How I use Zotero + Scrivener to organize sources and write my dissertation
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- Опубликовано: 14 окт 2024
- A quick overview of my process for finding research sources, organizing them using Zotero, and plugging into Scrivener to begin building chapter 1 of the EdD dissertation.
Zotero: first 8 minutes
Scrivener: final 6 minutes
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Just stopped by to say WOW and Thank you! I am not an established writer, yet a desire to write a non-fiction book (first one of many) has brought me to the need of an extensive research for the topics I want to cover, so here I am, learning how to use reference tools. My old reference library looked like Firefox bookmarks file with 960+ links. Cleaned up version is around 200 links as for most of those I already forgot what I saved them for...
So again, here I am learning how to do the research properly and build the research reference library from the ground up. I wish I’d knew this years ago...
You go, Nik! I'm so glad you're going to be writing. Being organized can help. Everything else is just daily dedication and work. I wish you all the best!!
Thanks,I learned a lot about this topic that interest me.
Great video! Especially if you did in one take. I was hoping to learn how to move from Zotero to Scrivener. Are you just cutting and pasting? Or is there some sort of import or export procedure involved?
I don't know of an automated process, though I wonder if someone better at programming than I am could write a script. It takes me three clicks: 1) go to Zotero and right-click the item I want to include as a citation or reference; 2) use the resulting menu to select "Export as Bibliography" (Zotero remembers what documentation system you're using and retains that setting); 3) go back to Scrivener and paste the reference wherever it needs to go.
I usually hand-write my own in-text citations since APA, MLA, etc only require 1-2 authors at this point; any more and you just need lead author's last name and "et al." so I didn't bother using Zotero to generate those. I always used the export method (3 steps I just described) to get references into my bibliography, double-checking each one as I imported it to make sure that Zotero had grabbed all the article information properly. Some journal home pages set up their code weird and it can confuse Zotero on things like the article's page numbers or swapping the first/last name of the authors. Annoying but not the end of the world.
This seriously helps!
Very nice Lori. Thanks
Super helpful, thank you very much!
I find your process here very helpful for doing the necessary inductive work to clarify a literature on a topic. You seem to be gathering material, classifying in folders by subject, and building themes from emergent ideas. I find Zotero very helpful for this. My question is how to continue this inductive process (or, grounded theory) in Scrivener. Can I work from the bottom up--taking the notes/citations to create the outline for a literature review?
Hey, Daniel! I'm working on my ch 2 right now, so I need to make a new video about that. My goal is to use my Zotero folders to help me read related articles in chunks -- like, sit down on a Saturday afternoon and read 10+ articles on a similar theme, probably working from oldest to newest.
I expect to sort articles further into deeper subfolders, and I expect to throw out some of the articles I've collected in my initial search. I've been playing with using tags in Zotero to help with the sorting, but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort yet.
As to Scrivener -- I'm thinking that my reading in a sub-topic (aided by my "piles" in Zotero) will let me jot down ideas and connections as they come to mind. I am planning on using sub-pages in Scrivener to help me organize, at least in the big 3-4 themes, as I build a lit review.
Once I've moved into collecting qualitative data, I hope Scrivener's search, snapshot, and summary tools will help me wrangle some of that data, but I know a lot of Qual researchers use other tools. *shrugs* I'll get there when I get there. :D
Thanks for asking! What are you researching?
@@ljr634 I'm working on a visual ethnography of poverty, focus on homelessness, using field notes and images compiled over a thirty year period from Seattle (1989-91), Israel (2006-12), France (2012-8), and Olympia WA (2018-9). Currently, I am building a literature review around the themes of urbanicity, mental illness, and homelessness (proper). I am using Zotero extensively (I have used several other platforms such as Endnote) to manage a LOT of pdfs and citations in sort of a two stage process: extract annotations and then distill the annotations. Like you, I can cover between 10-25 articles a day in detail (of course, with each new batch to review, holes in the emergent cognitive structure are found requiring more searches to plug gaps). It's a grounded/inductive process in time: I have a general idea, topic if you will, that becomes in focus (pun intended) as my Zotero library grows.
My field work technique, evolved over a few years, entails carrying a deck of file cards on which I write an idea or an observation to be filled in when I return to my base. So, now I have this large bibliography and stacks of field notes. So, I have to build structure from the ground up as I go: outlines, battle plans, structures, et al., are somewhat fluid. I need a technical process that will allow me to arrange and rearrange all these data into higher order derivatives, if you will, that then can be structured into coherent chapters with sections and sub-sections of text AND images (not merely graphics).
The only problem I have with Zotero is that it cannot handle, as we correspond, with images in jpeg form that make up a critical part of my work. I can work around that if I must; however, in generating a grounded theory, it would be nice to have a means of moving from the micro to the macro in such a way that permits me to see the whole as it emerges from the parts.
I have found that the tags and related links in Zotero to be of immense help to this process. The key is PATIENCE. I collect, annotate, and tag as I go. Then I return to the collection a second (or as many times as it takes) to make the related links between the works in the bibliography within and across catalogs and sub-catalogs. Of course, with each iteration, knowledge gaps become apparent as I shout and argue with the authors (out loud at my poor, enduring, laptop), which formulate new questions and subsequent searches. Of course, there must be limits imposed; mine are set when searches in engines like Google Scholar begin to turn up nonsense or repeat citations. This is either because the process has encountered the "edge of the world" or the free access world of internet knowledge has yet to upload current citations. Class boundaries and barriers are critical themes in my research: the egregious price per PDF is a glaring example, which could be a fruitful topic FOR ANOTHER TIME.
WOW. Thank you for answering. Your video and response are excellent. For one, I would love to see more of your process as you work from ground up. Yeah, I know you have the top down imposed structure of Department Writing of Gradual School: a necessary exercise under which I slaved from my dissertation in the age of snail mail. Even so, you have to still have to start at the ground floor of collecting "sea shells," arranging them in boxes, grouping the boxes, etc. Please make some videos to document what you are doing, the choices you are making as you go, and how build from the pieces to an emergent structure.
Kudos to you for sharing your process. I, for one, have benefited if only in this exchange. I hope you are able to construct a following of like minded individuals to help us all. Thank you.
@@danieljackson654 That's fantastic research, and I imagine you are seeing some incredible connections as you assemble so many elements. I think visual material is vastly underrepresented in research, yet we communicate so much through what we see and what we show to others -- and that's 10x more true now that social media has people living a visible "public life" they've carefully curated for other people's consumption.
I find it hard to organize visual stuff. I've been a creative director in the past, and nothing quite replaces pinning everything up on a board so you can SEE for yourself a larger emergent whole, an ambiance, a feeling. Digitally, I can get close using Pinterest -- making a private board and uploading individual images. You can drag pins around to get some sense of organization. This breaks down, though, once you're seeing more images than your screen can view at once.
I've also used mindmapping tools like Popplet because you can insert images into the bubbles and drag them around into piles or draw connecting lines. It works for a mood board or for project communication with an artist or graphic designer. If you have a sense of the "piles," you could create individual Popplets or Pinterest sub-boards for minor themes.
I wish you all the best in your research.
That was very helpful, and interesting. Thank you.
I'm glad!
Really helpful, can you make a video regarding writing PhD thesis using Zotero and Scrivener in detail?
What information do you think would help you?
Very helpful video. Is there any way to have Scrivener automatically create an in-text citation or an article that you are referencing in Zotero? I understand that Scrivener works well with EndNote but I prefer to use Zotero. This would be super helpful if there is a way to make it work.
I wish! I believe most people separate out the work of the citation manager from the framework of Scrivener, but there might be an integration I'm not aware of. I'm not a programmer, so I don't know how to pull in data .... but I did find this forum post at Literature & Latte that addresses the question: www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=51434
I will say that the process of copying the in-text citation info from Zotero (right-click, Create Bibliography...., choose in-text or reference) and pasting it into Scrivener in the right spot takes me maybe 5 seconds. Given that my Zotero database probably holds a few thousand files at this point, I don't mind keeping the two programs' files entirely separate.
Also, most APA-style in-text citations are just authors, year, page, so I quickly write those by hand. If it's the first time in the dissertation that you're citing an author, you list all authors (up to 7), then you can use et al for future in-text references to that same source. I did a thorough "read just to fix in-text citations" run on chapters 1-3 to sort this out recently.
@@ljr634 Thanks for the insight. I'll definitely follow this model. Thanks for making such a helpful video. Working on chapters 1-3 of my dissertation. Wish me luck!!
@@gregoryclarke3857 YOU CAN DO THIS!
Thank you Lori, you are a great communicator. Just wondering why you don't use the Scrivener metadata affordance for "footnotes" or "endnotes" to store your bibliographic reference as linked to the part of your paper that contains the quoted citation? Instead, looks as though you have decided to place all references in a bespoke Scrivener document (you've named "References").. Thoughts? Comments? Reasons?
What a great question! I will look more into Zotero's metadata options.
The reason I was using a separate References list in Scrivener - especially at this point in the writing - was due to how fluid a reference list tends to be early in a project. I've often had to review my draft against the reference list at key submission points for faculty, especially after making heaving revisions, to ensure that I'm providing references only for what I've actually cited in-text.
The Scrivener document is opened in a separate viewer, but it's just one of several sections in the paper itself. (You can open any subsection in a separate viewer for easy reading or reference.)
Cool! I wish I’d had this video to refer to this 4 years ago when I was working on my dissertation.
May I ask how you approach 3rd party edits and comments when using Scrivener? My co-authors always use the “suggest edits” and comments functions on word or Google docs, and I’m not sure how to integrate that into a Scrivener-based writing process. Between that and the complicated reference management issues it’s kept me from using Scrivener as much as I’d like.
You're asking an EXCELLENT question re: commenting and collaboration. I ended up with a very old-school and somewhat inefficient approach, but it worked for me: because my chapters were due over a series of several months (with clear checkpoints of what was due), I would do the bulk of my drafting and individual revising (and snapshots of sections before doing massive changes) in Scrivener. When the chapter was as done as it would get for that deadline, I exported to Word and did revisions and comments in Word. I often wasn't asked to overhaul large portions and I have written professionally in other settings, so people weren't giving me copy edits all that often. For that reason, I was more in control of my edits.
If I had to make big changes, I went back to Scrivener and reworked the section, then copy/pasted from Scrivener into Word to share for feedback. Like I said, kinda janky, but also - not really that big of a deal to paste a drafted section into the working document that my advisor could keep up with (which lives in a Google Drive folder, at his request).
Little changes are something that I may or may not keep up with in Scrivener. If a section is essentially "done" in content, I consider the Word doc version that I share with my advisor to be the up-to-date and final form. There are small differences between my Scrivener chapters and their final form, but -- for me -- the goal of using Scrivener isn't for its ability to output new docs each time, but to give me a better space for drafting large hunks of text when I'm doing so much thinking, organizing, and rewriting.
I had to make massive changes to almost all of my chapters this fall due to a shift in methodology. I reworked those sections in Scrivener first because it just makes drafting and editing so much easier.
@@ljr634 This makes a lot of sense. Thanks for taking the time to comment, not to mention for sharing your wisdom and expertise on this channel!
tanks from paris
Thanks Lori...which one more effective than the Mendeley plugin into Word, would you like to compare it
I don't use the Mendeley plugin, so I can't say.
Could you explain how to do endnotes using Turabian style citation and not in-text citations as with APA. Thanks.
I don't use a footnoted style for my dissertation (though I wish I did, honestly) but I did find this which might help you:
www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14058
you talk too much, i would suggest you reshoot and be precise. thanks
lol didn't make it for YOU in particular, and you're welcome to make a new video that provides the same info, but better. :)