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RE: Best practices for using RM for research
| RE: Best practices for using RM for research |
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Author: Linda K
Posted: Tues, 26 Jul 2005 14:20:00 -0800
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IF you can obtain a PDF of a document, that's terrific. You can put a
direct link to wherever you have it placed (OUTSIDE your RefMan
directory!!) on any drive. Then you simply click the "world" icon next
to "Link to PDF" and up it pops. (I also use that line to link to Word
.docs and any other electronic format of a file.)
Do NOT use numerical IDs. You can't tell in the manuscript if you have
screwed up and inserted the wrong number. It is also a disaster when you
start to write things with other people--which in academe is the norm in
many fields, though certainly not in all.
While RefMan cannot do your research for you, it can certainly help keep
your writing organized. Use the keywords field, not a special field, to
note the subjects for which you want to pull up an item. You can use a
special intro character--such as "zz"--to demark YOUR keywords from
whatever you may have pulled over from indexing services. Do _not_ use
an asterisk; it messes up seaching something fierce, as there it is a
wildcard character.
BTW, turn OFF the feature that searches titles and abstracts for
keywords. All it does is wind up putting every noun in your keyword
list--not helpful, in my opinion. But then I'm spoiled by working in
public health, where the National Library of Medicine does proper,
controlled-vocabulary, indexing.
We have used RefMan to keep track of things for a major literature
review (the supplement to this month's issue of Pediatrics), and it CAN
be useful. We used our keywords to note in which sections something
would be germane; we used the "link to full text" link to link to
tabular analyses of the study(ies) in each paper; we noted which items
were on request from interlibrary loan; we noted where things were
stored (for that we do use a custom field). We used the "notes" field to
leave rabbit tracks for ourselves.
We always use author-date IDs, but then we expand them by adding a core
word from the title. We also have two other rules: for hyphenated names,
we only use the first half, and for corporate names, we abbreviate to
initials. (I wish RefMan did this on its own!) So then we have useful
RefIDs like Basen1988Pilot or CDC2002Asthma or Parcel2004Eval ...
We try to have the "extension" in the ID be a complete word, but I allow
standard abbreviations for things like EVAL(uation), SELF(-efficacy),
META(-analysis) and other terms we see a lot. It does seem to help if
the extension is pronounceable!
If you don't do this, you can wind up with Parcel2004A, Parcel2004B, and
Parcel2004C, which can be just as mysterious as 19545, 19546, and 19547.
Understand, I work in a heavily collaborative environment. But even when
people are doing their dissertations, I teach them to do it this
way--and it comes to bear fruit a year later, when they are doing their
post-doc and suddenly collaborating with other people doing grants and
papers.
Numerical IDs are DEATH to any sort of collaborative work. I do not
think they should be the default. (Note: if you use Author-Date IDs,
change your preferences for how citation markers are inserted. Author,
Date, RefID is highly repetitive if you are using Author-Date IDs to
begin with! <g>)
Don't worry about being part way in the 20th century. You can only do
what your budget and personal expertise allow, and people working on
their doctorates are often short on both--you're learning, that's why
you're in graduate school.
In the end, what will be "best practices" for you very much depends on
the field, your personal mental quirks, and your situation.
For instance, filing: There's a tendency to want to file things by
subject. This can get tricky if you're dealing with a mix of theoretical
papers and disease-specific studies, for instance. If you have a group
of papers that easily clump together and fill a storage unit (box, file
drawer, or whatever), and you want to carve them off, okay--but then
note in your RefMan database WHERE they are filed (file: Asthma
Prevalence). But it's easier to keep most things in one simple sequence.
Since we don't use numerical IDs, that sequence tends to be first
author. Do NOT, as one faculty member does, make a separate file folder
for each article. First off, take a box of file folders and a box of
hanging folders and put them in your file drawer. See how much room they
take? And that's before you put anything IN them!
Skip file folders. For long-term storage, use box-bottom hanging
folders, 1"-2" wide. File groups of items together, say "BA-BE" if
you've got more than one hanging folder of "B". You'll save vast amounts
of time this way on filing and lose very little on retrieval.
For short-term storage, it can be useful to use box-bottom filing
jackets, because they'll stand upright on your desk all in a row
(between a set of bookends), and you can grab each one as you need it.
That assumes you're using a relatively small set of items at once.
People who are doing meta-analyses follow the Cochrane Collaboration's
suggestions, which are excellent for that particular sort of project.
Subject articles are kept in three-ring binders.
Exception: some people are horizontal filers. For them, out of sight is
out of mind. One of the most brilliant and productive people I've ever
known knew this about himself. Next to his desk, from desk height to
ceiling, were 1x12 boards about 8" apart. Each stack was a separate
article, journal he was editing, or other project. It worked brilliantly
for him. If you find yourself stacking things, go with it--just label
each stack and keep them off your actual working surface.
If the stacks get dusty, time for those items to go in a file cabinet or
box. Use a bulletin board to pin up notes about the subjects "out of
sight".
When I worked for an attorney, he would pull files that he needed to do
something with. They would start to overpower his desk. I would file
them all back--but put Post-It notes in neat columns where the files had
been. That was as good a reminder as the physical file, and his working
environment was much less cluttered. That can be a great factor in your
productivity, whether you realize it or not--how uncluttered your work
space is. If you find yourself going somewhere else to get "real work
done", your environment may be too distracting--and what's distracting
you may be all the clutter.
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
Karyn Popham
Sr. Res. Asst.
Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research School of Public
Health University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
"Linda.K.Popham"
713-500-9665
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