Dissertation processes break down when students can’t find or have misorganized their reading. Lack of initial organization will result in wasted time during the thesis process, and time is your most precious commodity during graduate school. This article covers the initial organization of dissertation reading and writing, while focusing on the frequently asked question, “Why should I use reference software?” While EndNote is the software I use and therefore know it most intimately, any software could work as long as it allows you to do these three things: first, help you capture and organize your notes, second, allow you to cite and build a list. of references as you type, and third, allowing you to easily change reference styles. This article discusses the three attributes of good reference software along with brief notes on how they will help you in your dissertation process.
Capture and organize notes
Beginning doctoral students rarely understand the importance of capturing every little bit of their thoughts in a database from the moment they start. The notes you take now, on the ideas you have as you read, will be invaluable later. If you don’t start a reference library early in your process, at some point you’ll need to back up and capture the ideas you’ve missed. As a high school student, I grew up in the days when people took notes on cards. We were trained to write the entire reference and then capture every idea that we found interesting and that we could use for our writing in the future. That same idea is maintained today in reference software such as EndNote. You’re doing more than capturing that reference and what you read, you’re capturing your ideas about it.
Because you’re using a database, you’ll have fields, some of which you may need and some of which you may not need for each particular type of reference. Be sure to fill in each required field each time you choose and read an article you think is worth mentioning. This can be done by electronic transfer, depending on your library, from your library’s database directly to your EndNote file. You may also consider simply typing in the necessary information, as this is often faster than electronic transfer. Never leave a reference without capturing notes about your ideas about the article in the database fields below. Why did you read this article? What did you find important about it? What ideas do you not want to forget? Be sure to answer all of these questions before closing any documentation about your reading.
Citing and referencing as you write
Scholarly work requires that we acknowledge the other authors whose work we have read and who influenced the ideas we are writing about. This is not the same as quoting them verbatim. I suggest you get into the habit of writing what you think from your own point of view, and then at the end of each paragraph, go back to your list of references and acknowledge the work of whoever added to what you just wrote. If you’re using EndNote and hopefully for other quality reference software, you’ll be able to highlight the references of the authors you want to cite and easily bring that group citation into your writing. The reference software should also simultaneously start a reference list and keep it in alphabetical order for you. This step alone saves you hours and hours of work. When you have an author who wrote multiple things in the same year, the software will even go back and add the requirement to . or b. after those appointments.
There are times when your references may change a bit. For example, you might discover that you’ve misspelled an author’s name or that you somehow need to update some of the fields in the reference. Instead of having to go back through every document you’ve ever used that citation in, you can know that simply updating the reference list when you open the document again will cause the updates. As your academic writing spans years, this will save you more time than you can now imagine.
Easily change reference styles
Your university requires that you use a particular reference style and constantly refer to that particular style manual. Your reference software does much of that work for you by keeping updates as those style guides change over time. Keep in mind that you won’t always write in the same style because academic journals use a number of different styles and you need to match your writing to the needs or guidelines of the publications you write for. Again, EndNote, and hopefully other reference software, will let you change the style and then update the document to reflect that change.
There are other specific reasons once you start writing a doctoral thesis why you’ll want to have all the things you’ve read captured in a reference software. As an example, a comprehensive database will allow you to easily classify your reading into topics for your bed review and write each topic area in your own voice. The ways you can use reference software during the dissertation or thesis writing process are covered in other articles. Meanwhile, in short, a beginning Ph.D. student will save many hours if they start early to use reference software to capture and organize their notes, cite and reference what they read as they write, and allow them to easily change reference styles. .
