Annotated Bibliography

Since I wrote about importance of reading in research on my last article, I believe this is the right time to write about annotated bibliography. For those of you who are in research many years this is not something new. I am writing this specially to those who are new in research. Even if you want to end up in academia or become an industry engineer following latest technology you should be reading constantly. Best way to keep track of what you read and what is going on is to keep annotated bibliography.

My annotated bibliography is on a google word document. It has the author, year, subject and paper name or conference name respectively, my advisor wanted me to follow Chicago style. Once I read a paper, I write a paragraph summary of the paper, as the word describes it self, annotate. I use my words as much as possible to avoid plagiarism in case I will need to add it to my paper. After the summary, I try to write a few sentences of how the paper/ research could be improved. This helps me get a better idea of what I could potentially add to my research. Sometimes it is a great point to start. In research what has been done before seems very important but what is missing is way more important for us, young researchers.

Another benefit i found of an annotated bibliography is you can keep track of what each researcher did. Sometimes you will see same authors publish very similar information in few articles within the same years with some improved comments. Even though I believe each paper published must have something unique, this shows a way to get most out of one project.

I hope this will help some of you have better way to organize your research library. Good luck!