PERRLA’s Research Notes make it easy to do your research and create citations once and then don’t worry about them again.
Research Notes live in your PERRLA Papers in the Outline/Organize tab. This tab is split down the middle with Research Notes on the left and the Outline on the right.
To get started, you first need to add a Reference to your paper. You can either create a new one or add one you’ve already made. Once you’ve added it, you’ll see it listed in the Research Notes section. FYI: adding a Reference here makes it show up in the References & Citations panel in the Editor as well.
OK, now you can start taking Notes for your Reference. Just click Add Note under the Reference and start typing. You can type anything you want, but Research Notes are great for quotes, paraphrases, or even your own insights. When you’re done, just press Enter to save the note.
If the Note needs a citation (like a quote), you can add one by clicking Add Citation in the Note’s bottom right corner. Now your Research Note has a Citation attached to it. Oh, and it’s perfectly formatted.
You can add as many Research notes as you like and for as many References as you need. And, if you like keyboard shortcuts, you can find those by hovering over the ? icon at the top.
Once you have a few research notes, you can put them to use. You can organize them inside the under their Reference, or you can drag them across the screen and drop them into your Outline. There you can get really organized.
If you like to live on the wild side and write your paper without an outline, you can find all of your Research Notes inside the paper Editor in the Research Notes side panel. There you’ll see all your Research Notes waiting to dragged and dropped directly into your paper.
Dropping a Research Note from here or from the Outline tab will insert the Note’s text and automatically add any Citation attached to it as well. Make the Citation once and use it for your entire paper.
When you drag a Research Note into your paper, it turns light green in the panel, so you know you’ve used it already. You could also use the check mark on the Research Note to mark it used or unused. Either way, feel free to drag and drop a Research Note as many times as you need.
In addition to only needing to create citations for your Research Notes once, if you update the Citation for a Research Note anywhere in your paper, it will be automatically updated everywhere else. So simple.
OK, last thing you need to know. If you Remove a Reference from your Paper after you’ve created Research Notes for it, it will remove all of the Research Notes and their Citations from your paper as well. Eek! Don’t worry, we warn you before this happens. Hopefully, you won’t have to do that (since it could cause you to plagiarize), but now you know.
That’s it! Research Notes in PERRLA make it easy to take, organize, and use your Research without the hassle of tracking formatting across index cards or documents.
If you have questions, let us know in the Contact Support module. Thanks for watching and good researching!