How to organize your research literature by the fish bone chart

As long as you start to do research. You many have several kinds of information:

1. Not related after I read.
2. Information may be useful to me, but not now.
3. Information is partial helpful to my research.
4. Related information, which may be part of my literature review.

Well, it will be becoming more and more painful when you accumulate plenty of the files or books above. Even worse that most of people do not know which kinds of information they are. Thus your research life become more confusing; you feel you read a lot,but get only few.

My experience is like those I described, hence I started to know to manage your research is immediately important once your PHD is on the way.

I learnt several methods to organize the research. Here I first list the fish bone chart as a example.(I also use mindmap sometimes)

In the fish bone, you will try to list every piece of information as a fish bone. No matter how tiny it is. By a presentation of a fish-bone chart, you start to feel more clear and more confidence in your research. And this will be a good start of your research.

p.s.

The fish-bone chart is made long time ago when I was a first-year PHD student. The information just for reference. Some corrections may need for this.