Looking for best practices for using web clipped articles

I used to clip a lot of articles into Evernote, but I found that I never used them for anything. In addition, I had several articles that talked about the same thing: these clippings were begging to be synthesized, but I never did.

So, I’ve all but stopped making web clippings. When I come across an article that I find useful, I either directly make a zettel or I create a literature note and then create zettels from the literature note. The difference between the two approaches depends on whether I get only 1 or 2 ideas from an article or I find that I need to spend time unpacking and digesting the article before making zettels.

In some cases, I find the Roam-highlighter talked about elsewhere on this forum to be helpful for creating a literature note (despite the name, it also works with Obsidian). Using that, I make highlights directly on the page and store those in a literature note in Obsidian. After copying the highlights, I make my own notes by only referencing the highlights.

In the rare event that I decide to save the entire article, I store the article in Zotero. I only do this if I feel that I may want to go back to the source document one day. Depending on the nature of the note, I create a link to the file in Obsidian.

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