the source note (lit note for me) as just the note from which you created the main note?
Is there any way to link to a section/paragraph of a web page? Example:
I create a statement in a perma note from paragraph 25 and link after that statement to that paragraph. How would I do that? Is that even possible lol?
Thanks a lot.
Yes, Riferimenti contains links to the sources where I've taken stuff for writing the note (they can be other notes but also external resource, I don't always do a literature note for every text , article or single phrase I've found relevant), but not only these.
I can put there other kind of references.
In general you are not so lucky to have the possibility to directly refer to a specific paragraph in an external web page (is out of your control). If you are lucky, into the page are defined anchors that you call with links that contain a #, for example this is a link that refers to a specific block of text:
https://urm.wwu.edu/how-create-anchor-jump-link#creatingananchor
In general, what I would do is add after the link a textual description of the location.
A bit of context for the link.
For example, if I have to refer to the history of Zettelkasten in its wikipedia page, i would write something like:
In general is a good thing for me having comments near the links in the reference. Maybe today I know perfectly why, when and for which block of text I've inserted this link in my note, but after five years, who knows...
If you need, instead, a big control to the text you need to reference, just copy and past the text into a note, so create a literature note made of the full text, and put it into your notes.
I often do this for some web pages.
Be careful of an important issue using references to external sources, such web pages.
Today you find there, tomorrow the pages could disappear (or change their content), so you lose your references.
1) For important contents it could be preferable capturing the external content and bring it up into your system. It requires more work but is more stable.
Maybe the use of links to external sources is suitable when you need to retrieve the context in which you have took the contents, rather the exact content itself.
If your sources are pdf, download pdfs into your pc.
2) write your notes with the mindset that they must "remain alive", maintain their mean, even if the sources totally disappear. It's important that they express their meaning alone or together with other notes in your note set, without a strong dependency from the external sources.
I don't want to have given you a bad advice, if you infer that it's always convenient to fill your notes with links to web pages :-)
Doing source notes continues to have its importance.
If you want to preserve the information you see on web pages, you can use services such as InstaPaper or Omnivore, which capture the contents for you. Or you can use a service such as:
https://webtopdf.com
Or you can "Save as PDF" in Chrome or "Export as PDF" in Safari.
Finally, if you have your own Internet Archive account, you can save current copies of web pages there, and access them later.
Lots of ways to do this, but as you said, if you just save the direct link to the web page, the content can (and will) change.
Reminds me of the guidelines for StackOverflow:
https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer
I recently went with this tip for a programmer-specific event & Zettelkasten. That for a note to be self-contained, you need to either quote enough as a backup of your claims in case the website goes away, or be so thorough in your paraphrasing that you don't need the original source anymore ever. (Makes it hard to share the content if Internet Archive one day disappears)
Author at Zettelkasten.de • https://christiantietze.de/
Oh, now I've realized why a moderator considered bad a discussion I've opened in stackoverflow. I've inserted a link to a demo outside. He was right...
I have a very different workflow than most in this forum, but it solves the problem you pose! I use google docs for my permanent and literature notes. Any source I use for those notes I save in Zotero (which is an amazing, free, reference manager) https://www.zotero.org/.
Google allows you to insert a Zotero reference into the notes... which ends up looking like (author last name, year). If this ever gets moved to be part of a larger project, the reference goes with it, allowing you to create your bibliography with the click of a button.
Regardless of what you use for your notes, you can still use Zotero for your references and manually enter the reference (author last name, year) into your notes.
I agree 100%. The best source material is what you have saved in a "permanently" retrievable form on your own computer. For this reason, I am often buying e-books.
Got it. I'd rather be corrected in good faith than the other way around
. Thank you for answers btw!
Interesting how everyone has a unique "perspective" on zetelkasten, it is truly an amazing method for not only writing.
amazing, thank you. I didnt know that "atoms" (perma notes) can be this short. So much overthinking at my side.
great idea, thanks!