I’m an academic (a historian of philosophy). I’m in the early stages of a multi-year, ungainly project, and I thought, based on its features and on a colleague’s recommendation, that I’d try Scrivener. Now, as these things go, it’s typical for one to spin off journal articles from a larger book project. That doesn’t just mean submitting a chapter of the book to a journal. Rather, one must always adapt the spun-off article to the journal’s audience, as well as provide some contextualizing background in the article, background that would otherwise be found in earlier chapters of the book.
What I did recently, for a presentation I gave at another institution, was copy material from the book chapters into another (phantom) book chapter, and then revised that. (I call it phantom, because it will not be a chapter of the book, yet it needs to be in the Manuscript folder in order to compile.) This creates problems re-integrating innovations in the writing and research into the extant chapter drafts.
Have folks used Scrivener to wrangle such a process before? What would you recommend?
This is not my province, but my immediate reaction was: separate projects?
You can drag/copy folders and documents from one project to another, so when you want to create an article from one of the chapters in the ‘book’ project, 'drag it into the ‘Articles’ project and do the modifications there. Similarly anything could start in the ‘Articles’ project and be dragged into the ‘Book’ project to act as the basis for a new chapter.
Mark
P.S. And for research materials, look into Devon Think or Tinderbox as a common research repository.
One approach might be to write your articles as sub-documents of specific chapters.
If the articles extend across many multiple chapters, then collate the sub-documents in one or many Collections, as required, naming the Collection with an article topic name. You would also be able to differentiate the collected sub-documents in the Inspector → Custom Metadata tab by highlighting each document in a collection and unticking the Include in Compile box before compiling your book project.
Alternatively, you could filter when compiling, by including or excluding Collections, thereby choosing when to compile your book or specific articles.
I’m going to second @xiamenese’s suggestion … spun-off articles are in my mind brand new projects. For a new project/article, open the main project and then create a new project and “seed” it with chapters from the main project by drag and drop. While working on the new project, keep the main project open in a window and available for reference or more drag&drop and/or copy/paste. If the new project results in material–wholely or in parts–that are fodder for the main project draft&drop and/or copy/paste from the article project to the main project.
Might be some cleaver ways to use Scrivener’s collections and or binder organisation along with customised compile settings, but all that kinda “hurts my brain”.
The short answer is yes, definitely. There are lots of ways to compile pieces smaller than the entire Manuscript folder.
Whether to treat the spin-off articles as part of the main project is really up to you. It’s just as easy to move material between projects as within a single project.
I second the recommendation of DevonThink as a research repository.
I’m an ex-academic (history and philosophy of medicine) and as I am still very active in research and writing even now I still have a book/article/essay/pop lecture requirement. As William James said, any non-specialist projects must be written for the audience (which is why so many decontextualising philosophers misunderstand him).
I simply use different Scrivener projects - you can always link to the longer, full research, version as you edit down and rewrite the article - and new insights from the re-write can very easily be added to the original, to be edited in. The ‘Copy to Project’ command allows any document in the MS part of the folder to be sent to any open Scrivener project.
Incidentally, what (who) is the subject of your work?
Thanks for the suggestions, Xiamenese! I’ve been using Evernote for years as the main repository for my research, and I like it. I’ll experiment with your suggestion.
Thanks for this suggestion, RevoTiLlor. I’ll have to play around with some version of this to see whether I can master it. I’m new to Scrivener, and I don’t quite get what Collections are. It’s on my list of features to experiment with.
You ask who the subject of my work is. It is Martin Heidegger, and I’m currently researching his slide into National Socialism. (Grim subject, I know.) Up till now, my research has always been strictly focused on the main texts of authors I’ve written on (mainly Heidegger, Husserl, Kant, and Dewey). For this project I’ve been examining many different kinds of sources: documentation of university affairs, Heidegger’s notebooks, unpublished seminar protocols, etc., as well as a much larger range of secondary sources. So I have lots of different kinds of material to wrangle. It’s new for me, and I knew I needed a new tool. A standard word processing environment, even supported by EverNote for research findings, wasn’t going to work for me.
For a terrific tool to help with research stuff … DEVONthink. Mentioned above up-post by others, and now by me. Will cope with the demands you most likely will face. My understanding is that numerous Historians rely on it.
Nothing better, IMHO. While Scrivener has the “Research” folder in the the Binder, compared to DEVONthink, it’s just a folder.
rms, kewms, and xiamenese have all recommended DevonThink. I used DevonThink a long time ago, but switched to EverNote at some point. I don’t remember why. Have any of you compared the two platforms? If so, what makes DevonThink superior in your view?
Sounds very interesting: phenomenology comes into my work as a (large) digression - not Heidegger and now only incidentally Husserl, but early Merleau-Ponty, which had closer links to French physiology (of the Bernardian kind) than his later work.
In reply to the query: Collections are a fabulous tool: think Smart searches - very well worth exploring. I organise the main note hoard for my research using a series of Collections. And another thumbs up for Devonthink: everything I read or write digitally is indexed in there and just the Search function of all that is worth most of the cost. I also use if for PDF reading/notes at times. The new version 4 is now available.
Sooner or later someone will mention Tinderbox … an acquired taste, but for me now an essential companion to DT and Scrivener.
Re Evernote … I used it many years ago. In that era it was the “cool app” and company, especially in Silicon Valley (per my niece who works there). Years ago I stopped using it as it became clear my data files were in the app in a proprietary format and “held hostage”. Looked around and found DEVONthink.
I cannot comment with any authority on EverNote vs. DEVONthink. I do notice that if you Google “evernote v devonthink” quite a few articles that others have written will appear. Didn’t look at most. Some seem good. Some see not so good. But published none the less.
I will say there is no comparison IMHO to using DEVONthink v Scrivener’s Research Folder for managing professional research (and a lot of other personal information mgmt).
The DEVONthink Forum is a good place to get guidance from other professional researchers from past posts, and for you to ask new questions.
Oops - missed that! I do see them as complementary though: DT for the repository; Tbx for the graphic development of/connections between research ideas. They play nicely together too.
