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Organizing Research

Research projects generate a lot of material — PDFs, web pages, interview notes, data files. Atlas lets you keep all of it alongside your writing so you can trace every claim back to its source. This guide suggests a workflow for researchers, academics, and non-fiction writers managing sources, notes, and drafts.

Importing Sources

Bring your research materials directly into Atlas:

  • Web pages — Drag URLs into the Organizer from your browser, or use the Share Extension on iPad/iPhone to send pages from Safari. Each URL becomes a web page document with a rich preview.
  • PDFs and documents — Import PDFs, DOC, and DOCX files via the + button, drag and drop, or Cmd+Shift+I. These are stored as media documents you can reference alongside your writing.
  • Images and media — Import figures, charts, photos, and other visual materials from Files or Photos.

Folder Structure

Organize sources and drafts separately:

Draft/
├── Introduction
├── Literature Review
├── Methodology
├── Results
└── Discussion
Research/
├── Primary Sources/
│   ├── Interview Transcripts
│   └── Survey Data
├── Secondary Sources/
│   ├── Journal Articles (folder of PDFs)
│   └── Web References (folder of web pages)
└── Notes/
    ├── Key Findings
    └── Methodology Notes

Tagging Sources

Use tags to categorize research across the folder hierarchy:

  • By type — Primary Source, Secondary Source, Review Article
  • By relevance — Core, Supporting, Background
  • By status — Unread, Annotated, Cited

Combine tags with search to quickly find all cited primary sources, or all unread articles on a specific topic.

Tip

The Notes field in the Inspector is a good place to store citation metadata — author, publication date, journal name, or DOI — without cluttering the document body.

Canvases for Concept Mapping

Create canvases to visualize relationships between ideas:

  • Place source documents as cards and draw edges showing thematic connections
  • Use text labels for key concepts or arguments that span multiple sources
  • Arrange cards spatially by theme, chronology, or argument structure
  • Use synopsis display mode on cards to see summaries without opening each document

Linking Sources to Drafts

Use wiki-links ([[) to connect source documents to the draft sections they inform. As you write a section of your draft, type [[ to link to the source that supports your point. Over time, each source document accumulates Incoming Links showing exactly which parts of your draft rely on it.

This makes it easy to verify coverage — if a key source has no incoming links, it may not be cited yet. And if a draft section has no outgoing links, its claims may need supporting references.

See Also