Hello from Georgia, USA - science journalist
Hi all! I'm slowly moving my way through a brand new ZK baby. Started off roughly in mid-January and am finally getting comfortable with most of it, though I'm still working to glean material from science journal papers.
I use Notion because it lets me integrate with my indices and drag things over to my projects. It also let's me keep a 'journalist hub', though I'm still trying to figure that out, as well as a CRM (I'm moving from Zoho, which frustrates me to no end).
I'm a science journalist, with a focus on space and astronomy. I don't write research papers but I sure do read them. There is lot of information that I pick up but don't remember, so I'm trying to follow Andy Matuschak's example and put material in Anki so I can source it when I'm out and about, but that's going slowly.
I had to give a talk last week at my alma mater and was able to pull together research papers into a single talk, which was extremely helpful. I'm also creating my own 'encyclopedia of space' (for myself) so I hopefully can fact-check my articles more quickly. There's nothing like trying to find that one line I pulled information from out of 20 research papers and 6 NASA and ESA pages lol.
I've been hanging around the forum but I'm here today in search of some strategies for pulling facts into zettels. The problem of course is that I am not directly solving problems like a researcher but instead writing about them. That still involves some meshing. I know literature notes vs evergreen notes vs reference notes vs zettels lol I'm just trying to figure out the best way to put things into practice.
I'm also trying to figure out if I'm over-creating? Yesterday, for instance, I created 11 zettels. But I also work with a lot of information so....? Appreciate any insight.
Looking forward to chatting!
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Welcome to the forum @scottiegazelle,
Processing research papers was a logistical challenge I addressed by treating each one like a book and applying the The Barbell Method of Reading to them. In particular, every paper I read is stored in Zotero, including the PDF. I use a PDF reader to read and highlight, which also allows me to add notes. I export the highlights and notes to a Markdown file. This file is then processed with Regex, which puts them in note format, marking the copied highlights clearly and attaching the inline citation. A note is created, and each highlight is refactored to fit my understanding. The entire process is compiled into one comprehensive note, which may or may not be further broken down later. Here are a couple of screenshots: first, the paper in Zotero; second, the marked-up PDF; and third, the note with both processed and unprocessed content. This way, I can locate the citation for any piece of text I use.
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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
I am blown away by using PDF expert to save highlights/notes. I tend to read book in Kindle for that reason but I didn't make the pretty obvious leap to doing it with articles!
I also use Zotero for everything I use in my ZK. I've thought about using the notes section for my reference notes, but I've stayed with a file in Google drive since that's where I have all my zettels.
@scottiegazelle, do you mind saying a little more about Notion? I'm not familiar with it, but it sounds interesting!
I'm curious what you do to "export" the notes and highlights for attachments stored in Zotero. I don't believe there is any "Export as..." menu item in Zotero (unless it is a feature of a plugin that I'm not using). Do you manually copy and paste from Zotero UI?
Personally I've been fetching them from the underlying sqlite database, but I've been curious if there's a robust way for users to pull notes and highlights out to an external file. (The data models used for Zotero are rather complicated, so I'd prefer not to touch them if I don't have to...)
I don't use Zotero's PDF reader to view PDFs. You can specify which PDF reader to use in the general settings. If your PDF reader doesn’t export the highlights, try a different one. I use 'PDF Expert' to export the highlights.
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
Ah, I see. I'm on Linux so the variety is limited as to PDF viewers, though I think that a more recent version of them can handle annotations. Thanks for the instruction with screenshot.
I find the built-in PDF viewer of Zotero sufficient for most of my needs. And with a newer version, I can also seamlessly highlight and add notes on web page snapshots with the same UI, so I like the idea of being able to export them to an external file directly from Zotero. Perhaps a plugin for the task exists if I look hard enough. I'm yet to find one.
You'll evolve your own practice for your specific needs, but for some inspiration here are some resources from three journalists including one who focuses on science (only one calls his process a ZK, but they're all incredibly similar in form):
website | digital slipbox 🗃️🖋️
@mlbrandt said:
A historical note that may be interesting: Back in July 2014, Dan Sheffler (who was an early participant in discussions on the zettelkasten.de blog) wrote a series of blog posts that described how he used essentially the same process that @Will described above, but using the Mac software Skim and BibDesk (software that I still use) instead of PDF Expert and Zotero. Links to some of his blog posts from that series:
@mlbrandt said:
@mlbrandt: Since you use Google Drive for your zettels, and therefore your workflow is probably already very web-based, it occurred to me that you might be interested in Hypothesis, a web browser extension and service that can save and export highlights and annotations from your web browser. @chrisaldrich uses it heavily.
Thanks all!
Regarding Zotero: I read papers in Zotero and highlight them there. When I go back to the main page, I can right-click and 'add note from annotations'. (I have three plugins but a quick google suggests that it's native.) I originally picked this up to use with Scrivener but I'm currently using Notion for my basically everything (including zettelkasten), so one of the plugins (I think it's Notero) will let me export the annotations to Notion. I have a table of research papers that I reference accordingly. Usually when I'm making a literature note, I have Zotero and the paper open on one side and the highlights alone on the other (yay three monitors), in case the text didn't come through right (which is often the case with numbers or things like Msolar) or in case my note didn't wind up standing well on its own.
Thanks for the links and reading suggestions!
It's interesting how much more comfortable I've gotten with my zettelkasten after only a week (following the previous weeks, of course).