Comments on: How to Build a Paper Research Wiki

By: Estara

Estara — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 16:38:15 +0000

Great system! I think I’m going to start learning how to implement that for my senior high research paper, so that when I’m actually in college I will have the system down good!

By: Study Hacks

Study Hacks — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 13:50:29 +0000

I was wondering what you thought the advantages of a wiki were over say creating a directory structure and tex documents.

When working on mathematics research, I do use latex documents — one per potential problem — as my central organization tool. As you note, the ability to easily render math is essential for this specific type of work.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:05:43 +0000

Hey Cal! Great post here. I have one question though. I assume that due to your math background you are familiar with LaTex. I just started grad school and am brainstorming some ideas for paper tracking. I was wondering what you thought the advantages of a wiki were over say creating a directory structure and tex documents.

I like tex because eventually that is how all my papers and writings will be formatted and published. I also enjoy a good afternoon of vim and tex writing as well, but I see some of the positives about using a wiki. Most notably the fact that you can easily view and navigate the content. What argument would you provide in choosing the wiki over something like a good latex set up? I would also be interested to see your response to the comparison of using Evernote rather than a wiki as well.

Thanks for any comments and suggestions!

By: R.

R. — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:44:43 +0000

Thanks for this wiki post, this is great! I have been all over the place with my dissertation notes and all the word docs I use to house them, and this sounds like a great way to organize and structure things better. I’m not at all familiar with wiki, but I’m going to go give this a try. Thank you!

By: heddie

heddie — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:21:15 +0000

your blog is an answer to a most desperate prayer. I’m a 3rd year “grad stud” working on a phd in biomedical sciences. I passed my orals in august, got married two weeks later and nothing in the lab has worked since… almost daily i pound my head against the wall asking why nothing works. i now have a few ideas how i might improve-but any additional ideas would be greatly appreciated.

By: Project Management

Project Management — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:04:34 +0000

Thanks for the great step by steps on how to create a research paper wiki. Well written.

By: casper de tello

casper de tello — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:20:23 +0000

I’m off Wikis altogether and on to Onenote! Just curious if anyone else has tried to apply the above system to onenote, and how it worked out?

For those of us stuck with windows, I can’t imagine a more perfect solution. In fact, I had no idea what to do with it until I started adding structure as per the description in the above in the post. Your wiki-like onenote pages because a virtual sandbox for ideas, but the nuts and bolts of organizing a ’spine’ of citations and concepts garnered from texts can be done in a quote table supporting it.

Since its all integrated into MS Office, you can have your database cake and eat it (or your wiki at least), too.

By: Organizing a literature review « Protoscholar

Organizing a literature review « Protoscholar — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 06:44:01 +0000

[…] useful you had to be very familiar with the literature in question. More recently, I ran across the idea of using a wiki to organize thoughts and materials. This idea seemed promising, but I don’t know wiki […]

By: casper de tello

casper de tello — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:55:49 +0000

At risk of seeming like a blog-hog, I’m posting again to give a little dirt on TiddlyWiki, which I found a better solution to PBworks. Wanted to illustrate what Keith posted about not needing to be “tech savvy,” because I surely ain’t:

My two step / two second solution to Tiddly-research-Wiki creation:
1. Write a wiki-wide TOC (table of contents) in the main menu on the front - and only - initial page,
2. Create the corresponding pages by adding double brackets as you write the page names inside the TOC.

That’s it, ya’ got yerself a wiki.

Btw, yes, PBworks can work this way too, but, it was significantly slower because you’re online with a delay (up to 7 seconds on my count), and it had too many clicks to get to the same point as Tiddly. If you further arm yourself with a cheat sheet here [http://www.linuxbeacon.com/doku.php/cheatsheets], and a FAQ there [http://www.giffmex.org/twfortherestofus.html], both for absolute beginners since there’s a lot of documentation, you can even do advanced things right off the bat (text formatting, printing, tables).

Hope that helps,
/Cas

By: casper de tello

casper de tello — Thu, 28 May 2009 16:08:49 +0000

I haven’t really seen the scenario where it would help.

Noticed that tagging a PB page ‘template’ makes it a template next time you use it, which is handy.

Thanks for the wonderful post, btw. I think this ‘node-based’ wiki approach (embedding a link page, and adding the links/pages as you go along) let’s you, the researcher, bring the complexity to the project, rather than imposing a structure a priori on your work. The underlying organizing principle being radically simple, but not simplistic.(Hearkens to mind an another MIT figure on language).

Can’t wait to see your ideas on the doctoral dissertation, but hurry my defense is coming up : )