Progressive Geographies

The Mechanics of Research Production – some interesting writing discussion and advice at Daily Nous. This isn’t just relevant to philosophy.

There are many little everyday steps leading up to the production of a philosophical manuscript. Charles Rathkopf (CUNY) writes in asking philosophers about “the daily habits of routine research.”

Do they take notes on paper, then transfer to a computer? Does anyone still try to write anything substantial with pen and paper? What bibliographic system is best? Do people keep pdfs of the papers they read on their computer? Or just save the references? Do people use comment functions in pdf readers? Do they keep physical copies of the papers they read? What software do people like to use for note-taking? For writing articles? How do people deal with logical notation?

 Some of these questions have been addressed here at Daily Nous, with posts about writing and reference software (and just a few week’s into DN’s existence we conducted a little poll about when people write). But people are welcome to revisit these questions and the others Rathkopf lists, and we can add further ones that might be of interest:

Discussion continues here – most of the comments are worth a look.