how to keep research articles organized

I save my articles to specific folders on my computer rather than printing them off because I find that easier to navigate. I have a large folder for my DNP project and then put articles in individual folders within that DNP folder based on the specific topic. I also put the last name of the first author after the title when I save it so that helps me keep track of articles better as I am writing my DNP paper and referencing each article by author name. The nice thing about not printing the articles off is that I can search by title or author on the computer and I can search for certain words within the article as well, which makes research much easier. If you do prefer to print off articles, I would recommend putting them in binders and using tabs to separate by topic.

Hope that helps a little! Ultimately, you just have to figure out a system that works best for you and stick with it.

11 hours ago, RNtoNNP said:

I save my articles to specific folders on my computer rather than printing them off because I find that easier to navigate. I have a large folder for my DNP project and then put articles in individual folders within that DNP folder based on the specific topic. I also put the last name of the first author after the title when I save it so that helps me keep track of articles better as I am writing my DNP paper and referencing each article by author name. The nice thing about not printing the articles off is that I can search by title or author on the computer and I can search for certain words within the article as well, which makes research much easier. If you do prefer to print off articles, I would recommend putting them in binders and using tabs to separate by topic.

Hope that helps a little! Ultimately, you just have to figure out a system that works best for you and stick with it.

Thank you! I like the idea of organizing by topic in either system. I appreciate your input.

I have been working on my BSN to PhD for 4 years now and I use a system almost identical to RNtoNNP. I generally keep articles in a subfolder for each course I'm in which roughly equals their topic as I tend to have only one major topic per course. I save each article as a computer file, writing out the first author's name in all caps followed by the name of the article, for example:

SMITH-Article organization for the beginning researcher

When I shift out of school mode, I imagine I'll keep similar folders but by specific topic like maternal-fetal, or professional issues. There is definitely a place for printing off an article but in general, I like them kept as PDF files on my computer with occasional back ups to a thumb drive (as well as an online cloud backup).