# DEVONthink for academic research - ADVICE

**URL:** <https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477>\
**Category:** DEVONthink\
**Created:** [May 7, 2020, 7:42am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477 "2020-05-07T07:42:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![lerone](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/lerone/32/6146_2.png) [@lerone](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/lerone)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2020, 7:54am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/41 "2020-05-18T07:54:38Z")

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thx all for this thread!

it is enlightening, and a breeze. also thx for – in the course of it – asking that interesting notetaking question (– see also [Favorite External Editors for Notes in macOS & iOS](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/favorite-external-editors-for-notes-in-macos-ios/24192/24)) … and pointing to Keypoints!

it is good to know; and certainly the question of exegesis vs. topology (and other fundamental aspects of excertping and annotation) is a central one for (post-)humanities. as btw is the inherent question of excerpting _vs_ annotation that is itself another complexion to streamline…  
– I have also found over the years that folding the whole research system into one-or-two apps doesn´t work (as good as e.g. DT is), as one always ‘bends’ an application agst its architecture – and it´s just a permanent uphill-struggle agst affordance/habit/flow to do that. (so I am still struggling to make DT a really useful app for visual / image research (the ‘other’ form of information), which just behaves differently than text-centric research…)

for this reason I for myself arrived at [MarginNote](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/favorite-external-editors-for-notes-in-macos-ios/24192/24) (currently [MarginNote3](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/favorite-external-editors-for-notes-in-macos-ios/24192/24) for excerpting PDF (and other material as websites!). it not only allows different views of notes, tagging them, filtering them according to metadata and other clue systems – but also _brings a full-blown mind-mapping solution along with it_ (actually one that can keep up with all the pro-apps, which I do not list here!). – this mindmap has _different rather sensational aspects_ to it – besides giving a visual rendering and backtracking to the linear exceprts/annotations: (a) it can itself be manipulated (sorting, moving, linking, further annotations that write back to the ‘PDF notes’!, etc.) (b) it can be exported as interactive pdf, going out alongside the notes/excerpts (besides all the options to export single notes, note sets with backlinks etc.) (c ) different excerpt-maps can be combined, manipulated and searched as topological/conceptual maps (search generally is another strongpoint of MN).

there are _some weaknesses/drawbacks_ of course: PDFs have to ‘live’ in MN; the UI needs some getting used too (it´s the kind of you either love or hate it; or just get along…); and (like with Keypoints and others) it neccessitates a rather elaborate personal workflow/protocol to keep things in sync with whatever the personal system in DT is.  
– anyway I thought I drop a mention of it, as it relates to several of the mentioned aspects/questions in this thread (including the OPs question).

best, oliver

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**Author:** ![GKZ](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/dec6dc/32.png) [@GKZ](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/GKZ)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2020, 1:49pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/42 "2020-05-19T13:49:25Z")

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Thank you for that splendid LRB link. Incredibly informative and reassuring.

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**Author:** ![TommyWeir](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/tommyweir/32/4788_2.png) [@TommyWeir](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/TommyWeir)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2020, 8:32am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/43 "2020-05-20T08:32:00Z")

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People might find LiquidText of interest, currently only on iOS but with Mac/PC apps coming. Its an intriguing piece of software.

> **[LiquidText](https://www.liquidtext.net)**
>
> LiquidText revolutionizes reading, analyzing, and annotating documents, and saves you time. - "Most innovative iPad app of the year" Apple - "All you need for deep research" MacWorld

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**Author:** ![SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/sammyscoops/32/5462_2.png) [@SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/SammyScoops)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 8:51am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/44 "2020-05-22T08:51:35Z")

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I’d be interested to hear if you ever do find a reliable app or tool for scanning in handwritten notes and having them be recognized by OCR. I swear I should have been Dr., and am trying to avoid having to transcribe by hand if it’s at all possible I have quite a few notebooks/journals I’d like to scan for posterity and then potentially free up the physical space.

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**Author:** ![benoit.pointet](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/benoit.pointet/32/9018_2.png) [@benoit.pointet](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/benoit.pointet)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 6:23pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/45 "2020-05-22T18:23:47Z")

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If you want to keep your notebooks, use an iphone scanning app, like scanner pro of readdle. Is does a fairly good job.

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**Author:** ![SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/sammyscoops/32/5462_2.png) [@SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/SammyScoops)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2020, 10:29pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/46 "2020-05-22T22:29:52Z")

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What do you mean if I want to keep my notebooks?

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**Author:** ![benoit.pointet](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/benoit.pointet/32/9018_2.png) [@benoit.pointet](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/benoit.pointet)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2020, 1:15am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/47 "2020-05-23T01:15:44Z")

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If you don’t want to tear them down as single pages …

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**Author:** ![mbbntu](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/439d5e/32.png) [@mbbntu](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/mbbntu)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2020, 6:39am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/48 "2020-05-23T06:39:34Z")

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Readdle’s app is not going to be able to OCR handwriting, though. I imagine it will be a struggle to find an app that will do it. MyScript by Nebo on the iPad has a very good handwriting recognition engine, but as far as I know it is only for recognising text as you are writing it.

As to Liquid Text, I thought it was going to be wonderful, but ended up never using it because whatever you did was effectively trapped inside that application. Export was not good (though I suppose it might have improved since I last used it a coupld of years ago). The same applies to MarginNote. Nice in some ways, but difficult to export material to other programs.

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**Author:** ![lerone](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/lerone/32/6146_2.png) [@lerone](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/lerone)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2020, 1:31pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/49 "2020-05-23T13:31:40Z")

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… just doing something very obvious here:  
[https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/liquidtext-or-marginnotes3/25043/25](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/liquidtext-or-marginnotes3/25043/25)

best! oliver

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**Author:** ![SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/sammyscoops/32/5462_2.png) [@SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/SammyScoops)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2020, 10:43am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/50 "2020-05-24T10:43:18Z")

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No need to tear them out if I don’t want to. I have a standing scanner like library would use, just really started playing around with it and trying to get through the massive heap of journals and books chocked full of annotations class notes, and any other paper item cluttering up my apartment. Less than stoked about the results of OCR, likely due to my chickenscratch, but I still need to double check the printed text as well to get a little better idea whether that’s all it is. I know DT had been having issues with OCR a while back too (basing this solely off of general forum chatter) , not sure if it’s been resolved.

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**Author:** ![rmschne](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@rmschne](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/rmschne)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2020, 11:35am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/51 "2020-05-24T11:35:47Z")

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Are _you_ having OCR issues? I’m not noticing any OCR issues…

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**Author:** ![SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/sammyscoops/32/5462_2.png) [@SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/SammyScoops)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2020, 11:43am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/52 "2020-05-24T11:43:55Z")

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I am, though I wouldn’t say that they are necessarily related to DT, like I said probably has something to do with the quality of my chicken scratch handwriting. I’d want to go back and look at some of the stuff I’ve imported via my scanner too. The fact that it has it’s own OCR that it runs makes it difficult to parse out where the breakdown is coming from.

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**Author:** ![SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/sammyscoops/32/5462_2.png) [@SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/SammyScoops)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2020, 11:48am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/53 "2020-05-24T11:48:51Z")

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But the handwritten journals I compiled to archive for myself in Devonthink are completely unreadable, at least according to the OCR when I ran concordance using one of the previuos tips posted here to verify the accuracy of the OCR in DT, so I’m assuming that problems exsited at least on some level.

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**Author:** ![rmschne](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8baadc/32.png) [@rmschne](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/rmschne)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2020, 11:59am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/54 "2020-05-24T11:59:08Z")

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> [@SammyScoops](#):
>
> I know DT had been having issues

Oh. You you said “ I know DT had been having issues…” which didn’t seem to be the case.

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**Author:** ![SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/sammyscoops/32/5462_2.png) [@SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/SammyScoops)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2020, 12:22pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/55 "2020-05-24T12:22:34Z")

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??? I"m confused, thought I threw the caveat in there that observation was based solely off of general forum chatter since I hadn’t been able to figure out where the issue was originating from.

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**Author:** ![SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/sammyscoops/32/5462_2.png) [@SammyScoops](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/SammyScoops)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2020, 12:26pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/56 "2020-05-24T12:26:01Z")

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> [@SammyScoops](#):
>
> I know DT had been having issues with OCR a while back too (basing this solely off of general forum chatter) , not sure if it’s been resolved.

Maybe read/use the whole quote next time instead of cherry-picking it [shrug].

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**Author:** ![sandgiant](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/sandgiant/32/14735_2.png) [@sandgiant](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/sandgiant)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2020, 8:30am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/57 "2020-05-29T08:30:13Z")

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I’m fairly certain DT doesn’t do handwriting OCR. ABBYY (the OCR engine used by DT) does in fact seem to support it, but only in certain scenarios: [https://abbyy.technology/en:kb:faq:recognizing\_handprinted\_text](https://abbyy.technology/en:kb:faq:recognizing_handprinted_text)

I might look into creating a script for handwriting OCR for DT if I can find some open source tools, but don’t hold your breath. 🙂

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**Author:** ![ngan](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/4da419/32.png) [@ngan](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/ngan)\
**Post date:** [June 8, 2020, 5:11pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/58 "2020-06-08T17:11:24Z")

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This might be a possible script for taking snippet-notes. My fifth iteration of a note-taking script for reviewing literature.

> [@Stack V5: a rather configurable script for taking snippet-notes while reviewing literature](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/stack-v5-a-rather-configurable-script-for-taking-snippet-notes-while-reviewing-literature/56384):
>
> Note: An updated version V5b6 is in post#2 This is the fifth iterations of Stack scipt ( from [V1](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/updated-stack-script-v1-0-create-stack-of-multiple-cards-snippets-for-each-document-with-backlink-and-wiki-group-link-cited-text-or-blank-note-comment-tagging-by-ordinary-tag-and-group-tag/48639) to [v4](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/updated-scripts-for-stack-stacklink-and-tagger-v4/54435) ) that I use for taking multiple atomic notes while reviewing academic literature.I hope that it might be useful to some forum members. What the script does: take atomic note on cited text (or blank note) and name it with a unique identifier, save all notes taken from a literature/source document into a source-linked group. The scipt can insert different backlinks into the note, and tag the n…

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**Author:** ![ngan](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/4da419/32.png) [@ngan](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/ngan)\
**Post date:** [June 14, 2020, 10:36am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/59 "2020-06-14T10:36:00Z")

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This might be a possible script for tagging complex document. My fifth iteration of a tagging script for reviewing the literature.

> [@Tagger V5: A tag selector for reviewing literature with a \[good sort of\] kitchen sink syndrome](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/tagger-v5-a-tag-selector-for-reviewing-literature-with-a-good-sort-of-kitchen-sink-syndrome/56558):
>
> I believe that tagging is one of the most important means (the other two being search and links) to recall academic knowledge. However, well-designed tags structure and consistent tagging methods are hard[never?] to achieve. My hypothesis is over-tagging, within a limited list, on complex academic literature and breaking down long notes into atomic notes will lead to a more effective retrieval of knowledge than seeking for the ideal tags from an ideal list. My general argument is that in the lon…

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**Author:** ![kaibo](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/kaibo/32/15291_2.png) [@kaibo](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/kaibo)\
**Post date:** [August 14, 2020, 5:30pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/devonthink-for-academic-research-advice/55477/60 "2020-08-14T17:30:36Z")

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+1 for you to indeed report back on this!!

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