Best practices in research recommend organizing and storing your research materials as you acquire them. In order to capture all of your books, journal articles, newspaper articles, and videos. There are a variety of ways to do this, from manual pen and paper to free citation management software.
One of the easiest, low-key ways is a simple research log. Included here is a blank table you can copy and paste into a document, as well as an example of one filled out.
| What it says | How it relates | What I think |
|---|---|---|
| Source/Citation: | ||
| Date: | Permalink: | |
| How I found it: | ||
| What it says | How it relates | What I think |
|---|---|---|
| "Despite fearing for their reputations because of their sexually provocative cheerleading routines, every cheerleader I interviewed was... proud of the squad’s technique, and committed to cheering." | Cheerleaders are athletes who want to showcase skill and technique in a non-seductive way. | Cheer coaches should make conscious decisions about routines that highlight skill and athleticism and not include dance that reduces the athlete to a sexual object. |
| Source/Citation: Johnson, Chelsea Mary Elise. “‘Just Because I Dance Like a Ho I’m Not a Ho’: Cheerleading at the Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender.” Sociology of Sport Journal, vol. 32, no. 4, Dec. 2015, pp. 377–94. EBSCOhost, https://doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2014-0091. | ||
| Date: 8/9/22 | Permalink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,sso&db=sih&AN=113169505&site=ehost-live&custid=s8993175 | |
| How I found it: I went to SocIndex and typed in cheerlead* | ||
If you are unable to download the software to your personal device, you still have options available to you. You can add an item on the web version using a unique identifier such as the URL, DOI, or ISBN (in both Zotero and Mendeley) or you can import the .ris file (Mendeley only).
Browser extensions provide additional functionality to your web browser. The extensions for Zotero & Mendeley are not standalone products. However, the extensions do make it really easy to pull citation information from a page on the web. As always, you will need to review the information being imported for accuracy.
With all pre-made citations, you will need to double-check them for accuracy. A common error is when something is mistyped in a title, it will be misspelled or in all caps in your citation. Remember that your citations are part of your academic integrity, and you don't want to leave that wholly up to an algorithm.