<aside> 📌 examples of other people's research workflows for inspiration

</aside>

Finding a workflow that fits for your own work style and personality is not easy. You will probably never find the perfect workflow but hopeful you find a good enough workflow. I have been improving my workflow the past ten years and only now I am close to the ideal one. So settle for one that is good enough and keep improving it over time.

Table of content

my own research workflow

My own research workflow involves mainly Zotero, Obsidian (as of recently) and Scrivener for the final text. I have been using Zotero and Scrivener for a long time and am very happy with both of them.

Zotero works great out of the box but also offers many options for customisation. You can use folders to organised your academic sources, but also tag them with e.g. 2 inspect, read or different stars.

overview Zotero

overview Zotero

overview one paper in Zotero

overview one paper in Zotero

https://whimsical.com/hyperorganised-workflow-8axKP7dYSLmdmL9ixLrrRV

Extract highlights from Zotero ⬆️

A plugin for Zotero - Zotfile - allows you to extract your highlights and notes from Zotero.

extracted highlights via Zotfile

extracted highlights via Zotfile

See [Cat's forum entry](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/zotero-zotfile-mdnotes-obsidian-dataview-workflow/15536?) in the Obsidian discussion forum on excellent tips on how to adjust the different settings.

extracted coloured highlights via Zotfile after some modifications in the advanced settings

extracted coloured highlights via Zotfile after some modifications in the advanced settings

Using bibtext to easy identify your sources across apps ⬆️

Using bibtext as a unique citation key for every publication or source, you can identify your sources easily across apps. If you are writing down some thoughts in Obsidian for example, you can easily see which source you are referring too. Bryan (see video on next section) goes through how to use your notes in Obsidian as well.

The Zotero plugin Better BibTex (BBT) allows you to assign unique citation keys for your sources. You can adjust the format of the citation. I am using e.g. authorYEARfirsttwowordsoftitle.

If you want to know how to install bibtext and Zotfile, check out Cortex Futura's excellent YouTube video.

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/c126bd2b-800f-46ca-8ce2-a514c826f7e6/Untitled.png

https://youtu.be/Nm5BsfMfO9M

Using mdnotes to access your Zotero notes in Obsidian ⬆️

By using another Zotero plugin - Zotero mdnotes - you can export all your extracted annotations and your own notes directly in your Obsidian vault. The plugin was created by argentum, a moderator on the Obsidian Forum. Read the Forum post about argentum's research workflow to the right.

Below you can see my own Zotero database with the three attached notes. After running the mdnotes plugin, these three notes are exported into one Markdown note (md) that is directly accessible in my Obsidian vault (picture to the right). When writing in Obsidian I can now access all my Zotero notes.

Zotero plugin to export metadata and notes to markdown

Zotero notes and md note

Zotero notes and md note

combined md note in Obsidian

combined md note in Obsidian

Zotero & Obsidian ⬆️

Excellent detailed walk through of how Bryan Jenks uses Zotero and Obsidian.

Bryan' amazing update for 2021, NB: the video is 4 hours, so use the time stamps if you are only interested in certain questions. Bryan really deserves a coffee for this video!

https://youtu.be/_Fjhad-Z61o

https://youtu.be/wB89lJs5A3s

Notion for academic research ⬆️