Skills no one tells you you'll need: how to properly catalog papers so that you can come back to them weeks, months, years later and know exactly why you downloaded it, why it was important, and what it taught you.

Here's what works for me, a thread :

@AcademicChatter

First thing's first: I re-name every paper I download in a common way so that it is searchable (to me) and memorable (to me).

My format:
LASTAUTHOR_Firstauthor (Year) - Title.pdf

I refer to the papers by shorthand: LASTAUTHOR_Firstauthor (Year) in my notebooks, notes, etc.

This shorthand format contains the key information:
- the lab the paper came from
- the first author
- the year published

It makes it incredibly easy to connect papers from the same lab by different first authors while keeping track of the first author and year published.

Next, every single PDF I save gets a stamp to determine where it came from. These stamps either say:

Downloaded by me on (date)

OR

Sent by (person) on (date)

I add a note to the top of each PDF containing key information on:

- Why did I download this paper?
- What was I thinking about when I downloaded it?
- Why do I think (name) sent me this paper?

If the paper was sent by e-mail, I might even paste the e-mail right into the note.

Once I've read the paper, I annotate it at the top with a summary of key information from the paper.

THIS IS THE BEST PART: this summary means that whenever I open that PDF I *IMMEDIATELY* know what the key information was and where to find it.

That looks something like this:

Last, but absolutely not least:

I index every paper in a literature tracker in a fully-searchable Excel database that the insanely talented @SteMcQuilliam taught me how to make.

THIS is what that looks like:

And here's where to find out how to make one yourself in less than 30 minutes and with limited Excel capabilities (I'm serious, Excel is my enemy most days), courtesy of @SteMcQuilliam's wonderful webinar. https://twitter.com/thoughtsofaphd/status/1252969261494153217?s=20

If this seems daunting - it's not! I promise!

Once you get a system going that works for you (and it might be very different than the one I've described) future you will thank past you for saving them SO, SO much time later.

Organize your papers. It's worth it, I promise.

Full disclaimer: this is my system and this is what works for me. It definitely won't work for everyone, but my goal here is to get you all thinking about ways you can organize YOUR papers that make sense in your brain. This makes sense in my brain.

Update: a lot of people are also suggesting @zotero and @MendeleySupport to manage your papers. Try them out! Personally, I couldn't find a single reference manager that met all of my (admittedly) very specific needs - but these are both incredible softwares to have!