Again, probably more for humanities than science...

Any tips on organising your reading / note taking? I've just spent a surprisingly productive morning printing off loads of relevant articles and chapters. Now they are all neatly piled up all over my floor. Any tips on the best way to organise what will now be days of reading?

ta

Hmmm...I can JUST remember the days when my living room floor wasn't covered with random articles...

Look at the titles and trying to prioritise what you think will be the most useful. Although, I literally just picked up whatever was on top of the pile and read it (once I had a better idea of what I was going to write, I could be more selective and categorised stuff). I underlined the important bits and wrote down any points I thought were relevant, then wrote a brief summary of the main points at the end.

Quick tip: I make notes of the page numbers of arguments/quotes I think I might cite as I read (makes endnotes/footnotes a LOT easier when you come to write)

I tried to sort them into top-headings; at the beginning I just used very rough categories "Introduction, Method ..." During the last year I came up with a finer structure every month or so and moved the papers I had read accordingly. This way I hope that during writing up I can just pick the folder 2.Chapter, 3 Sub-heading and have everything relevant together (I add ideas, graphs, free writing texts etc as well) - additionally I put them into the reference manager and copied in the abstract and made up some key words. However, I am not really systematic enough with it and therefore I need the back-up of my paper system

I tend to assign every piece of reading to one of the chapters of my thesis and read it whenever I'm working on that particular chapter. But then it's not so rigid and some readings fit into more than 1 chapter, or I discover new readings after I've been working on the chapter they should belong to etc.

I normally read on screen rather than print out, but what I do is skim the paper to see if it's relevant. If it is I add it to RefWorks, archive a copy as a PDF, then read the paper through, posting a brief summary to my blog before I forget what it was about. If it really is just a summary, I sometimes make it a public post but if the summary contains some ideas, I tend to make it a private post. Mainly because I'm still in the early stages and I live in hope that my thoughts will turn out to be important later

Hi. I am about 8 months into my PhD. The best advice I can give is a good filing system and data base/ spead sheet. I was so confused abouut what I had read or if I had copies of articles. I use a spread sheet with headings: that include if I have a copy electronic/ print/ both; what type of study; when I got it; when I read it; did I reference it.
Take time designing this, then when you wnat to check up on something you have a table, and you dont have to read it all - but be able to find it all.
Also ENDNOTE ENDNOTE ENDNOTE....... don't evenr try work without referencing software - it may do what i descriv=bed above.. I just like my own table too.