Organising physical and digital research articles and papers

[Legday]

I am having a tidy up and have lots of articles and papers both printed and as digital bookmarks which I would like to organise. Can anyone recommend any software or share your organising tips as I’m drowning in paper. I’ve seen something called Zotero but need to explore further.
I’m not an academic as such but I thought this was best place to post.

Bump..

I don't know of any digital software but I've started just making digital copies of my papers and storing them in folders with full publication details. I have a folder for each year. Then I throw away the paper copies. These are just for ones I've authored though. For others when I have finished with them, I throw them away, thinkly I'll find them again online if I need them. I keep a note of the citation in a file though if I think I will need them again.

In my research journal I use the a4 dividers and on the tabs, write eg, archaeology, ancient egypt, forensics, criminal profiling, ect

It's always best to have a hard copy in a binder.

Zotero. The storage is cheap and it's easy to use and footnote from. Also has an app.

Zotero is good. When you read articles online you can the reference in 2 clicks.

Thanks all, I’m going to have a look at Zotero but if that is too complicated, I’m just going to keep .pdfs in digital folders.

Zotero is an example of a reference management tool, and very easy to use. There are lots of others (Mendeley or Endnote, for example)

You can add in articles from source eg your library or a database - there'll be an option beside the article to add the citation to your ref mgmt tool.

However, you are not necessarily adding the full text, just the citation. Often it'll be linked to the source and you can access the content that way.

But it's definitely worth doing & easy to do. Zotero is free. If you work in a university they will have a tool they subscribe to, and the Library (usually) will have guides and tutorials to help you.