The Reading Matrix
When you start a research project, there is a lot to read. This is not news. What doesn't get talked about enough is how to read. How to actually get your head around the literature rather than just accumulating a pile of PDFs and hoping it eventually makes sense.
There are two tools that will genuinely make this easier. One is software. One is a spreadsheet.
USE REFERENCING SOFTWARE
These days there are great open-source options that do something genuinely magical. They create a database of all your articles, let you read the PDF within the software itself while highlighting and taking notes, and then link to whichever writing software you use (Word, Google Docs) so you can “cite as you write”.
Then you click a button, and it will automagically create a beautifully formatted reference list for you. I don't think anyone needs to spend time learning what APA7 style is anymore, because tools like Zotero handle it for you.
I recommend Zotero (zotero.org), it is open source, free, and excellent. Other options include Mendeley (also free) and Endnote (your institution probably has a licence). It is good idea to set up your referencing software before you start reading. It is so much easier to build a library from the beginning than to try to reconstruct one retroactively.
BUT THE SOFTWARE DOESN'T SOLVE THE REAL PROBLEM
The most common questions I get about managing all there is to read are mostly about how to extract what you need from the contents of the papers.
How do I get my head around the literature?
How do I find the "gap"?
How do I know when I've read enough?
What's the best way to take notes on what I'm reading?
This is where the Reading Matrix comes in.
WHAT IS THE READING MATRIX?
The Reading Matrix is a spreadsheet where each row is a paper that you have read and each column is something about the papers that you want to keep track of. It's a structured note-taking system that makes it easy to compare papers that you are reading.
When you're reading to get your head around the literature, you're looking for patterns. You want to identify consistencies and inconsistencies in methods and findings. By setting your notes up in a spreadsheet, you can sort and colour-code in a way that makes those patterns jump out at you.
The columns you include should be specific to the patterns you're trying to find. For example, if you're looking at research on constructs that moderate the relationship between stress and exam performance, you'd add a column for moderating variables and track which ones have been studied in past work. In my own research in developmental psychology, I was always most interested in the age of the babies and the type of eye-tracking task being used, so those were my columns.
You adapt the template to your own purpose.
WHAT THIS ACTUALLY DOES FOR YOU
Once you're filling in the matrix as you read, things start to happen that don't happen when your notes are scattered across a pile of PDFs.
The matrix helps you see patterns. Which methods keep coming up? Which populations have been studied? What do most papers agree on, and where do they diverge?
The matrix helps you find the gap. The gap is almost never one missing study. It's usually a pattern, a combination of population, method, or question that keeps appearing at the edges of other people's work but hasn't been directly addressed. Your reading matrix will show you that pattern.
And the matrix helps you know when you've read enough. When you open a new paper and you can already predict which studies it will cite, you're there.
GETTING STARTED
Grab the Reading Matrix template (download it as part of the Overwhelm toolkit). It's set up with a basic structure you can adapt to your field. Open it alongside Zotero and you've got everything you need.
The literature is big and it can feel overwhelming. The Reading Matrix doesn’t reduce how much you have to read, but it will make the literature make more sense.
This post is part of the What They Forgot to Teach You series, based on Reveal Research workshops for Honours, GradDipAdv, and PhD students. Head to revealresearch.org to download the full overwhelm toolkit and find out about upcoming workshops.
