Collaborate with information

Research today involves large amounts of information, data (see Topic 8 for more information on sharing data), references, images and more. Collaborative research teams need to be able to share the readings they have found, the data they have gathered, and the information they have created. This section covers social bookmarking, and reference sharing.

Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking allows you to share the websites you find useful or entertaining (as well as letting you access your bookmarks from any computer).

  • Pinterest lets you bookmark, tag and summarise websites visually and display them by category.
  • Diigo allows you to highlight, annotate and attach 'sticky notes' to the pages you have bookmarked. You can also use it to organise your notes, pictures and other information.

Activity – Social bookmarking

  1. Open one of the social bookmarking sites mentioned above or choose your own.
  2. Search for keywords that are relevant to your research.
  3. Can you find other users who are interested in your area? If so, see what sites they have bookmarked.

Sharing references

A variety of online tools help you share, as well as manage, your scholarly references.

  • Use EndNote to tag, annotate, organise, share and publicise references relevant to your research.
  • Use Mendeley to set up collaborative projects, work and discuss in groups, and share data.
  • Use Zotero to create shared libraries or publish your library so all researchers can see it.