Newsletter #10: How to Use Logseq for Research

Happy Tuesday, fellow Logseqers!

This week's newsletter is for all the researchers among you. Whether you use Logseq as an academic, professional, or just a curious mind, you'll find something helpful in this edition.

If you're in school and want to use Logseq to manage your classes or other learning projects, consider joining the Query Learning Sprint this summer. You can read everything about the program on the Logseq forum.

For now, let's dig into the resources that will help streamline your research process.

How to design and run personal learning projects with Logseq

I'll kick off the Query Learning Sprint by sharing how I use Logseq to run my learning projects.

If you want to get the most out of this learning sprint, I recommend you go through the preparation materials first. I also recommend you start by creating a learn log where you share your progress and struggles. In tomorrow's session, I'll write out my learning plan live.

​The complete outline of the session is as follows:

• ​Why you should have a learning system.
• ​What you need for a learning system.
• ​How to find and manage resources.
• ​How to manage time.
• ​How to manage focus.
• ​How to take notes.
• ​How to make flashcards.
• ​How to challenge yourself.
• Project: A personal learning plan in which you've selected resources, decided on a note-taking approach, and blocked time to learn and build.

⏰ Click here to register and receive a reminder when the session starts.

🧱 Click here for the materials to prepare for the session.

The session will be recorded and published on Logseq's YouTube channel.

New plugins and themes

This week, two new plugins landed in the Marketplace. One will be hugely valuable if you want to use Logseq to manage your citations. Search for them in ... > Plugins > Marketplace within Logseq.

❞ Logseq Citations
Aryan Sawhney created a plugin that will help you to manage citations within Logseq. It supports embedding and linking to Bibtex items in the form of pages and links. It also supports Zotero, Paperpile, and other applications with support for .bib references. See this gif for a demo.

🏷 Automatic URL Title
This plugin automatically fetches the title of a website and creates a Markdown link out of it. Also, it shows the favicon of the webpage within Logseq.

Learn from the community

At Logseq, we're firm believers in "game film for knowledge work." In its basic form, a game film is a video recording of someone performing a skill. But also, walkthroughs with screenshots and gifs can be regarded as game film for knowledge work.

When it comes to doing research with Logseq, there's already a lot of game film. These are some of our favorite resources. Have you documented your own knowledge workflows? Please reply to this newsletter and share them with us.

📄 Getting started with PDF annotation in Logseq
If you've never annotated a PDF in Logseq but want to start, this video by Ed Nico is a good starting point. It shows you how to add PDFs to Logseq, annotate them, and where everything is stored on your file system.

🏗 Using Logseq PDF annotation and building a research workflow
Dario da Silva and his friend Leigh show how they design and build a Logseq workflow for research. You'll see how they annotate PDFs within Logseq and then structure their notes to answer research questions.

📝 Zettelkasten: How to research and write with Logseq
Many resources tell you how to start a Zettelkasten in Logseq. But how about examples of the actual research and writing process? In this video, Alex Qwxlea shows how he uses Logseq's PDF reader to do research and then refines his thinking by writing entries for his Zettelkasten.

🔎 How to Use Logseq for Research ft. Cara Antonaccio
In March, we invited Ph.D. candidate Cara Antonaccio to show her research and writing workflow with Logseq. Likely, you've already (re)watched it—but if you haven't, you absolutely should. Plus, we had to mention Cara in a newsletter about doing research with Logseq.

🏷 Advanced Reference Management with Zotero feat. Jay Colbert
While you could use Logseq to manage your citations/references, that doesn't mean you have to (or should). In this interview with Dario da Silva, Jay Colbert shows how he uses Zotero to manage all of his citations. If you haven't used Zotero before, this is an excellent introduction.

📖 Example of a book review in Logseq
Not everyone needs an elaborate research process. If you just want to remember more from what you read, this book template by Brian Sunter may well be all you need.

📺 How to take notes from YouTube videos in Logseq
Did you know Logseq makes timestamping YouTube videos easy? This is ideal when you like to capture knowledge from videos and process or learn it later.

When playing a video in Logseq, just hit the keyboard combination Cmd-Shift-y (on macOS) or Ctrl-Shift-y (on Windows/Linux) to create a clickable timestamp.

Here's an example of how I take notes from videos, make them easy to revisit through links, and turn them into flashcards: