So I just got started with my PhD in Design (actually it’s video games, I’ll be researching about video games and mental health), and first up, it’s related literature reviews (may also include some gray literature, and playing games).
Before I get started, actually, I already started and I downloaded 70+ PDFs of related literature and I need to organize them and read and highlight all of them. By the way, I’m a Mac user, so I’ve actually been reading and highlighting PDFs using Preview. But there must be a better way to organize my files.
A quick Google search led me to this blog post: My top 5 software recommendations for PhD students, and introduced me to Mendeley (I already use the other software recommendations or its variations).
Mendeley converted this to that:
It automatically extracts the Title, Authors and even publication date, and you can also search your files based on Author.
Aside from organizing my files, I’m also reading Writing the Game-based Dissertation that was based on a lively “fireside chat” discussion at the seventh annual Games+Learning+Society Conference.
Mendeley also has its own PDF reader and it allows you to take notes and highlight.
Mendeley’s free account gives you 2 GB personal storage and 100 MB shared storage and you can create private groups of collaborators.
You can also sync your files to your web library (great for backups and reading on the go). Also it has an iOS and Android version (so really, reading on the go).
And the web version even suggests even more articles that are related to the ones you added.
It also has a Web Importer Tool that allows you to copy your entire search results from academic databases like Scopus, and import papers (and download PDFs).
Okay, back to readings.
Michelle Chen 