I have referred to this issue in earlier blogposts. In an unstructured programme, that has few external deadlines, we get a lot of time to read, which in itself is a fabulous thing. However, this also means that we can spend months and years together in reading things that may not contribute to our research. It is thus important to structure our own time wisely while reading.
First, I would emphasise that no reading is wasted reading. You will learn something from every chapter, book, article, or research study that you read. When reading, don’t just focus on what are the findings of the study and if and how they are relevant to you. You may also focus on the style of writing, the vocabulary used, the methodology adopted, sample selected, ideological underpinnings, among other things. It may also be useful to go through the references cited. This will help you to locate the other readings that may be relevant to you. Also, it will help you to know the authenticity of the writing.
Having said that, I understand the importance of time. We are constantly busy and have little time to waste on things that may not be relevant for our work. It is thus important to first and foremost be clear in why you are reading at all. Is there a specific aspect that you are focusing on? If, for example, you want to focus on readings that are relevant for your area of work, identifying the key words that will help you to search for relevant publications will help you to get better results. If a keyword or phrase is not working, tweak it and search again. If you are manually searching in the library, pick up each journal you think is likely to have similar studies and just read the index of the journal. In this process you will find many published works that may not be what you are looking for but are simply interesting, or seem to have potential for some other aspect for your research. Do not start reading them immediately. Make detailed notes of where you located them, including library numbers etc. If searching online, simply bookmark them or download and keep in a separate folder that needs to be revisited later. You may sub-classify it as you like so that you know why you have noted something.
I find it useful to first go through all journals in a library and take note of at least ten to twelve publications that I wish to read. I make notes of whether they are for immediate reading, or am I keeping a tab on them for later reading. This is based on whether the articles/ studies meet the criteria of the keywords I have identified earlier. If the title or abstract does not have the keyword specified, I usually postpone reading it for later. This usually works for looking for theoretical frameworks or research studies in an area. However, this did not work for me when I was trying to locate methodologies used by other researches in the area. For this, I went through the abstracts of studies to understand the methodology used and then decided whether I wish to read the full study or not and why.
In this entire process, my suggestion is that you keep detailed notes of why you are reading or something or not. Noting down references, what you read, and even writing why you didn’t find it useful will come in handy. Basically, note down everything you are likely to read when you have read hundreds of publications and don’t remember what is written where. If you are computer savvy, make cross links in word documents, hyperlinks and table of contents. If you are making hand written notes, it may help to just list all the readings that you have read and assign numbers to them. In either case, I strongly recommend taking down complete reference in APA/MLA/Chicago style so that your reference list/ bibliography is simultaneously prepared. If noting down verbatim, get into the habit of using quotation marks so that you don’t confuse what is quoted from the text and what is based on your own understanding later. Also, when noting down quotes, ensure that you note down the page number.
Finally, I strongly suggest that you photocopy what you absolutely must. Do not hoard readings. You will never be able to locate it again when you need it. Good luck and happy reading.