I constantly take notes on papers that I read. If the paper’s topic is familiar to me, I just take summary notes and points of dispute. If the paper has math or lots of unfamiliar terminology (especially common in anatomy and biochemistry), then I copy paragraphs from the paper as I read them, and then reformat the copied sentences (usually breaking up clauses) or then work out the math for myself.
I take notes for two main reasons. One, my memory is poor, and if I didn’t take notes I would just lose all of the research I do. I’ve completely forgotten the control theory I read a few months ago, but it doesn’t feel like a loss because it’s still in my exocortex. Second, I tend to hoard info, and if I didn’t summarize and discard the papers I read, they would accumulate in my documents folder without limit. Even while taking notes, I gain about a thousand papers a year. Hard drives are cheap, but there’s still a huge cost to not being able to find the paper you need when you need it.
I constantly take notes on papers that I read. If the paper’s topic is familiar to me, I just take summary notes and points of dispute. If the paper has math or lots of unfamiliar terminology (especially common in anatomy and biochemistry), then I copy paragraphs from the paper as I read them, and then reformat the copied sentences (usually breaking up clauses) or then work out the math for myself.
My notes for a typical CogSci paper on functional neuroanatomy of emotion regulation: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35756423/emotion-regulation.txt
Notes for a math paper by Jaynes on maximum entropy statistical inference that I’m currently working through: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/35756423/jaynes%20-%20stand%20on%20max%20ent.txt
I take notes for two main reasons. One, my memory is poor, and if I didn’t take notes I would just lose all of the research I do. I’ve completely forgotten the control theory I read a few months ago, but it doesn’t feel like a loss because it’s still in my exocortex. Second, I tend to hoard info, and if I didn’t summarize and discard the papers I read, they would accumulate in my documents folder without limit. Even while taking notes, I gain about a thousand papers a year. Hard drives are cheap, but there’s still a huge cost to not being able to find the paper you need when you need it.
Hope that helps.