Looking for Advice on Scrivener Workflow for Large Research-Heavy Projects

[Ingrid21]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been using Scrivener for a while now, but I’m still trying to refine my workflow for large, research-heavy projects. I’m currently working on a nonfiction book that involves a ton of sources—academic papers, articles, interviews, and notes from books. Right now, I feel like I’m drowning in information, and I’m not sure if I’m using Scrivener’s features as efficiently as I could be.

At the moment, I’m organizing my research using the Research folder, but I find myself constantly scrolling and searching for specific references. I’ve tried using keywords and metadata, but I feel like I might not be structuring things in the best way. I’ve also experimented with document links and comments, but my notes still feel scattered, and I often forget where I put things.

For those of you who work with a lot of research material, how do you:

1. Organize and categorize sources efficiently?
2. Quickly retrieve the right piece of information without excessive searching?
3. Keep track of connections between different research notes?
4. Use Scrivener alongside external tools like Zotero, Obsidian, or DevonThink?

I’d love to hear any practical tips, templates, or workflows that have worked for you. I’m especially interested in how you use Scrivener’s binder, corkboard, and metadata features for research-heavy writing.

I also checked this: https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/howto-make-scrivener-projects-look-work-like-files-in-win7/python

Thanks in advance for your insights!

[GoalieDad]

First remember you can assign multiple keywords to a single document so if had information on Paris, medieval France, and aristocracy all in same document could use keywords for each and then search by keywords and create a dynamic collection based on one or multiple keywords. So could have a collection on aristocracy and as add more articles a dynamic collection will run the search for that keyword creating an updated list each time.
The other thing I like is a link list. For example: If have a series of locations where things occur I create a Location link document and open as a quick reference panel which floats above the project (I put on another monitor screen if have that luxury and drag either a whole search collection or files on a topic on to this list. If save as a project bookmark, then in any document I can open the Project bookmarks and open my link list to a list of all the locations in my research.
Following up I will open a quick reference panel of what I am working on and can click in upper right and open a bookmark pane and anything dragged in here becomes a local bookmark even if in another project. (see image below)

And finally, Consider templates which can be any document organized in a way to help your research and can be used again and again.
I hope this gives you some ideas to help organize yourself. I also use custom icons (any png file can become a scrivener icon, but simple is better) which be a visual tag and labels can be as well.

This may only be so helpful as not an academic. Writing fiction.
I do have a website and discuss various aspects of Scrivener such as collection (Dynamic vs Static) which might be helpful. Using Collections — My Writing Journey

[Ascher]

I have the same use case - research heavy non-fiction. I have come to find it best to use more than one Scrivener project: the prose writing in one (including synopses, extempore exercises, mini-analyses and s. first drafts) and the notes in another. Having the notes in a separate project helps with intellectual claustrophobia, and although I very rarely move notes - better to link to them from the prose - it’s very easy to simply drag documents from one Scrivener project to another.

In the ‘notes’ Scrivener I work extensively with collections which make the hunt easier - and sometimes keywords (though in my historical field it can be a real chore choosing what they should be) - but even simple ‘Find’ can be very useful.

I use an entirely different app for pdf’s - usually Highlights or Devon Think. In both you can annotate and make comments and then export those to your Scrivener notes project.

[huguatrix]

Fo me, a separate reference manager is a lifesaver. I get lost enough in wrestling the material I’ve magpied into my Scrivener worldbuilding project. It was especially vital for dissertation research; now I use it for historical fiction–but in a very basic way. I personally like Bookends (Mac only, though).

With any reference manager, you can insert a link in your document to the reference. Since I only need to track the source of info (rather than formally referring to it), I have a lazy way of dragging or importing source or reference data to the Abstract field, then I lazily drag basic info like Title/Author/Date to those fields. I use general keywords in the reference manager. (I use images for worldbuilding, and those sources aren’t easily imported.)

In Scrivener, I use a separate project for the research notes/background, and another one for drafting and writing.

An invaluable tip I ran across is to keep a running research log or journal to collect your thoughts–on things like the research, questions, and your thought process. I’m wracking my brain for the source–will add the title when I find it. (<-- why I need a separate reference manager!) I made a separate section for this, with notebook icons.

What’s been useful for me in Scrivener, which I used to develop and write my dissertation, other writing, and now historical fiction:

Collections: sometimes I save a search for collections, but for more flexibility I’ll search and add those items to a new collection so that I can add items manually.
Keywords: (except I have way too many).
Document bookmarks: you can drag internal and external links to the bookmarks section, which is really useful for connecting data from other documents (in Scrivener or external). Depending on the source, you can see the text as you type. I use Scapple for brainstorming and gathering images for a particular scene, and drag these into the document’s bookmarks.
Split windows and especially open document as reference–like having multiple books open.

You could use Obsidian for tracking references, but a structured reference manager seems safer and easier. I use Obsidian regularly for collecting tidbits, but it gets unwieldy quickly.

DevonThink is a wonderful repository for source material like PDFs, but I’d find it unwieldy for tracking source information. I’m also not keen on its automatic replicant feature, which for me adds confusion.

I hope this helps, and good luck with your project!

[rms]

@huguatrix

I’m also not keen on its automatic replicant feature

I’m not aware that DEVONthink automatically replicates documents. Do you have some sort of smart rule doing this?

[suavito]

DEVONthink and Bookends here too. My content is all in DEVONthink and I mostly use Bookends as a source database, which is admittedly a bit unusual, but crucial for my workflow nonetheless.

But whatever software it will be in the end, the most important part in my opinion is: When you don’t have just one project and plan to never write again once it’s finished, or when you intend to continue writing but only about subjects that have no connection at all to the ones of earlier projects—both quite unlikely, I’d say—it totally makes sense to keep all your research outside of your projects too so you could easily re-use parts of it in your future projects.

And DEVONthink is the full package, it handles a lot of file formats, has a feed reader, has OCR inbuilt etc. etc. But if you don’t need all that or maybe because OCR nowadays comes with the OS already, you might consider just using a folder structure and Finder features like tags on your Mac and Hookmark for linking the files.

[huguatrix]

Urgh–my apologies. It’s been a while since I’ve used DevonThink, and I don’t remember exactly what this was called. I’d get perplexed when I saw multiple versions of the same document, a process that seemed automatic because I hadn’t deliberately set this up. I couldn’t get DevonThink to work for me, so I ended up keeping materials elsewhere. Many people love how DevonThink works for them.