Experiences of

Srinivasan TatachariOB & HR

Using Information Technology for Efficient Research

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Abraham Lincoln

Is there a choice?

• Information is moving to electronic avatars• Is there a choice?• Intimidating? Faint-hearted??

• Solution:– Personal Knowledge Management

Personal Knowledge Management

Personal Knowledge Management

• Stages– Ideation– Search– Storage– Retrieval– Application

• Artifacts– Research papers, Ideas, electronic versions of

books, handbooks, snippets from websites ….

Ideation aspects

Ideation

• Scribbles, notes• Mind-mapping tools– Helps in abstraction, conceptualization and

collation of ideas– Brainstorming & collaborating• E.g. Xmind Mindmap tool

• Blogging/Twittering/Facebooking ?

Mind Map (example Xmind)

Seek & You shall Receive• You search on-need or receive when ready– Library visits, journals by mail

• Google – the ‘God’ of search? – Scholar– Sometimes just old Google.com

• Research databases: JSTOR, EBSCO …

• Journal websites

• IIMB library assistance

References -> A to Z of EBSCO

Respective journals’ website

Serendipitous Receive

• Email subscriptions for notifications – New articles, journals

• Online First / New issue Print

• E-Mail lists like those of AOM, COGNET– Discussions, information sharing

RSS feeds directly from journal sites

Subscribing to RSS

FeedDemon

MS Outlook 2007

Email Alerts from Google Alerts

Email Alerts from Google Scholar Hot

Storage & Retrieval aspects

Storing

• Print documents – physical archive, highlight– Highlight in PDF (License?)

• Manual classification: Folder structure, Filenames– Tag, classify, keywords, type of documents

Store snippets, urls, images… in Evernote

MS OneNote

Retrieval & Application

• B(u)y memory !• Go by manual classification and open each file

to searchOR….

Use desktop search tools: Copernic Desktop Search

Similar to (better than?) Google Desktop

Retrieve snippets from Evernote

Zotero for Firefox stores citations, clips, notes, pdf& others

Endnote – no site wide license!

Use Zotero for citation in Word

Mendeley

EndNote

• Commercial Referencing tool• Not available on all desktops

Other tips

• Autohotkey– Automatically search for highlighted word in any

application from google and scholar website!

PDF-Xchange – Viewer free

Closing notes

• Start early– Be organized– Be efficient– Save Paper

• Backup data regularly (esp. laptops)• You may need administrative privileges for

desktop• May not be the best tools/methods available– Free!– Some are experimental – beware of crashes!!

Thanks

Contact for specifics:srinivasant07@iimb

It would be great if you can share your ideas from your experience/ experiments!!