Looking for PIM / Thesis Writing Software for the PC

Posted by Dr Andus
Oct 20, 2009 at 11:33 PM

Hi,

I’m also a PhD student, with a similar interest in designing a work flow that is supported by appropriate software tools. Unfortunately I’m still far from a fully integrated and streamlined work flow and each time I try, I do it slightly differently. However, so far I have assembled the following tools to support this process:

- EndNote to store and categorise references and link to PDFs;
- Adobe Acrobat and now PDF-Xchange Viewer (thanks guys!) for annotating PDFs;
- Surfulater for capturing website content and organising it into categories;
- Atlas.ti to analyse data (I haven’t got to that stage yet);
- Whizfolder for organising ideas and reading notes into hierarchical categories, capturing snippets from PDFs (using the excellent “Watching Clipboard” function), linking to PDFs and any other file with research data, and any ad hoc writing and outlining;
- CmapTools for quick conceptual mapping;
- Natara Bonsai for developing hierarchical outlines to be used for writing the final draft (building on material captured and organised in Whizfolder and the conceptual maps in CmapTools);
- MS Word for writing.

Out of all of these, I am really happy with and couldn’t or wouldn’t want to live without Surfulater, Whizfolder, CmapTools and Bonsai. I’m hoping that Whizfolder will become the nerve centre of the entire dissertation, although I haven’t fully utilised it yet, as I’m only just moving into the data analysis stage of my PhD. Still, for some unexplainable reason, I find working with Whizfolder strangely satisfying…

I’ve tried out too many mindmapping, notetaking and wiki tools to remember them all. The above are what I ended up with after 3 years of searching and experimentation. I have to say I’m not very patient, so if a software doesn’t immediately make sense, I quickly move on. I’m intrigued for instance by Ultra Recall but I just couldn’t figure out what it’s really for and how I could use it as part of the research process.

Anyway, I’d be also interested to hear about how others map their qualitative research analysis and writing processes.