Almost done with the slides for this upcoming webinar.

It will be aimed at note-taking and synthesis.

Here is a sneak peak:
👇 Note Taking

Most people take notes in the order they learn about the content.

This is wrong.

Conceptual notes are much more powerful.

Because you don't repeat yourself and use links instead.

Everybody uses Google Docs.

But most don't install any of the 100+ extensions.

Unlock hidden features and save time with these 4 must-use extensions: 👇
(I use them for scientific papers) What are extensions?

Extensions add functionality that Google Docs does not have.

Each extension adds a sidebar where it can be configured and activated.

Google does not develop these extensions but they gain access to your content.

Be aware of privacy issues.

I thought I would spend days on this lit review.

It took me just 10 minutes (no joke)!

Here is how and what tool I used:
👇 My Topic:

I am figuring out how forests react to climate change in New Zealand.

The big question: Who has done it before?
(A vast literature review question that can take hours)

Googling it, I found only a single paper: [Wardle 1992]
Really!?

Double your productivity in Google Docs.

Learn these 12 essential keyboard shortcuts.

Windows & Mac:
👇 1. Paste without Style

Ever pasted something from Word or a browser and noticed that the format is completely broken?

Paste without format to avoid this. Press:

⌘ + ⇧ + V (Mac)
CTRL + SHIFT + V (Win)

In this example I copy from MS Word and the style is totally off.

This is Niklas Luhmann.

He has more citations than 99% of scientists.
And 70+ books.

Here is how he did it:
(...steal his secret) Luhmann (1927-1998) was a German sociologist and philosopher studying how societies function.

He wrote over 70 books and 400 articles on topics like law, politics, and art.

Luhmann described society as a self-sustaining system and was influential, especially in Germany.

Everybody uses Google Docs.

But most don't know its best features.

11 features that save time and make your work more professional:
(even for scientific papers)
👇 1. Folding

If you have a long document this is a life saver.

Create a heading.
Next to the heading click the ">" button to fold all text beneath this heading.

The best researchers aren't geniuses. They're well-organized.

This is my favorite system to organize 1000s of notes.

Simple, yet powerful:
👇 1. The Problem

Taking notes helps you remember only if you can find your notes.

My vault has almost 400k words over 1000+ notes (and countless PDFs/Screenshots).

To find things easier you need to have MULTIPLE layers of organization. Divide and conquer.

Struggling with remembering where you saved a note?

Use Rainbow Folders: A hidden feature in Obsidian.

Here is how:
👇 Obsidian (@obsdmd) is a free software if you are serious about organizing knowledge (e.g. academics)

Organize by: Folders, Tags or Maps of Content

Rainbow folders gives every folder a color making them easier to find.

There are two modes: Backgrounds(Left) or Titles (Mid)

Plagiarism is a serious problem in academia.

Even a misplaced citation can massively damage your reputation.

Luckily AI is great at spotting plagiarism. Here is how:
👇 1. Plagiarism is complex

If you look at the Harvard Guide it identifies 6 types of plagiarism.

"Uncited paraphrase" might be the most difficult to spot.

Here you might mention established findings from older papers without citing them.

Want to get more done at the end of the week?

Use SCRUM - a scheduling technique most companies use. It's perfect for academics.

Details in text below:
👇 Summary:

1. Create a backlog of tasks and assign a difficulty to each (1,2,4,8 for the number of hours it takes to complete)

2. Plan meetings and seminars etc as they also take time.

3. Before starting your week distribute the tasks from the backlog to the days of the week. Don't plan more than 8hr of work a day (or less if you have other commitments).

4. During the week: Check off what you have completed (and how long it took you).

5. At the end of the week: Understand what you got done and what you didn't.

Understand that if you didn't get everything done it is a planning error. It does not mean you need to work harder/more (this is just recipe for burnout and I have been there myself). It just means you need to plan better. Efficiency comes in relaxation.

Every day you manage to accomplish what you planned you will feel great about yourself.

6. Next week you can copy and paste the open tasks to the next week and start the process again. Some people prefer to have a bi-weekly instead.

Don't have time to read a paper in detail?

Here is how to extract relevant information instantly:
👇 The setup:

You have a rather large and relevant conceptual paper.

There are others and you are not sure if it's worth reading it.

You are however more interested in the "big picture" not the methods and details.

Want to remember every paper you read?

Replace Zotero with a reference map and leverage your spatial memory.

Here is how:
👇

1. Reference manager vs map

Take a look at this screenshot: Which one looks more approachable and interesting? On the right is Zotero displaying all your papers in an endless list. On the left is a reference map.

Reference maps lay out your papers or PDFs in 2D on an endless surface called a "canvas" or "whiteboard". There are many tools that are capable of doing it: Obsidian is an obvious choice, Heptabase is great too, DrawIO is more complex but also good.

2. Zooming in and out / Finding things

Using the scroll wheel or pinch gesture you can fluidly navigate between the bird's eye view and the detailed view with your own notes on a single paper. Left: Detail, Right: All Papers.

To find papers you "fly up" and then "land on" the paper you are looking for. It feels incredibly natural and easier than scrolling through a list.

3. Why it works: Spatial Memory
Humans evolved moving around as hunter gatherers and spatial memory is a key trait needed for navigation. You leverage it by laying out your papers in a landscape, not a list. Your papers gain location and relation.

4. Headers and Topics: Location
Now that your papers are on a landscape or map you can have "countries" on this map. Every country is a topic, further subdivided in sub-topics. Here is the "Machine Learning Country" in the far south west of my map:

I can refer to "papers in the south west" - this is spatial memory being leveraged to remember where things are.

5. Semantic Connections: Relation

The next step is to build the "roads" between locations on the map. Simply draw an arrow and write on it what this relation signifies.

In the above example Swenson 2020 (top) wrote "the trait-demography relationship is weak (Yang 2018)".
So I read Yang 2018 (left) and added a connection. Later I found that (Lynn 2023) suggested a few solutions and linked those two as well.

By just looking at this map you can immediately write a sentence for your literature review. A narrative emerges and synthesis begins.

Summary:

Lay out papers on a spatial canvas using e.g. Obsidian instead of Zotero. Remembering them will be much easier because you can use your spatial memory. Synthesis starts happening automatically when you annotate connections between papers.

Do you do something like this?
Share a screenshot with us!


This is one of the methods you can learn about in my upcoming webinar:

https://twitter.com/Artifexx/status/1767442849438830848

6 Months ago my core tools barely included any AI.

Today things have shifted - a short update to this post:

https://twitter.com/Artifexx/status/1704046981344301339

1. Writing with 3 AI GPTs

When writing I consider 3 things:
- Finding citations to support the argument
- Putting ideas effectively on paper
- Skimming papers for logical relevance

ChatGPT can now do all of these with the help of GPTs:

effortlessacademic.com/a-complete-gui…

Webinar Apr 6th:
Literature Review & Academic Writing with AI

→ Find the most impactful literature quickly
→ Uncover reference gaps
→ Aid your writing process faithfully & ethically with AI

Link:

All details below:
👇effortlessacademic.com/elr3-webinar/ In this video I explain why the major changes in AI are such a big deal for literature reviews:

How do you conduct a lit-review in 2024?

❌ Old way: Searching for papers by keywords on Google
✅ New way: Semantic search using AI tools like SciSpace

Here is a demo:
👇 1. AI Search

Internet search replaced tedious searches in libraries and journals.

Similarly, semantic search will replace the internet search.

AI allows to search answers to questions directly, rather than using keywords.

SciSpace is one such semantic search tool. Let's try!

Overwhelmed with too many things for your paper or project?

Create an academic command center.

Here is how to do it:
👇 1. In @obsdmd install the Kanban plugin

Kanban is a free community plugin.

When I read papers, I often get distracted.

This setup helped to reduce distractions and gain deeper focus:
👇 I use @obsdmd to store notes and PDFs and @zotero to extract and import meta-data. The excellent "Zotero Import plugin" imports papers from Zotero.

Do not use Zotero for highlights because they are stored separately from the PDF.

You can just use the system's PDF viewer.

How important is coding for your scientific work?

As a computational ecologist I code every day, but about 50% of my code is AI.

Here are a few threads that can help you become an AI programmer:
👇 Generally this is my coding workflow:

https://twitter.com/Artifexx/status/1708699305630994927

Don't want to forget what you read?

→ Annotate the PDFs and connect them to your notes.

Here are 4 ways/plugins that make it easy:
👇 The key to remembering is to integrate your annotations into your notes, not just make them.

Read the PDF and highlight, this is ok, but won't help you remember.

Instead, import your highlights into your notes and and connect them together.

This is how it looks:

AI won't create academic writing from scratch.

But used smartly, it's a tool to make your words more coherent, elegant, and fluid.

Follow this example to save a lot of time: 👇

1. I reviewed several papers and extracted key points. But integrating these into a coherent paragraph requires time and skill, particularly for non-native English speakers:

💡 To help with this, I will create an AI assistant. Its task is to combine loose sentences into a paragraph of academic writing.

🤖 Think of AI assistants as a set of additional instructions you add to the normal AI conversation. They make it much easier to automate everyday tasks like this one.

Google or ask AI how academic writing is supposed to look and add your requirements (e.g., I am using markdown to format text, so I want to keep this format).

These rules form the basis of your assistant's prompt. Here is how it looks in my case:

Now I copy and paste the sentences to my newly created AI assistant and get two results to choose from:

(repeat for more alternatives or continue the conversation and ask for changes)

🛑 Do not use this result in your final paper.

It is far from perfect or "academic". AI tends towards generic expressions like "In summary,..." or "Consequentially,..." for example.

⏱️But, it is a massive time-saver as you can now focus on polishing your paragraphs, rather than writing the first draft.

Additionally, you can go back and tweak your assistant step by step. Every time you add something, it gets better and your job is done faster next time.

Btw, the best way to get better results is to add examples to your prompt. This is called "Multi Shot Prompting".

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦I use dozens of AI assistants in my research. It makes my work more enjoyable and more productive.

Summary:

1. Read papers and grab relevant ideas from them.
2. Throw these ideas into a sentence collection
3. Use an AI assistant to join them into a paragraph.
4. Use your words to polish the end result.
5. Feed finished examples back to your assistant to improve results

(Keep in mind that the use of AI sometimes needs to be declared when you submit your paper. )

If you are curious how to create your own AI assistant, follow this tutorial:

https://twitter.com/Artifexx/status/1746442577598112086

Yesterday, I chatted with a friend about writing her MSc thesis.

She said, "It was the worst time of my life because I didn't have a writing process."

Now, I am in her shoes, having to deliver a 10,000-word draft in the next few weeks.

Here is my AI-driven strategy:
👇 In this thread, we will focus on the introduction part of your paper.

AI can significantly speed up the process from here if you have read a few papers and taken some notes.

If you are entirely new to the field, go and read first.