/tiddlywiki

Research wiki. Simple, fast, powerful. Customizeable to your needs.

Primary LanguageHTMLMIT LicenseMIT

Custom Wiki

Preview the wiki here.

Update: I now use the amazing reference manager Zotero which fulfills all the needs listed below. I leave the code here because it was a fun project.

I use Mendeley to manage my citations. One limitation of this (and to my knowledge any other) reference manager is that you cannot link between papers. For that reason I wrote summaries in LaTeX in which I included hyperlinks to articles (e.g., if they would complement or contradict each other). This approach worked well in the beginning but did not scale well. At not even 100 summaries compiling took over a minute. Another solution was required... and here comes TiddlyWiki!

TiddlyWiki is a "unique non-linear notebook for capturing, organising and sharing complex information." It's general plus points are, among others:

  • Non-linearity: link from any entry to any other entry. Clicking a link opens the entry in a card. Read the card, close it, and continue reading where you left off.

  • Scale and speed: No problems with hundreds of summaries.

  • Ease of use. The wiki is a single .html file that you edit in your browser. No installation required. Markdown makes editing child's play.

  • And many more...

I found a template for summaries of research articles by Alberto Molina Pérez and made some modifications to suit my needs. I tried making the template as self-explanatory as possible. In judging whether my wiki is something for you, I suggest you check out the wiki and click through the pages.

For readers who prefer some more information: In my wiki you will find 9 tabs:

  • Create: use this tab to create new entries (or use the links within the subsequent tabs).

  • Publications: here go all your summaries of/notes on articles. Click through the examples and on the pen icon (Edit this tiddler) to see how you should enter publications, or any other entries for that matter. Mark papers as important (star), unread (closed envelope), etc.

    • I include FontAwesome to ease reading. E.g., a cog marks a hypothesis, a wrench highlights a method, and a test tube indicates a result.

  • Definitions: Different groups of researchers will employ different definitions. Keep them in one place under this tab.

  • Theories: For the bigger picture.

  • Tools: Anything methods or analyses related goes here. Especially in fields where authors do not routinely host databases of methods, this tab may come in helpful.

  • Notes: Notes from conferences, etc. Personally I am not using this tab much as I prefer to have notes in a format that I could expand to a research article. Same goes for the Ideas tab.

  • Ideas. Room for ideas. Although I do not use the Notes and Ideas tabs much, I kept them in this wiki as they come in helpful in a few cases.

  • Tags: Tag your publications (and definitions/theories/tools) and they will show up here. A great way to get all articles tagged "X".

  • Construction: TiddlyWiki is a non-linear notebook, which I love. However, in a non-linear notebook it is easy to loose track of 1) entries without separate tiddlers and 2) orphans. The Construction tab shows these. 1) Entires without separate tiddlers occur when you include a link to an entry but that entry does not exist. As such an event will show up under this tab, you can edit your entries without having to worry about forgetting to include any separate entries that you link to. 2) Orphans are entries that do not receive links from other pages. In my view all publication entries should recieve at least one link from another entry, as my goal with this wiki is to create links between articles.