research articles note

Research note

• Extensions or updates to previously published research
• The reporting of additional controls 
• Short descriptions of research projects that did not provide publishable results but represent valuable information regarding protocol and data collection
• Additions to established (software) tools and experimental or computational methods, e.g. new functionality of user interface, improvements in performance or the release on a new platform
• Replication studies
• Null results
• Data management plans

Authors must clearly acknowledge any work upon which they are building, both published and unpublished. 

Manuscripts reporting results of a clinical trial must conform to CONSORT 2010 guidelines. Authors of randomized controlled trials should submit a completed CONSORT checklist alongside their manuscript, available at  www.consort-statement.org .

Please note that pooled analyses of selected published research and bibliometric analyses will not be considered. Studies reporting descriptive results from a single institution or region will only be considered if analogous data have not been previously published in a peer reviewed journal and the conclusions provide distinct insights that are of relevance to a regional or international audience.

BMC Research Notes does not consider systematic reviews or meta-analyses. These should be published as full research articles in one of our BMC Series sister journals.  Additional criteria apply if your manuscript describes a software tool or data management plan. Please click on the respective link below to view these. These manuscripts should be submitted as a research note.

• Data management plan

Image integrity and standards Cropped gels and blots can be included in the main text if it improves the clarity and conciseness of the presentation. In such cases, the cropping of the blot must be clearly evident and must be mentioned in the figure legend. Corresponding uncropped full-length gels and blot must be included in the supplementary files. These uncropped images should indicate where they were cropped, be labelled as in the main text and placed in a single supplementary figure. The manuscript's figure legends should state that 'Full-length blots/gels are presented in Supplementary Figure X'. Further information can be found under 'Digital image integrity' which are detailed on our  Standards of Reporting  page.

Data sharing BMC Research Notes strongly supports open research, including transparency and openness in reporting. Further details of our Data availability policy can be found on the journal's About  page.

BMC Research Notes  strongly encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible. Please see Springer Nature’s  data repository guidance . Where a widely established research community expectation for data archiving in public repositories exists, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. A list of data where deposition is required, with the appropriate repositories, can be found on the  Editorial Policies Page .

Authors who need help depositing data may wish to contact our  Research Data Support Helpdesk . The use of the service is optional and does not imply or guarantee that a manuscript will be accepted.

Preparing your manuscript

The information below details the section headings that you should include in your manuscript and the information required within each section. For a one-page summary of what a research note article should look like, please click here .

Please ensure you adhere to the word limits for research notes:

• Abstract: 200 words
• Introduction, main text and limitations together: 2000 words

List of abbreviation, declarations, references, figures, figure headings, figure legends, tables, table headings and table legends do not count towards the above stated word limits.

Please note that your manuscript must include a ‘Declarations’ section including all of the subheadings (please see below for more information).  For all research involving human subjects, written informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16). BMC Research Notes does not consider research where only verbal informed consent has been obtained.

Please limit the number of tables and figures in your manuscript to 3 in order to be consistent with a note article type. Additional figures and/or tables can be included as supplementary files.

The title page should:

• Present a title that includes a clear description of what the manuscript reports
• If a collaboration group should be listed as an author, please list the group name as an author. If you would like the names of the individual members of the group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please include this information in the “Acknowledgements” section in accordance with the instructions below
• Indicate the corresponding author

The abstract should not exceed 200 words. Please minimize the use of abbreviations and do not cite references in the abstract. The abstract must include the following separate sections:

• Objective: The purpose and objective of the research presented.
• Results: A brief summary of the main findings.

If the data presented is a single observation or the side product of another research project then authors should state this in the abstract under objective.

Professionally produced Visual Abstracts BMC Research Notes will consider visual abstracts. As an author submitting to the journal, you may wish to make use of services provided at Springer Nature for high quality and affordable visual abstracts where you are entitled to a 20% discount. Click here to find out more about the service, and your discount will be automatically be applied when using this link.

Three to ten keywords representing the main content of the article.

Introduction

The introduction should be brief and provide the motivation/objective for the work presented in the manuscript, e.g.

• Where does the data come from?
• Why was the data obtained?

If the data presented is a single observation or the side product of another research project then authors should state this in the introduction. This will not negatively impact editorial assessment as BMC Research Notes aims to make single observations available to the scientific community.

We are not looking for a detailed and lengthy introduction to the topic and authors should instead cite relevant review articles. Authors should not provide a general review of the related literature but instead cite relevant work if the manuscript extends previously published or unpublished research.

For data management plans, the introduction should briefly summarize the research project for which the data management plan was written.

This should contain the body of the research note, and may also be broken into subsections with short and informative headings. Methods should be described in sufficient detail to allow repeatability. Authors should concisely describe the data or results they present and provide a critical discussion of the findings within the context of the research field. If an observation cannot be explained or put in context of the current literature then authors are encouraged to state that.

Limitations

BMC Research Notes considers scientifically valid manuscripts irrespective of the interest of a study or its likely impact. In order to ensure submissions to BMC Research Notes are of maximum benefit to the research community, authors should clearly state the limitations of their work.

Introduction, main text and limitations together must not exceed 2000 words.

List of abbreviations

If abbreviations are used in the text they should be defined in the text at first use, and a list of abbreviations should be provided.

Declarations

All manuscripts must contain the following sections under the heading 'Declarations':

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Consent for publication, availability of data and materials, competing interests, authors' contributions, acknowledgements.

• Authors' information (optional)

Please see below for details on the information to be included in these sections.

If any of the sections are not relevant to your manuscript, please include the heading and write 'Not applicable' for that section. 

Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data or human tissue must:

• include a statement on ethics approval and consent (even where the need for approval was waived)
• include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate

Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval and for experimental studies involving client-owned animals, authors must also include a statement on informed consent from the client or owner.

See our editorial policies for more information.

If your manuscript does not report on or involve the use of any animal or human data or tissue, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

If your manuscript contains any individual person’s data in any form (including any individual details, images or videos), consent for publication must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. All presentations of case reports must have consent for publication.

You can use your institutional consent form or our consent form if you prefer. You should not send the form to us on submission, but we may request to see a copy at any stage (including after publication).

See our editorial policies for more information on consent for publication.

If your manuscript does not contain data from any individual person, please state “Not applicable” in this section.

All manuscripts must include an ‘Availability of data and materials’ statement. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. By data we mean the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the findings reported in the article. We recognise it is not always possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, and in such instances data availability should still be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for access.

Authors are also encouraged to preserve search strings on searchRxiv https://searchrxiv.org/ , an archive to support researchers to report, store and share their searches consistently and to enable them to review and re-use existing searches. searchRxiv enables researchers to obtain a digital object identifier (DOI) for their search, allowing it to be cited. 

Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

• The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
• The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
• The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
• Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
• The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
• Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state 'Not applicable' in this section.

More examples of template data availability statements, which include examples of openly available and restricted access datasets, are available here .

BioMed Central strongly encourages the citation of any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely in the manuscript. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI) and should ideally be included in the reference list. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. Dataset identifiers including DOIs should be expressed as full URLs. For example:

Hao Z, AghaKouchak A, Nakhjiri N, Farahmand A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare. 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.853801

With the corresponding text in the Availability of data and materials statement:

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]. [Reference number]  

If you wish to co-submit a data note describing your data to be published in BMC Research Notes , you can do so by visiting our submission portal . Data notes support open data and help authors to comply with funder policies on data sharing. Co-published data notes will be linked to the research article the data support ( example ).

All financial and non-financial competing interests must be declared in this section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of competing interests. If you are unsure whether you or any of your co-authors have a competing interest please contact the editorial office.

Please use the authors initials to refer to each authors' competing interests in this section.

If you do not have any competing interests, please state "The authors declare that they have no competing interests" in this section.

All sources of funding for the research reported should be declared. If the funder has a specific role in the conceptualization, design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript, this should be declared.

The individual contributions of authors to the manuscript should be specified in this section. Guidance and criteria for authorship can be found in our editorial policies .

Please use initials to refer to each author's contribution in this section, for example: "FC analyzed and interpreted the patient data regarding the hematological disease and the transplant. RH performed the histological examination of the kidney, and was a major contributor in writing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript."

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

See our editorial policies for a full explanation of acknowledgements and authorship criteria.

If you do not have anyone to acknowledge, please write "Not applicable" in this section.

Group authorship (for manuscripts involving a collaboration group): if you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration Group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration Group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the “Acknowledgements” section. Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author if you wish, but this should be consistent across all authors.

Please note that individual names may not be present in the PubMed record at the time a published article is initially included in PubMed as it takes PubMed additional time to code this information.

Authors' information

This section is optional.

You may choose to use this section to include any relevant information about the author(s) that may aid the reader's interpretation of the article, and understand the standpoint of the author(s). This may include details about the authors' qualifications, current positions they hold at institutions or societies, or any other relevant background information. Please refer to authors using their initials. Note this section should not be used to describe any competing interests.

Footnotes can be used to give additional information, which may include the citation of a reference included in the reference list. They should not consist solely of a reference citation, and they should never include the bibliographic details of a reference. They should also not contain any figures or tables.

Footnotes to the text are numbered consecutively; those to tables should be indicated by superscript lower-case letters (or asterisks for significance values and other statistical data). Footnotes to the title or the authors of the article are not given reference symbols.

Always use footnotes instead of endnotes.

Examples of the Vancouver reference style are shown below.

See our editorial policies for author guidance on good citation practice

Web links and URLs: All web links and URLs, including links to the authors' own websites, should be given a reference number and included in the reference list rather than within the text of the manuscript. They should be provided in full, including both the title of the site and the URL, as well as the date the site was accessed, in the following format: The Mouse Tumor Biology Database. http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do . Accessed 20 May 2013. If an author or group of authors can clearly be associated with a web link, such as for weblogs, then they should be included in the reference.

Example reference style:

Article within a journal

Smith JJ. The world of science. Am J Sci. 1999;36:234-5.

Article within a journal (no page numbers)

Rohrmann S, Overvad K, Bueno-de-Mesquita HB, Jakobsen MU, Egeberg R, Tjønneland A, et al. Meat consumption and mortality - results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition. BMC Medicine. 2013;11:63.

Article within a journal by DOI

Slifka MK, Whitton JL. Clinical implications of dysregulated cytokine production. Dig J Mol Med. 2000; doi:10.1007/s801090000086.

Article within a journal supplement

Frumin AM, Nussbaum J, Esposito M. Functional asplenia: demonstration of splenic activity by bone marrow scan. Blood 1979;59 Suppl 1:26-32.

Book chapter, or an article within a book

Wyllie AH, Kerr JFR, Currie AR. Cell death: the significance of apoptosis. In: Bourne GH, Danielli JF, Jeon KW, editors. International review of cytology. London: Academic; 1980. p. 251-306.

OnlineFirst chapter in a series (without a volume designation but with a DOI)

Saito Y, Hyuga H. Rate equation approaches to amplification of enantiomeric excess and chiral symmetry breaking. Top Curr Chem. 2007. doi:10.1007/128_2006_108.

Complete book, authored

Blenkinsopp A, Paxton P. Symptoms in the pharmacy: a guide to the management of common illness. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science; 1998.

Online document

Doe J. Title of subordinate document. In: The dictionary of substances and their effects. Royal Society of Chemistry. 1999. http://www.rsc.org/dose/title of subordinate document. Accessed 15 Jan 1999.

Online database

Healthwise Knowledgebase. US Pharmacopeia, Rockville. 1998. http://www.healthwise.org. Accessed 21 Sept 1998.

Supplementary material/private homepage

Doe J. Title of supplementary material. 2000. http://www.privatehomepage.com. Accessed 22 Feb 2000.

University site

Doe, J: Title of preprint. http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/mydata.html (1999). Accessed 25 Dec 1999.

Doe, J: Trivial HTTP, RFC2169. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2169.txt (1999). Accessed 12 Nov 1999.

Organization site

ISSN International Centre: The ISSN register. http://www.issn.org (2006). Accessed 20 Feb 2007.

Dataset with persistent identifier

Zheng L-Y, Guo X-S, He B, Sun L-J, Peng Y, Dong S-S, et al. Genome data from sweet and grain sorghum (Sorghum bicolor). GigaScience Database. 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/100012 .

Figures, tables and additional files

See  General formatting guidelines  for information on how to format figures, tables and additional files.

Submit manuscript

Important information

Editorial board

About our article types

For authors

For editorial board members

For reviewers

Annual Journal Metrics

Citation Impact 2023 Journal Impact Factor: 1.6 5-year Journal Impact Factor: N/A Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): 0.687 SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 0.486

Speed 2023 Submission to first editorial decision (median days): 13 Submission to acceptance (median days): 191

Usage 2023 Downloads: 4,067,459 Altmetric mentions: 2,370

• More about our metrics
• Follow us on Twitter

BMC Research Notes

ISSN: 1756-0500

• General enquiries: [email protected]

JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser.

• Create an Account
• Before You Submit: Categories & Lengths

Categories & Lengths

It is absolutely essential that authors read several of the most recent issues of MISQ to help them determine under which category their research falls. This will also help authors understand the quality expected from submissions. It serves neither authors nor the review team if a manuscript is submitted prematurely. 

The MIS Quarterly reviews and accepts papers that fall into one of the following six categories:

• 1. Research Article
• 2. Research Note
• 3. Methods Article
• 4. Research Commentary
• 5. Theory and Review Article
• 6. Issues and Opinions

This category provides an opportunity for authors to:

• Make a contribution that is sufficiently original and significant so as to warrant a full-length article wherein the authors develop and present their arguments, solutions, and evidence.
• Ground their work in theory, whether it is a new theory being advanced and tested or testing an existing theory. In a Research Article, authors may also be refining or challenging theories.
• Expand our understanding of digital phenomena and the role information systems have in solving high-impact business and societal problems.
• Present evidence that supports the validity of their claims.

Most submissions to and most papers published in the MIS Quarterly are Research Articles. Authors who are developing new theories but do not test that theory in the current submission should categorize their article as a Theory and Review Article . See below for a description of this category.

This category provides a forum for a wide variety of concise research contributions.  Some examples of possible subject matter include:

• Empirical contributions that relate to topics that appear frequently in the MIS Quarterly and other top journals.
• Theoretical insights from the analysis of rich data on phenomena/problems that can trigger the development of theory.
• Discussions around an important methodological issue (or issues) associated with a published article. The connections between a Note’s content and earlier published article(s) must be clearly defined. Notes may arouse controversy and encourage dialogue on an important methodological issue.

Research Notes are typically half the length of a Research Article. A Research Note can also be thought of as a briefer form of a Research Article because it carries a distinct contribution while presenting the research in a more succinct format.

This category provides an opportunity for authors to address methodological issues and propose innovative methods for studying information systems. It is crucial to clearly present ideas to the readership as to introduce perspectives about how researchers should conduct research. A Methods Article may or may not provide empirical evidence, such as simulations, depending on the nature of the topic and the level of evidence required for that particular method. A Methods Article whose impact spans beyond the Information Systems discipline are welcome.

For this category, senior scholars are invited by the EIC to discuss a research stream or methodological approach and offer insight as to how the field should advance. Highlighting seminal or key works that show how the topic has evolved is appropriate. Research Commentaries conclude with a set of research questions that are worth exploring in order to address unanswered questions.

This category is for conceptual articles that develop novel theories and generate theoretical insights that advance the study and practice of information systems design, development, management, use, and consequences. Consistent with the MIS Quarterly‘s broad strategic positioning, the journal is receptive to different types of IS theories (for a discussion of different types of IS theories, see Gregor, S., The Nature of Theory in Information Systems MIS Quarterly (30:3), September 2006). It is also receptive to articles from a wide range of philosophical foundations and disciplinary orientations, including articles that merge siloed theoretical perspectives and are constructively critical of established theory and practice.

Articles in this category can be one of two types:

Theory-Generative Research Synthesis: Comprehensive review and synthesis of previously published research (around a theory, phenomenon, or concept) is done to generate theoretical insights and implications. These articles (1) act as repositories for the accumulated knowledge on important topics within the information systems field, and (2) clearly delineate the directions for future research that emerge from the literature synthesis.

Theory Development: Grounding in theory and/or practice is used to develop new IS theory. In contrast to theory-generative research synthesis, these articles do not engage in comprehensive review and synthesis of the literature (around a theory, phenomenon, or concept) to generate theoretical advances. Instead, they develop new IS theory through approaches such as:

• Conceiving new constructs and relationships pertaining to a phenomenon, problem, or solution.
• Drawing on a novel theoretical lens and elaborating it given the distinctive characteristics of the phenomenon, problem, or solution.
• Integrating multiple theoretical perspectives into a cohesive new IS theory (including integrative, inter- and intra-disciplinary theories).
• Falsifying assumptions and refining existing theories given the characteristics of the phenomena, problem, or solution.
• Challenging existing and advancing new philosophical foundations.

While preparing their manuscript, authors are invited to read prior Theory and Review articles published in MIS Quarterly as well as the following editorials:

• Rivard, S. 2014. The Ions of Theory Construction MIS Quarterly (38:2), pp. iii-xiii.
• Webster, J., and Watson, R. 2002. Analyzing the Past to Prepare for the Future: Writing a Literature Review MIS Quarterly (26:2), pp. xiii-xxiii.
• Zmud, R. W. 1998. Editor’s Comments MIS Quarterly (22:2), June.

This category provides a forum for well-developed and well-articulated position statements concerning emerging, paradoxical, or controversial research issues. An Issues and Opinions article may be described as rigorously argued and/or relying on scholarly evidence. Issues and Opinions submissions should open new areas of discourse, close stale areas, and/or offer fresh views on research topics of importance to the discipline. An Issues and Opinions article should:

• Identify the issue(s) in terms that are accessible.
• Provide appropriate conceptual frameworks for the issue.
• Offer opinions and supportive arguments.
• Describe the implications of these opinions to research, practice, and/or education.
• Include supporting empirical evidence, when appropriate.

Scientometric papers will be considered, but they must yield a large theoretical contribution in our Research Articles. If a scientometric study addresses valuable professional concerns, it could find a home in the Issues and Opinions section.

See the Category Lengths section below for manuscript length requirements for each of the described categories.

Category Lengths

MIS Quarterly has requirements for the maximum total length of an article. MISQ follows these requirements in order to maintain an effective and efficient editorial process that benefits authors, reviewers, and readers of the journal.

The maximum total length requirements include tables, figures, references, and appendices. It is the total length of the article that will be reviewed.

Please follow the guidelines below on maximum total length of an article, including tables, figures, references, and appendices:

• Research Articles : 55 pages
• Research Note : 30 pages
• Method Articles: 55 pages
• Research Commentary : 30 pages
• Theory-Generative Literature Synthesis: 65 pages
• Theory Development : 55 pages For the difference between these types, please refer to the Categories section.
• Issues and Opinions : 30 pages

Submissions that exceed the maximum total lengths of their respective category will either be returned to authors for shortening before review or desk-rejected. The maximum total length must be adhered to in all revised versions.

• About Lamarr 
• Current Overview
• Research Overview
• Resource-aware ML
• Trustworthy AI
• Human-centered Systems 
• Embodied AI
• Planning & Logistics 
• Industry & Production 
• Life Sciences 
• Natural Language
• Publications

Research Made Easy: Scientific Note-taking

While researching and learning about new concepts, it is crucial for most researchers to structure and write down the newly acquired knowledge in a concise way. This allows them to come back to and effectively recall these concepts later. Additionally, structuring your knowledge outside of your head in a written form is useful in order to make new connections between information as well as novel discoveries. In part 2 of our Blog series on “Research Made Easy”, we have curated methods used by Lamarrresearchers that help them achieve structure and clarity in their thinking process.

Remember what you read through note-taking

When reading research articles, some scientists find it really beneficial to “work with the material instead of just reading it”. This includes highlighting the articles, sometimes with different colors indicating different semantic concepts, scribbling their thoughts in the margins or summarizing key concepts in their own words. To combine knowledge from different sources into one overarching hierarchy, a popular method is to create a mind map.

Mind maps help in visualizing how different concepts relate to each other. They serve as a vehicle to make sense of complex, interconnected and novel concepts. Their hierarchical structure can also help in clearly defining sub concepts that may be explored in depth individually.

For some researchers we interviewed, structuring knowledge and ideas in a written form is also very beneficial. Whether it’s summarizing key concepts of articles, writing overview notes of new topics they’ve learned about or concisely formalizing an idea to make it succinct and less fuzzy, note-taking is essential in the everyday life of our Lamarrresearchers.

Since mathematical equations, graphs and (pseudo)code are different forms of information often used in Machine Learning, it is important that the note-taking tools used support these kinds of resources. Popular tools include Overleaf, which is an online LaTeX editor that facilitates inserting mathematical notation, Evernote, a tool that helps you keep track of rich text notes across devices and Notion, which is similar to Evernote and invites collaboration via its sharing functionality. How you structure your notes and how in-depth you want to write them is up to you. However, from our experience, the same concept as mentioned in the previous blog post on efficient literature study still holds true: Keep it simple and straightforward (KISS) ! There is no need to needlessly formalize and over complicate your note-taking system from the beginning. Tools like Notion and Evernote allow you to grow into a system that you feel comfortable with over time.

Zettelkasten: Build a second brain

A novel way of taking and organizing your research notes, that has gained popularity in the community recently, is called a Zettelkasten , which literally translates to slipbox . The concept was famously used and popularized by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, who claimed that it allowed him to make new connections between his notes so efficiently that it allowed him to be a highly prolific writer. A Zettelkasten is sometimes referred to as a second brain since it allows you to store your ideas and thoughts externally and makes it easy to link them together in order to derive new concepts and connections between previously separate items of thought. Luhmann’s Zettelkasten is currently in the process of being digitized and can be explored here .

Each note in the system is supposed to be an atomic idea, thought or concept. These notes are then implicitly arranged in a hierarchy by “linking” to and from them. In the analog world, this involves writing numbers and hierarchy levels in the top corners of the note itself.

While managing such a big system of paper slips is a daunting task, nowadays, there are two popular digital tools implementing this concept: Roam Research and Obsidian . Both follow the idea of linking information in the way that we are used to from the Internet, namely via hyperlinks. You can refer to another digital note via a link, and even link to specific parts of your notes like headings. This allows the digital Zettelkasten to be more flexible and extensible according to your specific needs and preferences in regard to how much information you want to have on your cards, what type of cards you find useful etc. Because notes are just digital documents, both tools also automatically suggest linking certain notes based on the occurrence and frequency of certain words and phrases. That way, an interconnected web of notes emerges inside your second brain almost automatically, sparking new ideas and helping you to organize and think about your research in unexpected and fruitful ways.

Time management for effective research

Of course, taking diligent notes and organizing them in a useful manner takes some time, no matter how simple your system is going to be. To get the most benefit out of the time you have in a day, there are certain concepts and tools that help you to keep track of your tasks and avoid spending your time unwisely. The next blog post in this series will discuss tips and tools for time management and keeping track of your tasks.

Matthias Jakobs ,

5. April 2023

• note-taking
• productivity
• self organization
• time management
• Zettelkasten

Matthias Jakobs

Matthias Jakobs focuses his research on trustworthy machine learning. He is currently working on various problems, including providing guarantees for explanation methods based on Shapley values, both in theory and in practical applications. Additionally, he is exploring the combination of explainability models with Bayesian Neural Networks (BNNs). He is particularly interested in illuminating the decision-making process of black-box models to instill greater trust in the decisions made by neural networks, […]

More blog posts

Can Stories Help LLMs Reason? A Deep Dive into the Story of Thought (SoT) Framework

11. December 2024

Narratives are a powerful cognitive mechanism for structuring information and enhancing comprehension – a core...

LLM or Not: Finding the Right AI Solution for Your Business

20. November 2024

Introduction: AI Doesn’t Always Mean LLM In the current AI landscape “LLM” (Large Language Model) has become...

AI and ML applied to Life Sciences

06. November 2024

The scientific area “AI in Life Sciences”  is a highly interdisciplinary component of the research at the...

Multilingual Instruction-Tuning: Do Polyglot Models Demand for Multilingual Instructions? 

30. October 2024

Introduction to Multilingual Instruction-Tuning  In the rapidly evolving landscape of large language models...

Thoughts about the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 …

23. October 2024

In this blog post, I share some of my thoughts about this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics which surprised me as much...

How Audio Mining, Generative AI, and LLMs Are Transforming Media Archive Searches

16. October 2024

AI-Driven Solutions for Media Archives In the rapidly growing digital landscape, media archives containing vast...

Hate Speech and Digital Violence: How Artificial Intelligence Can Help Combat Hate Online

25. September 2024

Hate speech includes inhumane and discriminatory statements that are directed against certain groups of people. These...

Conscious use of Large Language Models: How to avoid biases? 

17. July 2024

The last blog post was about how to avoid bias in the context of training data. In this week's blog post, our authors...

Ethical Use of Training Data: Ensuring Fairness and Data Protection in AI

03. July 2024

The rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) since the early 2010s have truly left their mark on the...

Multimodality in Large Language Models – How AI is becoming more humanlike 

19. June 2024

Large language models (LLMs) have become more capable, reliable, and available in the past years. ChatGPT has been...

The 2024 elections: How disinformation and deepfakes are putting democracy at risk

05. June 2024

Worldwide, more than 70 elections are scheduled for 2024. In Germany, these include local elections and state...

Live-ASR Software Facilitates Barrier-Free Plenary Sessions in the Saxon State Parliament

22. May 2024

The Saxon State Parliament is committed to enhancing the accessibility of its plenary sessions to meet the societal...

• Peterborough

Useful Research Notes

Why is notetaking important, what should i note.

• Guidelines for good notetaking

5 Notetaking Pitfalls to Avoid

• Note templates

Good notes ask questions, summarize key points, analyse, connect to your thesis, and to other sources.

Taking notes helps you read analytically and critically. Notetaking also provides distance from sources, making it a useful strategy to avoid plagiarism.

Bibliographic or Reference Information

Before taking any notes on content, record the bibliographic information. For books, r ecord the author, title, publisher, place of publication, and date published and for journal articles, you need the name of the journal, the volume and issue numbers, the year published, and pages.

Summary or Paraphrase

Most of your notes will be of summaries of an author’s ideas, arguments, or findings with some paraphrases of more specific ideas. It is essential that you strive for accuracy. Do not confuse what you want research to show with what it does show, and do not make a point out of context. 

Facts and Figures

Be meticulous when you record facts or figures.

Quote thoughtfully and carefully; take note of context so you can be true to the author’s intent.  Remember to always place quotation marks around direct quotations in your notes.

Record important terms or words that need clarification. Your ability to use these words correctly and to define terms clearly will affect the success of your argument and analysis.

Response and Analysis

Record your insights and questions as you read; your notes will then provide that necessary balance between yourself and the material.

• Consider how the interpretation offered by the text addresses your topic and it relates to your thesis.
• Compare and contrast competing arguments between scholars.
• Assess the author’s use of evidence or the logic of his or her argument.
• Ask questions like “how,” “why,” and “so what?”
• Ask how your research supports your thesis or doesn't support it, as the case may be, and how you will have to deal with it in your essay.

Guidelines for Good Notetaking

• Have a clear direction: Maintain a clear focus on the purpose of your work. As you read and research, revise and modify your tentative thesis and outline.
• Organize your notes carefully: set up a folder for your research, save your digital files frequently and clearly label all files.
• Take point-form notes in your own words as much as possible: include your own thoughts and analysis about the reading. Make sure to note references and page numbers for all sources.
• Wait for breaks in the reading (paragraph, sub-section, chapter) before summarizing the author's ideas; then go back to specific details you wish to include.
• Once you have finished the whole text, review your notes, and summarize the key points and how they relate to your work.
• Taking too many notes: without a clear research direction, you may take far too many notes. Consider your purpose; only record ideas relevant to your topic and thesis and which have a place in your outline.
• Using sticky notes or highlighting instead of taking point-from notes: putting ideas into your words makes you think about material more carefully. It also helps avoid plagiarism.
• Copying and pasting from electronic sources: this makes it hard to remember if ideas belong to you or the author. In addition, you may rely too heavily on direct quotation in your paper, with little attention to analysis.
• Incomplete referencing: when you record references at the final stages of writing, it is easier to miss essential information or have difficulty finding the texts again.
• Recording content but not your analysis: ignoring your own response can lead you to a paper with too much summary and not enough analysis.