Research Process

Organizing Information

One of the most helpful things you can do for yourself when you're conducting research is organize the information properly as you go. You certainly don't want to find articles, not be able to locate them when you need them, and forget where you got each piece of information that you need to cite in your paper. I recommend using a program called Zotero, which is free to download, and is very helpful in keeping your documents organized. You can keep all of your articles within Zotero as PDFs, and also include the information that you'll need to cite your sources. In addition, there's a plugin for Chrome and Firefox that will allow you to automatically add articles that you find directly to Zotero. Watch the video below to learn more about using Zotero.

An additional successful strategy for organizing your information and tying it into the writing process is to follow these steps:

1. Read your information sources, and highlight sections that you think are highly relevant to your topic.
2. Write a full reference for each source in a document.
3. Underneath each reference, go through the source and type out the quotation or paraphrase the information, with a complete in-text citation included. If it's a quotation, you can even include the quotation marks.
4. Create an outline for your paper.
5. Copy/paste each quotation or paraphrase into each section of the paper where it is relevant.
6. Write the paper within the outline, including each quotation or paraphrase at the appropriate point. The in-text citation is already included, so you've already done that step!
7. Once you've written the first draft of the paper, go back through the paper, and note each in-text citation. Immediately copy/paste the full reference into your references page at the end of the document.

Now you're in a good place revise and edit the paper.