Research Notes in PERRLA Online (Online)

PERRLA’s Research Notes make it easy to do your research and create citations once and then don’t worry about them again.

What is a Research Note?

Research Notes live inside of your PERRLA Papers in the Research tab or inside your References in the Reference module. They allow you to document your initial research directly in PERRLA (meaning you don't have to switch between documents or note cards).

Each Research Note can contain a quote, a thought, or whatever text you want.  There's no one right way to do research, so use your Research Notes in a way that works best for you.  You can also create a Citation for each Research Note. 

Once you make a citation for a Note, it will follow that Note throughout your entire paper.  So when you drag your Research Notes into your Outline or directly into your paper, the citation follows along automatically.  This is where Research Notes become really powerful.

How to create Research Notes in your papers

Creating a Research Note is easy.  Here's how it works:

1. Go to the Research tab in one of your papers
2. Add a Reference to your paper
3. Click + Add Note beneath the Reference
4. Type your Note in the new field
5. Press Enter on your keyboard

That's it!  You've got a brand new Research Note.

To add a citation, click the Add Citation text in the bottom-right corner of the Research Note. Then, add the citation's information and click Create Citation. The citation will follow your Research Note wherever you use it.

Any Research Notes you create for a reference will automatically be available for that reference in any future papers.

Using Research Notes in a paper

After you've created your Research Notes, you can start to put them to use. 

Adding Research Notes to your Outline

The first way you can use Research Notes is to add them to your Outline.

In the Outline tab inside your papers, you can open the Research Note panel to see all the notes for the references in your paper. Then, you can drag and drop the Research Notes into your outline wherever you need.

You can also use the + icon in a Research Note to add it at your cursor's current location in your Outline.

Using Research Notes in the Editor

You can also use Research Notes directly in the Editor tab.

When in the Editor, you can open the Research Notes side panel by clicking Research Notes in the ribbon bar.

There you'll see a read-only version of your Research Notes from the Research tab.  Just like adding Research Notes to the Outline, you can drag and drop your Research Notes directly into your paper. We'll add the Note's content and citation right into the body of the paper.

Once you add a Research Note to your paper, its background will turn green so you know that you've already used it.  You can still add the Note again - this is just to help you know which Notes you have or haven't used.

You can also mark Research Notes as used or unused by clicking the checkmark for that Research Note.  Just hover over the Note and you'll see the checkmark on the right side of the Note.

Combining Research Notes with your Outline

Research Notes are incredibly helpful when you're putting together the outline for your paper. You can learn about the Outline Editor here (https://perrla.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/13657717004827-Using-the-Outline-Editor-in-your-Paper-PERRLA-Online-).