Research Notes and How to Take Them

One of the main types of essays you will be asked to write throughout your college career will be research papers. This means that you actually have to look for information to backup what you are saying within your paper. Unfortunately, many of you might find that you are not taking good notes during your research phase and then struggle to put the paper together at the end of it. This post is here to help you with that part of the research stage. I will help you recognize what sorts of notes you should be taking, how you can take them to be better organized, and point you in a direction that will help you piece it all together.

Note taking strategies
Write.com offers basic writing advice to those in need of it. One of their articles talks about the strategy of note taking for research writing. In the article, they write:

Having a plan created around note-taking strategies allows you to conduct research in a more organized fashion. Plan ahead, and decide how you intend to approach note-taking in general. 

This is a very important step when preparing for a research paper. If you are not somewhat organize with your notes, you will be completely lost when it comes to actually putting all of your information down on paper.

Write.com's article shares three basic pieces of information that you must include in order to have all of the information that you will need:

1. Make notes about the information presented in the source - there are several ways to do so: paraphrasing, direct quoting, summaries, and personal thoughts. 
2. Create and keep track of citations as you find the sources - if you forget to write down the citation of a source you will have to hunt it down later on and that might seem an impossible task after a point; if that happens, then you are very much out of luck and may not be able to use that source if you cannot cite it properly.
3. Put in to place an organization system that will help you find your source information easily - this means that you should compile your notes in a way that lets you go through them easily and recognize what is what and where you will be able to use it in your paper.

All three of these information pieces are crucial to the research aspect of your paper. Let me shed some more light on each of them.

What to write down
When you find a useful source, you will want to make note of how it is useful and where it might be connected to your overall paper. Hopefully you have a basic idea already of what your argument is and how you hope to prove that argument; once you know this you will have the different subtopics that your sources will fall under.

So, what do you actually write down? This will depend on the information you are wanting to present. If the source says it better than you could, you might want to quote the source, but if you can put it into better wording for you paper, then you might want to take a different approach when using the information. You just have to make sure that you are giving credit where credit is due and that you are not taking these ideas and presenting them as yours when they are not.

Paraphrases and summaries
When you are paraphrasing, you will write down in your own words what the source is saying. This is very similar to summarizing, but you are following what is said more directly rather than drastically shortening what was said. Basically, paraphrasing and summarizing are the same in concept but different in application

For example, take a look at this paragraph:

Dog lovers are friendlier and more extroverted than cat lovers, who prefer to be alone. Dog lovers also tend to be more confident and dominant than cat people. (17 Basic Differences Between Dog People and Cat People)

If we were to paraphrase these two sentences, I could say that this particular article shares the idea that people who like dogs are much more outgoing than people who like cats as they prefer to be by themselves and that dog people are more prone to being comfortable with themselves and their situations than cat people.

On the other hand, if I were to summarize these two sentences I could simply say that the article shares the idea that dog lovers are better people persons than cat lovers.

Direct quotes
Direct quotes are exactly what they sound like: quotes that come out of the source that you are using. Be mindful, however, that in your paper you cannot just through in a quote without tying it in to your own text. You will have to be able to comment on what is said and show how it is relevant to your purpose.

**Side Note: Depending on the citation style that you are using, you will have to write the direct quote a specific way within your paper.

Personal thoughts
When you find a source to use, you might have some opinions about what is said or have additional insight into how that information is useful to your argument. These are great things to write down along with the source information and citation. The thoughts you have about the source might play nicely into your argument and help to make the sources more relevant to your paper.


Tracking citations
As soon as you find a source that will add credibility to your paper, be sure to write down all of the relevant citation information or create the citation right away. This will take a little extra time, but if you keep track of them as you go and note what information came from that source, you will thank yourself for avoiding a headache later on. Trust me: you do not want to have to go back and find all of the source information for the works cited or bibliography after you have put your paper together, especially if you do not remember exactly where you found the source or what search terms you used when you found it.

I recommend keeping the citation near your notes about that source. You might also want to put your collection of citations into a bibliography or works cited list as you go along. This is just a way to help save you some work at the end of your paper writing; you will have to compile the list any way. And if you decide not to use a certain source or two, you just have to delete them from your lists.

How to organize your notes
According to Hunter College's Writing Center, there are two strategies for note keeping and organization that seem to work the best: note card style and notebook style.

Note card style
Note card style involves writing your source information on index cards. You can write your parphrase, quote, personal thoughts, etc on the note card along with the citation information. This keeps all of your sources separate from each other and allows you to literally put related idea cards together so that you know what information you have.


Notebook style
When you utilize the notebook style of note organization, you should have a notebook set aside specifically for your research notes. You can use one page per source, half a page per source, or whatever organization method seems to work best for you. Just be sure that all of your sources are separated in some way so that you do not mix them up or blend them together.

Other strategies
In an age of technology, it does not always make sense to use a ton of paper for notes. So if you prefer a more paper friendly approach or you find that you take better notes on a computer, then by all means, do so! You can employ the same concepts from both the note card and notebook styles: write down all of the source information and keep it separate from your other sources. You could use different files for each source, add page breaks within a single file, utilize text boxes for separation, or whatever other system works for you.

Manage your information
There are several ways for you to manage all of the sources, information, and anything else that you need for your research and paper. You can always keep notes in a notebook or in files on your computer, but there are some online tools that can help as well. Two of the good ones are RefWorks and EndNote.

Closing remarks
I hope that this information proves helpful to you. Taking good notes and organizing them is going to make your research paper experience much better and much simpler. 

As you go through the process, let me know what works for you and what doesn't. Did you find a different method or approach that works better?