What I mean is, I am a Ph.D. graduate student recently ABD status (all but dissertation). That means that starting NOW until Spring 2021 I must research, write, and defend a dissertation in my field (history of science).
I recently had lunch with a colleague in his final semester. He recommended I download Scrivener for writing. (He also recommended DEVONthink for managing archival material, and Zotero for citations.) After two days in the tutorial, I decided it was exactly what I needed.
In the past, I used Evernote and OneNote (+Word) for writing. They served me well. But this is a much larger project than I’ve ever undertaken. I’m looking forward to having my decision to migrate the site of my writing labor validated in the coming years. Wish me luck!
Also, if anyone with similar experience—writing history in Scrivener—has any advice or words of encouragement (or warning), they are especially welcome!
I am a DBA student (Doctor of Business Administration). I think Scrivener will a terrific tool as I continue to write my doctoral study. So far, I have not found a need for programs such as Zotero and EndNotes as I use a Word document to list my literature, written in APA format. Then, I have each article downloaded in the cloud. Scrivener will help me organizer my literature as I write my literature review.
I use Papers 3 for all my literature references which gives me a chance to both annotate the pdfs and organize them in various ways (similar to collections in Scrivener).
I then use an Apple script provided by Mekentosj to copy both the reference, the cite key and all my annotations for each paper I am to use for a given article to Scapple and organize and make more comments.
Then I start writing in Scrivener and import the Scapple map as an image and all the individual reference papers into the research area. For writing I have made a template that follows the general IMRaD structure of articles within my field.
Late to the party but I wanted to say that I used Scrivener to write my thesis (Masters in Environmental Engineering) and I don’t know what I would have done without it. Managed citations easily enough using EndNote by direct copy/pasting EndNote refs into my Scrivener drafts and then converting them after I exported to word for final polishing and so on.
Good luck with your dissertation and have fun with Scrivener!
It’s so cool. I also once dreamed of becoming a professional writer, but nothing came of it. But now I’m working with Scrivener and improving my skills. I hope that everything is ahead and I will still find help for myself
I am very late here, but I wanted to ask: How did it go? That’s such a huge task to take on. I’m currently writing research essays and studying for my BA in Developmental Psychology. I hope to be a researcher one day.