Use this template to guide you. It is by no means original and is adapted from others too. Adapt as you see fit.
Title in Header
Tag Authors and Topic
Highlighting in paper to orient myself, either physically or via PDF readers. The highlighting of sentences will aim to summarise the topic of the paragraph.
There tends to be more highlighting in the abstracts and top-most paragraphs. The first section usually begins with a literature review or summarises the history of the topic.
Some of the sentences highlighted will also be notes, but not every note will be something I’ve highlighted (if that makes sense).
Always add the footnote to the end of the quote, detail matters.
Highlighting will the article will be important for later reading in being able to go and scan the article quickly.
Note-taking, either taking from highlighting into Evernote or some other cloud-based, synchronizable package, for things I might be able to use directly in my own work.
Add a ‘To Read’ at the end of every note — a further bibliography to chase up.
It’s always useful to discover people’s methods for extracting the work they need from a massive body of literature. It almost goes without saying always highlight for your own intended research question or purpose. This brings to me Goal-oriented learning: your stamina is a product of your motivation. It is therefore always recommended to have a goal in mind when reading, which will help you distill (and remember, if only some through constant revisitation of the notes) the salient parts of the article(s).
If necessary, create two (or more) sets of notes with different objectives and questions for the same journal article.
A ‘First pass reading’ will do to get a basic grip on the article. Answer these questions if needed:
What are the aims of the author?
What are the main contributions (new or additional developments to the field)?
What problems does it attempt to solve?
Is this a paper I’m actually interested in reading more of?
And finally, as an overview:
First: skim for interest, cursory look at references.
Second: Includes such questions such as Are their claims validated by their evidence? What is the nature of their evidence? Are their biases in the evidence?
Third: Understanding the terms and the methodology.
