Organizing your articles

Aim

To efficiently document the literature.

Requirements

To document your literature in an efficient way.

Responsibilities

Executing researcher:

• to document your literature in an efficient way.

Project leader:

• to provide important literature from the field.

Research assistant: N.a.

How to

Researchers have to handle large amounts of literature. There are various database programs that can be used to organize the articles you read and cite. Organizing these articles in database programs helps you to efficiently cite references within your own articles and thesis. Besides the cite-while-you-write options, you can store articles in different databases for each new topic. If you are starting to investigate a new topic within your research field, ask your mentor or colleagues if they already have a database with the relevant articles; a copy will help you make a flying start!

Within the Amsterdam UMC and VU University (VU), programs as EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley are commonly used. The Amsterdam UMC medical library and VU library provide user guides and workshops that will help you to work efficiently with these programs.