I use Obsidian primarily for professional notes related to business and economics news (non-academic), and relate to your observation that most use cases out there are about study, especially personal knowledge management - most examples end up being fairly esoteric, like taking notes on how to take notes!
For me, what I found useful is to start a few notes based on questions I needed to answer.
I start collecting sources, initially with highlights, perhaps summaries of key points in my own words, with the aim of answering these questions. Source acquisition, highlighting/bulleting, and summaries are initially done in a “daily” or “scratch” note that is a catch-all, which I will review and convert to my own original notes every day/few days/weekly when I can look at accumulated notes side by side.