Hello and thanks for your message. I’m glad to hear you think my tags-first, crucible notes approach might help to speed up your workflow. Regarding your questions:
-
In obsidian, I title each highlight note with the surname of the author plus the date. They are almost always academic sources so this works well. I use et al. for references with three or more authors. For example, an article by John Smith in 2021 would be titled [[Smith, 2021]]. An article by Smith and Holloway would be [[Smith & Holloway, 2021]], and an article by Smith, Holloway and Jones would be [[Smith et al., 2021]].
-
For note names, it depends on what type of note. Probably the most relevant for importing highlights and generating new outputs would be highlight notes, paper ideas, and crucible notes. Highlight notes are literally just the highlights taken from other people’s articles. Each point or idea includes between two and ten tags. I don’t rewrite any of these highlights yet because I save that part for when I’m creating a new article of my own. Paper ideas are notes where I can bring together quotes from highlight notes. In a sense, I construct as much of a new paper as I can from the papers I’ve read. I still don’t rewrite the points at this stage. I add a checkbox to each point or idea. This way I can easily keep track of which points have been rewritten in the following step in the process. I name each paper idea note whatever I’ll name the final article but with a P - at the start. For example, I’m writing a paper at the moment which proposes a new argument genre, and I’ve named the relevant paper idea note [[P - Elaborating a new argument genre]]. That’s it for paper idea notes. Third, I have crucible notes. This is where I’m now ready to rewrite or summarise what other people have said, mixing in my own ideas and insights as I go. I have the crucible note open in one pane and the associated paper idea note beside it. As I rewrite or summarise an idea in the paper idea note into the crucible note, I check the checkbox and move to the next one. My use of highlight and paper idea notes means I already know which other work I’m citing and what the structure of my final article will be. This makes the process easy and, dare I say, fun. I name my crucible notes the same as the associated paper idea note but with a CN - at the start for crucible note. For example [[CN - Elaborating a new argument genre]]. When the crucible note is done, I use Word for the final edit.
-
You could use the workbench plugin for the stage in the process where you search your vault for given tagged ideas (using the line search ability) and then want to pull together and structure the notes of others into your paper idea note. The paper idea note can start as the workbench and be renamed when it’s ready, but you don’t have to do it this way.
I hope this is helpful. The tags-first, crucible notes approach only uses particular aspects of obsidian, so it may not seem appealing to some people at first glance. But for academics or HDR students who need to read regularly and can’t afford to waste time summarising or reworking ideas that you may not use in your own outputs, this approach works very effectively.
Good luck and I look forward to hearing how you go.