A Note on Systematic Notetaking

One of the defining characteristics of academic research, across every discipline, is the review of existing literature. Generally speaking, if our written work does not demonstrate sufficient knowledge of existing literature within the appropriate field(s), it is rejected as insufficiently researched, or at best is considered ‘undercooked’ and in need of significant development.

A review of literature (often explicitly called ‘Literature Review’ in some fields, which stands as an independent section or chapter) is not simply a list of publications. Rather, it is a sustained discussion, sometimes several thousand words in length (e.g. for a PhD thesis), about the history of work in your field and cognate fields, especially work that relates to your own research question or research topic. The review of literature includes theoretical developments and methodological advances, as well as decisive moments in the scholarship of your subject, and will generally review all recent important publications–all of which justifies your research project as a logical next step within your field.

To create such a discussion, however, you need to be well versed in the literature of your field of research. This means not only understanding the history of your field, but also having spent time thinking about and seeing various connections between and across studies. Importantly, it means thinking critically about the work; seeing where errors or omissions were made, evaluating whether interpretations are justifiable based on the evidence advanced, and being able to articulate why research choices were well made and/or why they were problematic. 

As a general tip, we encourage you to think about making systematic notes on a piece of literature as a project. This way of thinking we owe to Robert Talbert (mathematics, Grand Valley State University) and his blog post on this.

In order to be able to craft a comprehensive review of literature you need to make notes—lots of them—about every journal article, chapter, or book you read in the pursuit of your research question. A professional researcher will do this systematically, in a way that enables critical evaluation of each piece of work, and such that their notes are ordered and searchable for future use.

The following is advice about how to do just that.

PLEASE NOTE: If you are using referencing software such as EndNote, Mendeley, or Zotero, be advised that these applications always produce exactly what you tell them to produce. This means, if you give them problematic data, they will produce problematic citations. Usually this will be because you have citation data input was incorrect, but sometimes the software will produce a variation of the a citation style different to what you expect. But the machine always does what you tell it.

If you are using such software (in fact, any software), it is your responsibility to check that all computer-generated citations are correct and appropriate for the context you are writing in. Remember: you are not a gadget.

Let us begin with a general overview of the process:

1. Read the item and take comprehensive notes
2. Distill your notes into a short SCMAR overview
   (instructions for this below)
3. Create a smooth-flowing, discursive version of your SCMAR overview–this will become your annotation.

Simple, right?

Read stuff and make notes, distill what you’ve noted into an overview,
create a discursive summary based on that overview.

IMPORTANT–each step involves both reading and writing. This is vital.

Always. Be. Writing.

Now let’s look at each step the process in more detail.

STEP 1–Read the item and take comprehensive notes

While everyone will develop their own specific system for taking notes, our work leads us to understand effective and sustainable literature note creation to follow something like the following procedure:

1. Start by writing out the complete bibliographical details of the item before you do anything else. Get in the habit of doing this perfectly, in accordance with your primary referencing style (the style you default to).
2. Note the claims made in the abstract and particularly in the introduction. You may wish to flip to the discussion/conclusion sections and see whether the claims at the end are the same. You might be surprised how often the beginning and end of a paper do not line up.
3. As you read through the article, make notes about what is being claimed or argued, as well as what you think about it. Part of your role as a researcher is to ‘listen’ to the discourse of your field and help correct it where you see a problem.
4. Note what evidence/data is being used and how it was collected (including how it was selected, obtained, cleaned, and analyzed). Where this is not clear, be sure to make a note to this effect, including comment on whether you think this undermines the claims of the text.
5. Note which theoretical frameworks are invoked in order to understand evidence/data. Where this is not clear, be sure to make a note to this effect, but give your best account of what theoretical framework(s) seems to be in play.
6. Take quotations where necessary, and always include a page number. You should also include a page number whenever you summarize or comment on a specific claim or section of the text. Never forget to include page numbers in your notes; they will help you return to sections of text in the future.
7. Whenever you think of something while reading the text which leads to comment that is not summary or quotation, indicate this with some kind of visual signal that this is your reflective thinking in response to reading the text (Alex uses an asterisk (“*”) in his notes; Jack normally signifies this with italics or other visually prominent formatting). This could include rhetorical questions, thought bubbles, tangents, or any other variety of piff™. At this stage, you are simply thinking onto the page. When you think onto the page, you are engaged in something called “freewriting”, which is one of the most powerful ways of organizing your thoughts and finding new ideas (see Peter Elbow’s discussions on this).

8. While there is much flexibility in the method described below, we strongly suggest you ask most of the following questions about each piece of academic writing you read.

   1. Were the methods and/or claims explicitly articulated?
   2. What claims do the authors *say* they have made?
   3. What claims did the authors *actually* make?
   4. How, or in what way, are the claims made? What are the methods the authors use to arrive at their claims? (Tip: here you are thinking about epistemology.)
   5. How well do the claims align with the methods? Are the methods appropriate for the claims?
   6. f. What data were curated/created/used? How were the data collected? Was the collection method suitable and sufficient?
   7. What theoretical frameworks were employed to make the argument for the claims? For example, in the statement “If theory X and data Y are true, Z must also be true”, the claim Z relies on theoretical framework X, without it Z may not be true.
   8. How convincing is the argument? The collection and representation of data or primary source evidence is not sufficient for an argument in academic work; there must be analysis and argument.
9. When finished reading the article/book, make further reflective notes which briefly summarize your thoughts about the text overall. Did the authors succeed in what they intended? Was what they were trying to convey clear? Was the argument convincing?
10. When making these final reflections, you may sometimes find that they are not brief. This is good. If you feel the ideas flowing, keep writing. Some of your most important thoughts will occur as you freewrite in response to other material.

If you get in the habit of taking notes on everything you read, driven by such questions, not only will you soon develop a significant library of personal reflections, but you will also get into the habit of thinking about how your own research work might be evaluated in such a way. In a perfect world, this means that you will habitually produce research that is well designed and well argued, and which uses appropriate methods for whatever question you want to pursue. You will become the type of researcher who anticipates critical questions, meaning you will always design research to be robust in the face of such questions.

Remember, excellence is a habit.

**STEP 2–Distill your notes into a short SCMAR overview**

Now it’s time to turn your comprehensive notes into a more concise, systematized summary. You should use a consistent formula for every single item that you read.

You can use your own system, but we suggest the following elements:

• Summary—Summary of the article/chapter/book in 1-2 sentences. Be concise.
• Claims—Identify and articulate the claims made in the text. Mention whether the claims are explicit or not.
• Methods & data—Briefly explain the evidence/data used in the text, and the methods by which the data selected/obtained/cleaned, and the methodological tools with which data were analyzed. Include mention of any theoretical frameworks used, whether these are implicit or explicit.
• Argumentation—Evaluate how well the claims of the text are supported by the evidence and argumentation advanced in the text.
• Reflection—Include any additional reflections in response to the text. At a minimum you should summarize what you think of the text, but you can also include much longer reflections if the text has given you ideas or prompted new questions.

 
STEP 3–Create a smooth-flowing, discursive version of your SCMAR overview

With this structured note on a text, you should then be able to create a discursive version in which you describe and evaluate the text, thus creating your ‘annotation’. Set yourself a constraint for this text–say 200 words to summarize and evaluate the text. What you produce will look something like an abstract, but it will be an abstract of your thinking and response to the text. You will not be able to capture everything in 200 words, so spend time working out the best way to summarize and evaluate the piece.

BONUS!–Reading notes, SCMAR overviews, and discursive annotations are valuable

Reading literature is high value work for researchers. Don’t skimp on it. In fact, treat a book or journal article like a project. Break reading literature down into manageable tasks (chapters, sections, etc.) and treat each of the above steps as a form of productive output: reading notes, SCMAR overview, and discursive annotation. Each will have value for you.

When it comes to needing to write something for other readers, with a systematic notetaking approach to literature notes you will have already done much of the heavy lifting.

For example, say you are writing a paper on X. And let’s say you read and have made systematic notes, per above, for 30 journal articles on X and cognate topics. When it comes time to put together the Introduction/Background section(s) you have a whole library of your own twice-distilled notes on the literature from which you can draw. Simply make yourself a little flowchart of how the literature fits together for you: tell the story of the research that has come before you and that leads to your research. E.g. ‘Authors A and B looked at X and found Y. However, Author C looked at Z, which relates to X, but found Q. While Authors D and E also found Y with regards to X, they pointed out the need for understanding of Q. In this study, I look at Q in X...’ and so on. You will find that you will refer to your discursive annotations frequently, but that your SCMAR overviews and reading notes will both be very handy for when you want to go into detail on a particular issue in a text (e.g. critiquing a specific analytical choice). Dig down into them and paraphrase accordingly–it will be easy, because your annotations will refer to topics summarized your SCMARs, and your SCMARs will point to places in your reading notes (and pages in the text itself). And should you need it, your reading notes will point directly to pages (or equivalent) in the text so you can go direct to the source, if needed.

Pro-tip: paraphrase your own notes to flesh out your writing. To do this, instead of copying your notes into a project, paraphrase from your own notes into your project notes. That way, your notes remain clean for future projects to draw from. That is, seek to be able to re-use your literature research!

Remember those thought bubbles and tangents you noted, marked by an asterisk or the like? Those will be super handy when it comes to pointing out problems in the literature that you think your research can help resolve. That’s why it’s important to Always. Be. Writing; especially while reading the work of your colleagues. Those think-writing notes, which you might end up turning into the beginnings of your own evergreen notes (see [Andy Matuschak](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes)) are gold. They can be part of your creative input to the discourse of your research area. Your contribution to the conversation that is your field. Your voice echoing from the giants’ shoulders.