Outlining your research: Organising literature notes, data, and writing in progress

Over the past year, I’ve increasingly started using outlining tools as part of my work flow. Outlining is great, and I use it for pretty much everything. In this post, I’ll write a bit about how I work with outlines, and some of the apps I like working with.

Here are some of the things that I create outlines for:

• Organising ideas: This is usually after a first brainstorming session using mind maps. Sometimes I convert mind maps to outlines after the ideas become more structured, other times I start from scratch with a new outline, because building the outline from the ground up helps me sort the ideas more critically.

• Sorting data: As I’ve written about before in my post on mind mapping, I find mind mapping and outlining very useful in the data sorting process. I use these tools both in the initial, inductive phase of data analysis, but also after I’ve zoomed in on particular parts of the data material that I want to analyse in more detail with the help of particular concepts. Outlines help me frame that process of systematically reviewing and analysing that data.

• Paper dispositions: This is probably one of the most obvious usage areas for outlines. Thinking through what your paper should look like before you start writing is always extremely useful, and outlining tools are great for that.

• (Re-)-organising sections or paragraphs for papers in progress: During the writing process, I always rework different sections and paragraphs in my papers multiple times, with a view to refining and clarifying my argument.

• Taking literature notes for a particular piece of academic work: As I’ve written before in my posts about Circus Ponies Notebooks (e.g. here), outline pages are very useful for note taking.

• Taking literature notes for thematic or conceptual ‘clusters’. For example, I have outlining documents comparing different theoretical approaches, or different perspectives on the same theory or concept.

• Preparing teaching and outlining lesson plans.

• Taking meeting minutes and research administration.

So, what makes outlining different from a rich text document? In my view, it’s the following:

• the ease with which you can create and visually display hierarchical relationships
• the ease with which you can cluster information as you take notes
• the ease with which you can move chunks of text around, as well as sort them
• the opportunities for combining and linking (although this will depend on the app you use) different kinds of media and attachments to specific pieces of text, or creating links between different cells 

Apps for outlining

Circus Ponies Notebooks

One obvious and strong alternative for outlining is Circus Ponies Notebooks, which I’ve written several posts on previously. This post in particular deals with outline pages.

CPN is a very powerful outlining tool, and over at the blog Organising Creativity you’ll find lots of additional information on how to maximise the use of outlines in CPN for academic work.

OmniOutliner Pro

I’ll declare some bias up front: I love this app. It’s solid, feature rich, and provides a range of options in terms of formatting and adding various links and files. 

OO comes in both a mac and iPad version, but I only recently got the iOS app so I’m more familiar with the former.

On the mac, you can write up your outlines in OO’s own file format, which allows for a range of rich text formatting options, the creation of multiple columns, numbering and attaching a range of files as attachments. Here a screen shot for example, where I’ve also included some of the different inspector windows that will give you a flavour of the formatting options:

 

However, if you want something plain text that converts more readily to other outlining or mind mapping apps, you can also save your outlines in opml format. OO also comes with a range of exporting options, including plain text, RTF, Word, html and Keynote. 

Some of the features I like in this app include: 

• a lot of rich text formatting options
• the ability to attach files such as pdfs and images to your outlines
• the possibility to create and customise templates, which I find extremely useful for literature review purposes 
• the option of multi column outlines (the only app features in this post that can do so)
• the rich export options 
• the ability to isolate and focus in on selected parts of the outline when you’re working with long documents

The iPad version is not quite as visually pleasing as the mac app, but it’s user user friendly and solid, with the most important function keys available at the additional menu bar above the keyboard. That menu also offers a short cut for taking voice recordings. Here’s a screen shot of the ‘welcome outline’ from OO iPad:

 

 

My main gripe with OO is the current lack of seamless sync between mac and iPad. In short, it’s a royal pain in the ***, and it’s made me give up on using OO for my main literature overviews that I update on a continuous basis. Basically, there’s no DropBox support, no iCloud, and no simple way of emailing files back and forth (they transfer as zip files). The developers have an own sync service you can use, but I find it too inconvenient for everyday use. My use pattern is one where my iPad is always with my and my Air isn’t, so easy and preferably seamless transfer of files from mac to iPad is key. If this isn’t important for you, these sync issues might not matter that much. For more information on syncing with OO, consult this post on the developers’ web site. 

OO comes in both a standard and a pro version, and the differences between the two are outlined on this page. 

 

Tree

I came across Tree a bit by accident when browsing the net, and was taken by the way in which it can act as a cross between a mind map and an outliner. The main difference between Tree and other outliners is its capacity to branch out the outlines in a horizontal tree view (hence the name), as illustrated in this screen shot:

It also features a ‘conventional’ outlining view, and you can switch between the two views with a single click.  Other features include

• rich text formatting
• labelling of cells
• notes section
• export to plain text, RTF, Word and OPML (although my experience is export to RTF/Word is a bit more messy, formatting wise, than with OO)

The strengths of Tree is that it’s very intuitive and easy to use, as well as aesthetic. It’s also very reasonably priced compared to OmniOutliner, so if you don’t need all the features that OO offers, Tree is a very good option. Personally, I think it’s a beautiful little app and I like working with it when I’m dealing with simpler material that is likely to stay inside the proprietary Tree format. When I’m dealing with large literature overviews that are likely to be regularly exported to RTF formats and that have elaborate formatting templates, I use Circus Ponies Notebooks or OmniOutliner. 

The key weakness of Tree is that it doesn’t talk to iPad. There is no iPad version, and you also can’t save (only export) Tree outlines in ompl format. 

Curio

Curio is much more than an outliner – but if you want outlining plus, or outlining as integrated in broader project management, it’s a very powerful app. I’ve written more about Curio here and here. 

Cloud Outliner

Cloud Outliner is a simple outlining tool for mac and iPad with seamless iCloud sync. There are no fancy features or options for rich text formatting or adding attachments, and no folders for organising your outlines on your iPad – but if you simply want plain text outlines with optional check boxes seamlessly synced between your mac and iPad, it’s a very nice alternative. You can export your outlines in OPML format. Cloud Outliner also has Evernote integration, so you export your outlines to Evernote. 

Here are a couple of screen shots of the mac version (first image) and the iPad version (second image). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some comparative reflections: 

• If you want both rich text formatting and seamless sync between mac and iPad, Circus Ponies Notebooks is the way to go 

• If you’re someone whose work lives in the cloud and you’re happy to go with just the basics, Cloud Outliner with Evernote integration is a good option

• If you don’t have an iPad and purely need something for mac, OmniOutliner is probably the most impressive app out of them all – although CPN would come a very close second IMO. Their user interfaces are very different – for example, with OO you would be working with a standard file structure in Finder, whereas CPN offers a more integrated approach to your notes and the ‘look’ of a physical notebook. While OO provides some additional features in terms of multiple columns, templates and the ability to perform calculations, CPN allows for creating links between different cells, pages, and notebooks, and has a powerful multidex that makes it easier to relate your notes to each other. 

• If you don’t have an iPad and don’t feel the need to pay the extra money for all the OO advanced features, Tree is a very nice alternative and offers good value for money. 

 

 

Related post on this blog:

Circus Ponies Notebooks part III: Organising review notes with notes pages
Organising your writing projects with Curio
Mind mapping your research: Organising your ideas with iThoughtsHD and Curio

 

Criteria and questions for establishing your academic work flow

I’ve spent a fair amount of time (and probably too much money) trying to set up the academic workflow I want over the past year, and looking back I’ve now tried to consolidate the key criteria that are important when you’re designing your work flow. What questions should you ask when setting up your academic work flow on a mac? Here’s a short list of things I find useful to consider (‘it’ here being the app you’re looking at): 

Does it have an iPad version? If yes, does it talk to the mac version, and how?

With some rare exceptions, an iPad counterpart is a key criteria for me when I’m looking at apps for mac. My iPad is always with me, my mac isn’t. The second key question here is how they talk to each other, and whether that connection requires effort on your part (see next point). 

 

Does it sync? If yes, to what and how? Will the sync require any effort on your part?

Some apps are easier to sync than others. For example, while some sync seamlessly across iPad and mac, others require this to be a manual operation (e.g. Sente versus Bookends). 

Cross platform sync is also an issue for those using both Windows and OS X, and applies to e.g. Scrivener, Papers and EndNote. 

 

Does it communicate with other apps? 

Some apps, like Evernote, Scrivener, PostBox and Curio, have actively addressed integration with other apps – which can make your work flow that much smoother. Explore what the different apps offer, and how that might help your own workflow. 

 

Do you need to work across platforms (e.g. OS X and windows, iOS and android). 

If you, like me, work in a windows environment but use mac privately, this is important to look into. For example, Word, Scrivener, Papers and EndNote work across OS X and Windows, while Pages, Sente and Bookends don’t. 

 

What do the reviews say?

There’s a large number of reviews available on almost every mac and iPad app out there. Do some proper googling and make sure the posts you read are recent (I usually only go 12 months back in time) before you shop. Ask for advice on forums such as MacRumours and ask your connections/followers on social media what their experiences are. 

 

Will it be on sale soon?

A lot of apps are frequently on sale. I’ve saved a fair bit of money looking out for the apps I’d like on AppShopper, a site that has consolidated lists of apps on sale for both mac and iPad. Bookmark this site if you haven’t already – they also have RSS feeds.  

 

Any other questions and issues you think are important to consider? Please leave your comment below! 

Related post on this blog:

Academic work flows: When to use what, and how 

The wordle version of my academic work

Today I discovered Wordle, a free web based service that lets you make word clouds out of whatever text or web links you decide to feed it. For illustration, here is one of my articles-in-progress in Wordle format:  

 

Coming soon to a journal near you!

Not quite sure what else I’ll use Wordle for, but it’s fun to experiment with and provided a little excuse for some procrastination. Now back to work…

Academic twittering: What I’ve learned from two months on Twitter

I’m a real late comer to Twitter, because the 140 character format always put me off and I didn’t really understand what the point was. A couple of months back I decided to give it a try, and haven’t regretted it at all. Here are some of my reflections so far on the use of Twitter for academic purposes.

What does Twitter add to the academic experience?

Support

There are a lot of lively communities and supportive hash tag feeds on Twitter for academic work, especially for PhD students. Here are some to check out: #phdchat, #phdforum, #phdadvice, #acwri, #socphd, #phdconf and #esrcphd.

You can also check out discipline specific hash tags, such as #anthropology, #sociology, #law or #economics.

In these feeds, you’ll also find links to a lot of resources on academic writing, how to use social media to promote your research, how to maximise the impact of your work, and how to develop your academic career.

Networking and collaboration

I’ve already connected with several academics, many working in fields related to my research interests. Most of the feeds outlined above have weekly or biweekly chat sessions, where academics get together to discuss a topic selected by members through an online voting process. This is a good forum for discussing different topics and connecting to others in your field.

Live news on academic issues

Twitter presents a convient way of keeping up to date on academic news originating from a broad range of sources. Create different lists according to your preferences, and get news about #highered from online magazines, leading academics, research councils and institutes, and higher education institutions.

For this to work well, you need to spend a bit of time organising the user names you are following, and categorising them into lists that are useful for you.

Technical support

A couple of times now, I’ve sent out some tweets asking for help on how to address questions I have about the apps I use for academic work. Within a couple of hours, the answers come back to me from the Twitter universe. It’s very convenient, and you can simply tap in to the massive amount of experiences and resources that the people on Twitter represent. It’s like an online version of karma – you contribute out to the community when you have something to share, and then something will (hopefully) come back your way when you need it.

For more on tweeting for academics, check out LSE’s guide to using Twitter in university research, teaching, and impact activities:

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2011/09/29/twitter-guide/

Apps for tweeting

After trying out the stock Twitter app, TweetDeck and TweetBot, I have settled on the latter for both mac and iPad. It’s feature packed, easy to navigate, helpfully suggests to auto complete hash tags and references to twitter user names, makes it easy to switch between different lists and hash tags, and has (in my opinion, this is of course very subjective) a nice user interface. Sync between mac and iPad is so far seamless. I miss the ability to easily swipe between different columns offered by TweetDeck, and I also miss the option of seeing retweets and new followers, which both TweetDeck and the stock Twitter app offer (on mac, you can ask TweetBot to send this information to your notifications, though). I’ve placed feature requests on both with TweetBot, and hoping they will eventually appear. An app I haven’t tested but which is getting excellent reviews is Twitterrific.

For those who’d like to connect, I can be found @iExpand.

Hand writing on the iPad II: Hand writing to text conversion

In my previous post on hand writing, I reviewed Notability which has been my primary app for hand writing on the iPad for some time. However, recently I revisited the other app I recommended in that post, 7NotesHD, and also looked in to Notes Plus and WritePad, to decide what to use for hand writing to text conversion, which Notability doesn’t provide. Here, I’ll share my experiences of these apps with a focus on hand writing to text conversion.

First, why convert your hand writing to text? The most obvious advantage is that your text becomes easily searchable. In addition, in most cases it also becomes much easier to read – both for yourself (I sometimes find it hard to deconstruct what I have written), and for people you might share your notes with.

7NotesHD Premium

So, my first port of call was 7NotesHD Premium (you will need the premium version for the hand writing to text feature).

When I first bought it over a year ago, I thought the hand writing prediction was pretty bad at interpreting my admittedly messy squabbles and mainly stayed with Notability (without text conversation) for hand writing, but now I’ve given this app another try. I don’t know if the app has had some updates or my hand writing has gotten better, but now I’m much happier with the conversation feature and I’ve been using it regularly over the past few weeks. I’m having much better luck with the app guessing what I’m trying to say, and 7NotesHD also comes with some sophisticated editing options.

Here’s a screen shot of the handwriting conversation in action:

The zoom box menu provides options for switching between hand writing only, hand writing to text conversation, or keyboard input. You can also change the colour and thickness of the pen, insert spaces, and specify whether you are doing text input, numbers or special characters.

At the top of the image, you will see the hand writing I have already entered and converted to text. In the zoom box below, you see the text I am currently entering, and the app’s suggestion for which words I have entered. In this case, it has also suggested some options for further completing the sentence, based on my previous writing. The app ‘learns’ how you write, so hand writing to text conversion becomes increasingly smoother over time.

However, if you are not happy with the suggestions offered, 7NotesHD will offer you other alternatives to chose from, both at the word and sentence level. Below you will see how, when you tap on one of the word suggestions, a range of other alternatives will come up:

You can then just tap on the selection you want, or alternatively tap ‘clear’ if you’d like to input the word again. One of the things I really like with this app is that it makes it easy to go back and change words your wrote before the current one; just use the arrows at the bottom to navigate back and forth between the words you have already written.

Finally, here’s an example of editing/selecting at the sentence level. If you press the tree dots at the top right hand corner of the zoom box, the app offers different suggestions for completing the entire sentence.

Lastly, another nice little feature is the ‘delete’ button to the right of the zoom box (see second screen shot) which, when held down, provides you three different options for how much you want to delete out what you have entered in the box.

These advanced editing options, combined with a predictive capacity that works really well for me, makes this app quite attractive for hand writing to text conversion.

Edit 24 February: I just discovered that this app also does bulk conversion of text – so you can fill a whole page, then convert everything. The app facilitates editing of text in the process. Big plus in my book! 

 

Notes Plus

I decided to look into Notes Plus because it gets a lot of raving reviews, and many people applaud their hand writing recognition in particular.

The basic hand writing interface looks like this, with a zoom window that gives you options of altering colours and thickness of the pen, switching between pages, erasing, and navigating the zoom box up and down.

Then, you circle the hand writing to convert it to text:

There are two formats for converting hand writing to text in Notes Plus, ABC mode and T mode. ABC mode converts the hand writing exactly how you wrote it and puts it in a text box. This ends up looking like this:

You can then move the box around on the page. This is probably very useful if you are combining hand writing with annotating pdfs and images, or generally mixing hand writing with other kind of notes.

The other way of converting text (T mode), which is more interesting for my purposes, is to generate a full page of text. The text then formats as is it would on a ‘normal’ page filled with text. However, the text will still be arranged in different text boxes, but you can pull them up together so they look like a continuous block of text. The developers are saying they are considering introducing a feature in future updates where you can just merge the different text boxes to one block of text – this would be a significant improvement, in my opinion. Here are before and after screen shots:

Overall, the hand writing recognition in Notes Plus also seems very strong. In the text above, it’s only ‘wad’ (rather than word) than comes out wrong (the double ‘in’ being my own mistake), and this is after only having used the app for a couple of hours, so I assume performance would increase even further with use.

Further, having two ways of converting text, and being able to choose whether you want the app to retain the line breaks you did when hand writing (or not) makes this a quite versatile app for hand writing. This app also has support for a variety of languages (thanks to Fredrik Graver for pointing this out below – when I first published this post, I had missed the full list of languages available for download in Notes Plus).

In spite of this, I still find myself missing edition options as I write, as you can do with 7NotesHD and WritePad. Not a deal breaker, but I like to see how my notes are getting on as I go along, so I know I won’t have to do a bunch of editing at the end. I’m also not comfortable yet with the text conversion being a separate task that breaks up the flow of writing more than in apps such as 7NotesHD and WritePad, where you immediately get a text version of your hand writing as you write your notes.

WritePad

WritePad is another new app for me, which I also decided to test out after reading some good reviews. WritePad has a clean and simple interface, albeit with less options available in the zoom box – for example, you can’t edit the colours or thickness of the ‘pencil’:

In contrast to Notes Plus, though, you get ‘live’ conversion of hand writing to text, a big advantage in my opinion. You can also edit the text as you write, just press on a particular word, and different alternatives will be displayed:

Like Notes Plus, WritePad supports a variety of languages. It also has a helpful ‘mid character line’ in the zoom box, which can help you keep an eye on the height of your letters, so that the app can more easily distinguish between capital and lower case letters, and further comes with a range of helpful gestures, as well as a built in calculator (I haven’t tested the calculator, so can’t comment on its performance).

WritePad also has a very cool shorthand feature. This means that you can perform a set of commands (such as ‘cut’, ‘select all’, ‘copy’ and ‘paste’) or add specific words (such as today’s date or time) by writing a dedicated short cut and then circling it. These short cuts can be customised, so you can create your own short cuts for words you use often.

Some comparative reflections

- 7NotesHD is, in many ways, the most sophisticated alternative in that it offers a lot of editing options. It also does ‘smart things’ like delete the space immediately before a comma or a full stop, if you are inserting punctuation after a space bar break.

- Notes Plus has the advantage of different types of text conversion – i.e. both to text boxes and to ‘continuous page’ format. This might be important for those who use their note taking app for marking up pdfs and power point presentations.

- Consider how you like to input and convert text. 7NotesHD and WritePad steer you towards conversion at the word or sentence level, while Notes Plus is more aimed at writing a paragraph or longer before converting your hand writing (in cases where you are writing a longer text and not just a few quick comments).

- Notes Plus and WritePad have nice support for gestures. For example, in Notes Plus you can write a cross over a word to delete it, and in WritePad you can do a long swipe to the left. WritePad also has gestures for the return character, the space character, undo, and spell check (for a full list of alternatives, check the web sites of both apps).

- The apps differ in how the zoom box advances. I really like Notes Plus in this regard. The way in which the box automatically advances and allows you to continue typing at the beginning of the box doesn’t generate the chopped up words that I occasionally have with 7NotesHD (when I’m impatient and won’t wait the one extra second until zoom advance has completed). WritePad just offers an ‘enter’ button for transferring the text to the note.

- 7NotesHD only supports English, so if you are a multilingual note taker, look to Notes Plus or WritePad.

- I haven’t used them all long enough to make a proper comparison on the accuracy of hand writing to text conversion, but none of them have emerged as particularly bad so far; Notes Plus possibly has an upper edge, but I’m not really sure. In any case, the apps ‘learn’ as you go along, so the more you use them, the easier it should get.

Finally, the apps differ in many other respects, such as the user interface, how your notes can be organised, the type and amount of features, custom papers, opportunities for sharing, and so forth. I haven’t focussed on that here, as I wanted to just zoom in on hand writing to text conversation – but if you’re looking for a ‘full fledged’ note book rather than just hand writing conversion, make sure you do some more research because these apps are quite different.

Any suggestions for other good apps that convert hand writing to text? Please leave a comment below.

Related posts on this blog:

Hand writing on the iPad: Note taking with Notability

When In Academia: another good tumblr link for procrastination

Following on to my previous procrastination post, here’s another good one for work avoidance: 

http://wheninacademia.tumblr.com

 

My favourites so far:

When you need students to turn something in before you can leave for the night.

When I read sentences like….

When I discover that the core of my chapter argument…

When your ‘personalised’ gmail advertisement…  

Academic note taking: Circus Ponies Notebooks versus Evernote

In several previous posts on this blog (see some links below), I have sung the praises of Circus Ponies Notebooks, and I still think it’s one of the best note taking apps around for mac. However, Evernote is a strong contender and recently I have considered doing more of my academic work in Evernote. Rather than full reviews, here are my initial thoughts on some of the pros and cons of each app: 

 

Circus Ponies Notebooks 

What I like: 

Very powerful outlining features. I’ve written in more detail about this in previous posts – but CPN really excels for outlining, which in turn is an extremely useful way of writing up literature notes. It makes it very easy to distinguish between author’s text, own ideas, and  to organise concepts in hierarchical relationships to each other. 

You can tag cells of text in outline mode. I absolutely love this feature, and CPN is, to my knowledge, the only note taking app for mac that offers tagging of text (as opposed to tagging of a whole note). It’s a great way of organising pieces of text across a large number of notes (or pages, as they are called in CPN).  

You can combine text input with hand writing on the iPad version. Having said that, the hand writing feature is not very advanced compared to apps such as Notability or 7NotesHD – BUT if you need to sketch a quick diagram, figure or table while you are entering text, you can. 

The multidex (see my previous post) – you’ll never not find anything again.

In the mac version, you can link to files on your mac without actually importing the file into the notebook. 

CPN can synchronise text and audio notes. This is very useful for recording lectures, or for any other context where you are combining audio notes and written notes. 

The physical notebook-looking interface - working with CPN on the iPad is a bit like browsing through a ‘real’ notebook.

What I’m missing: 

- lack of consistency in formatting between mac and iPad (it’s not too bad – it’s just not consistent)
- proper hand writing features in the iPad version 

 

Evernote

What I like: 

Evernote works on ‘everything’. For me, this is a huge bonus, as I work in a Windows environment, have a mac and iPad, and also an android phone. Evernote syncs seamlessly across everything. 

Evernote has an efficient system for tagging each note. I’m a big fan of tagging as a form of organising notes, and Evernote does this extremely well. You can also create one level of hierarchical tags, in addition to using notebooks as a form of organisation. 

Evernote has great integration with other apps. A lot of my apps communicate directly with Evernote, including Postbox, Safari (through the web clipper), Cloud Outliner, Curio and MagicalPad.  

I can email notes directly to Evernote, and add tags and the designated notebook in the process. Extremely convenient. 

You can share your notebooks, as read only for free accounts, with editing features added with paid accounts. 

Powerful search function where you can easily search across all your notebooks, and also attached PDFs. 

The user interface has a nice short cuts and recent notes menu, which makes it easy to access your most important/recent notes. 

What I’m missing:

- full outlining features 
- hand writing option on the iPad 

In both apps (mac versions) you can:

Create links between different notes. This is extremely useful for organising your notes. For example, I often have thematic notes that I then link with source notes. Thematic notes can be ‘assessment’, ‘professionalism’, and so on, where I discuss different dimensions of a concept, theme or theory – then I link to source notes where relevant, which are the notes I make for individual publications. 

Choose a range of formatting options for your text, such as bold, italics, underline, and different fonts and colours. 

View pages side by side - very useful when reviewing literature. 

Make voice annotations and also import a range of files and media. 

 

The conclusion? It basically comes down to individual needs and preferences. There are also a range of other criteria that are relevant to consider, which I won’t go into here – for example, their user interface is very different. If you’d like to save a bit of money, Evernote gives you a lot for free. I use the Premium account to get offline notes on my iPad, but the free version goes a very long way for most people. 

 

Related posts on this blog:

Reviewing Literature with Circus Ponies Notebooks
Circus Ponies Notebook part II: the iPad version
Circus Ponies Notebooks part III: Organising review notes with Notes Pages
Hand writing on the IPad: Note taking with Notability