Research Process: A Step-By-Step Guide

Whether by hand or digitally, writing notes on each of your sources can be of great benefit when doing your research.  If you are creating your notes digitally you should keep them in a file separate from your main paper. 

For each source you should include the citation, the type of source (book, journal article, website etc.), and the URL if it is a website. 

When taking notes:

• Only record the information relevant from your research
• Save time by using abbreviations and acronyms.
• Try summarising the author's work in your own words
• When you are finished taking notes, go back and assign keywords, headings and subheadings 
• Try grouping your sources together by keywords and sub-topics