Workflow for writing/research

The bit after you've written your essay is always boring, prone to error and quite frankly a nightmare.

Previously I have written stuff like so:

1. Gather information. This is largely from doing database searches (OVID, OTDbase, Cinahl, Pubmed) etc.. as well as a hunt around the library's books for relevant literature
2. Read some articles/books and note down some points..
3. Gather my points and categorise
4. Plan where all the bits go
5. Write the thing
6. re-write the thing.. (!)
7. 2 hours before the deadline sort out the references and citations. Usually this is followed by:
8. "Aaarrgh! Where the heck did I get (Digby, Poncebury-Smythe, Smashey, Nicey 1996) from!!" After a quick look through my random bits of paper with the references written down I fail to find it. Damn. I have to delete the reference (or just hope nobody looks for the the citation in the reference list - which they usually do)!!

I've written a quick overview of what I now do. If it's a bit over your head dont fret! Just have a play with some of the tools that interest you - most importantly citeULike. The more people that use it the better it becomes! (CiteULike aims to do more than just "bookmark citations" for a good overview read the FAQ)

Ok, so after a few cock-ups and with the help of some technology it now goes like this:

1. Gather information. Use the databases above as noted. But, instead of just writing down on scraps of paper the references I "bookmark" the citations. To do this I use CiteULike - the brilliant online citation manager that allows you to gather your references in one place from a whole bunch of places. It works with the big sites: BMJ (and sister sites- Im working on improving this to work across the entire highwire press sites (they look really similar to the BMJ system)), PubMed (some call this medline), Nature etc.. (NB: its currently lacking the ability to bookmark references from OTDBase because OTDBase has a password restricted system - pester OTDBase to get it working with citeulike if you care!!)
   I wont go through the entire citeULike process - this is really to give you a quick overview. For a nice detailed tutorial see this page

   So fist step is to locate your article, e.g. via pubmed:
   
   Next click on your "Post to citeulike" bookmark, and add some tags to help you remember the article/citation:
   
   Click the Save button and you will be returned to your pubmed article. To find your citation again just go to recent articles or find it by the tag (e.g. falls)
   
   There you will find the full citation (as much as citeulike can work out) including citation and any useful links
   
   NB: anyone other than you can view the citation like this

2. Read the articles.
   Note that if your articles are to be found on the web then you can add the pdf to citeulike reference (see last screenshot above). This means easy access to all your articles where ever you are! Eventually the aim is for citeulike to do fulltext searches of your stored PDF's (for now I recommend using google scholar!!)
3. Gather my points and categorise.
4. Plan where all the bits go.
   Im a big fan of lists. To work out what I want and where I make a big list of top-level sections, then add bits as I go. The web can help here.. You can either use backpack or their free service - ta-da lists. Its not that great since you can't (or at least I can't figure out how) do heirarchical lists (lists with sub-lists. For something with a little more oompf I use omnioutliner. Check it out. Its cool (but its only on the mac)
5. Write the thing.
   Ok so you now have your references in citeulike - and you've probably adding to it as you go along. Nice. Now wouldnt it be good if you could just write your essay and as you write a citation it would just reference the correct one from citeulike as you go along. Well, sadly thats not easily done. The technology hasnt been made yet - however you can nearly do it using a bibliography manager such as Sente (my personal choice), Endnote, or Procite*. Download the script attached, run it, and it will add all your lovely citeulike references into Sente. You can keep doing this as you add stuff to citeulike. With Sente you can type your essay as you go and it will keep track of your references. It works like iTunes on the mac)
   Heres a quick overview of what Sente looks like:
   
   Ok so your writing your essay and you enter a citation - go to the menu and select "Insert Citation"
   
   Find your reference and select it:
   
   Done! And you can later add a Reference list. Whats really cool is that you edit the reference in Sente it will then update the reference list. Cool huh? Sente can also work with URL's (I have updated the Harvard style to do this)
   
6. re-write the thing.. (!)
   Not a problem anymore - use the tracking feature of Word though - makes your life a little easier :)
7. References.
   In word you can control sente to write you a nice bibliography. If you are using the Harvard style you will need to download my Style from third street's forum (its here to help you out) and install the script. Once run you should find your citeulike references in Sente ready to use! Nice.

* Sente has a few bugs I'll admit, but endnote is soooo huge it will eat your computer and a lot of the features are overkill for simple essays. Sente does the trick in my opinion. (It can work with Pages and Mellel as well as MS word by the way). Note that another clever feature of Sente is that it can search for items in your Unversity library and pubmed - allowing you to do all of your searching from one place.