Efficient Note-Taking Practices for Your Doctoral or PhD Research

Efficient Note-Taking Practices for Your Doctoral or PhD Research

Oct 01, 2024Rene Tetzner

Efficient Note-Taking Practices for Your Doctoral or PhD Research

Although taking notes may seem to some doctoral candidates rather old school, and certain PhD dissertations will require a lot less note taking than others, taking notes remains an excellent means of recording information from sources of all kinds and thinking through concepts and problems. The wide variety of methods available for taking notes in the early twenty-first century is a bold testimony to the fact that the art is far from dead: notes can be typed into computers, tablets, e-book readers and smart phones; they can be dictated into voice memo apps as well as old-fashioned cassette recorders; and they can be handwritten into software programs with a stylus or, most traditional of all, recorded on paper with a pen or pencil. Whatever method works best for you should be fully exploited as you consult the sources you plan to use in your dissertation, because notes taken while reading sources are a valuable time-saving resource when you need to cite and quote those sources in your writing.

The first concern when consulting sources is to ensure that you have the complete bibliographical information for every source you plan to use in your dissertation. If you are able to obtain a copy (via photocopying, scanning or a digital file) of a source, it may well already contain that information, but do be sure to check. If your copy does not contain bibliographical information or if you are not able to obtain a copy of the source, you will need to record the bibliographical details accurately and thoroughly. You might be able to get by with a minimal amount of information that allows you to find the source again (if, for instance, it is available in your university library), but for sources that you may not be able to access a second time (a manuscript or early printed book in a distant library, for example), all the bibliographical information should be recorded as neatly and clearly as possible (remembering that you will need to be able to understand it at a later date), and it is usually a good idea to do this when you initially consult a source no matter how easy it may be to access it again. This information should come at the beginning of any notes that you take from or about the source so that it is obvious to which source the material you record belongs, and obvious, too, when there is a transition in your notes from one source to another.

Remember that you will need complete bibliographical information for all the sources you wish to use when you are writing your dissertation, and often there is very little time to retrace your research steps at that point. Having the correct information at hand in your notes can significantly increase your efficiency when citing or quoting source material in your dissertation and providing the bibliographical details required in your list of references.

Why Our Editing and Proofreading Services?
At Proof-Reading-Service.com we offer the highest quality journal article editing, dissertation proofreading and online proofreading services via our large and extremely dedicated team of academic and scientific professionals. All of our proofreaders are native speakers of English who have earned their own postgraduate degrees, and their areas of specialisation cover such a wide range of disciplines that we are able to help our international clientele with research editing to improve and perfect all kinds of academic manuscripts for successful publication. Many of the carefully trained members of our manuscript editing and proofreading team work predominantly on articles intended for publication in scholarly journals, applying painstaking journal editing standards to ensure that the references and formatting used in each paper are in conformity with the journal’s instructions for authors and to correct any grammar, spelling, punctuation or simple typing errors. In this way, we enable our clients to report their research in the clear and accurate ways required to impress acquisitions proofreaders and achieve publication.

Our scientific proofreading services for the authors of a wide variety of scientific journal papers are especially popular, but we also offer manuscript proofreading services and have the experience and expertise to proofread and edit manuscripts in all scholarly disciplines, as well as beyond them. We have team members who specialise in medical proofreading services, and some of our experts dedicate their time exclusively to dissertation proofreading and manuscript proofreading, offering academics the opportunity to improve their use of formatting and language through the most exacting PhD thesis editing and journal article proofreading practices. Whether you are preparing a conference paper for presentation, polishing a progress report to share with colleagues, or facing the daunting task of editing and perfecting any kind of scholarly document for publication, a qualified member of our professional team can provide invaluable assistance and give you greater confidence in your written work.

If you are in the process of preparing an article for an academic or scientific journal, or planning one for the near future, you may well be interested in a new book, Guide to Journal Publication, which is available on our Tips and Advice on Publishing Research in Journals website.

 

 



更多文章