Taking Notes and Writing Papers
The resources that will be highlighted here are software options that should make note-taking and writing easier.
Note-Taking
If you are looking for a transition to an app that allows you to keep notes in a similar fashion as handwritten ones. You can look at:
- Notion - It is a productivity and note-taking application that provides you with a highly customizable space for planning and writing. While the free suscription should be enough for individual project, it is paid software
- Obsidian - Similar to Notion, it is a note taking app that allows you to have your documents easily accesible and organize them in an intuitive manner. It is free for personal use
Writing Papers
There are a wide range of software options that you can be using for writing scientific papers. Here, we are only providing tips that might make this process easier for you.
The Donders Institute provides all of its employees with the basic Office365 package. This means that you will automatically have access to a suscription of Microsoft Word to edit any text document. This text editor can be enhanced by linking your Zotero resource manager to it so it automatically keeps track of your references and automatically generates a reference table.
Alternative
LaTeX is a document preparation system used for the communication and publication of scientific documents. It provides a consistent formatting style that can be used to create complex documents with ease (such as scientific papers). The main advantages of LaTeX is the way it handles formatting (to look professional and follow your specifications) as well as adding equations (if your paper contains a lot of equations, we highly recommend it). Additionally, you can link your Zotero to it, making it equally nice for bibliography handling as Microsoft Word.
Overleaf is an online LaTeX editor that’s easy to use. No installation, real-time collaboration, version control, hundreds of LaTeX templates, and more. It expans on using LaTeX and provides extra features that make it more attractive. In specific, allowing for collaborations means it has the functionality of Google Documents with the addition of all the features that make LaTeX special.
The downside: learning to write in LaTeX will take some effort. However, as with a lot of things in science, it eventually ends up saving you time. If you try and see that this is not for you, we always recommend sticking to the software that works best for your personal working style.
Here we attach a LaTeX tutorial in case you want to give it a go: