Tidy Tabletop: Organizing Your Research
A few years ago, I was deep into a project on Fair Division. We had made several exciting discoveries, and the momentum was building. But one morning, as I was casually browsing, I stumbled upon a six month old arXiv article that mirrored exactly what we had been working on. My heart sank. Sure, we had a bit more to show, but it wasn’t enough to publish. For a while, I blamed myself for not keeping up with the literature better. And, to be honest, that was partly true. But in my defense - have you ever tried keeping track of the sheer number of econCS papers flooding arXiv every day? It’s like standing in the middle of a raging river. One day, you think you’re working on an open problem, and the next, it’s solved and is published.
That’s when I realized I needed a dam for this flood - a systematic, automated approach to stay on top of the literature and never miss important developments again.
The first thing I needed was a way to track arXiv updates. I didn’t want to clutter my inbox. What I really wanted was something simple - like a newspaper app - that would give me a clear, organized feed of all the latest arXiv updates, and ideally, let me filter it to only the research that mattered to me. It's almost like I was destined to rediscover RSS feeds.
RSS/Atom Feeds
I won’t belabor much about what RSS is, its history, or its stories. Just look at the picture above. Every day, I get updates from cs.GT, as well as from any of the researchers I’m following who publish on arXiv. It’s a seamless, effortless way to stay on top of the latest research without ever feeling overwhelmed.
Now, let’s get straight to the point. Here’s how you can set this up and start receiving tailored updates right to your feed.
Step 1: Install a client. There are many RSS feed apps available including Feedly, Fluent-Reader, QuiteRSS, Winds, NewsBlur, NetNewsWire, to name a few. You can even install clients on your phone! (I recommend Feeder). On my laptop, I use NetNewsWire. It is clean and simple.
Step 2: Add feed URLs. If you want to keep track of, say, cs.GT from arxiv, all you need to do is add the url http://rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.GT to your client. It will start giving you updates every time there is an announcement on cs.GT.
If you want to track specific authors on arXiv, they must either have a public author identifier or have linked their ORCID to their arXiv account. Only then will you be able to subscribe to their updates. For example, if you would like to track my arXiv updates, simply add the URL https://arxiv.org/a/prakashhv_v_1.atom2 or https://arxiv.org/a/0009-0002-4809-5814.atom2 to your client. If you don't have a public identifier yet, why not? Go ahead and create one now!
Zotero
Another great tool I discovered recently is Zotero. Zotero is an open-source tool that helps you maintain a high-quality BibTeX library. While it has many other uses, this is how I personally make the most of it.
No more missing fields, incorrect citations, headache of finding which one is the conference version and where is the journal version of a paper. It has a built-in search tool and, if you have the doi or a document, simply click the magic wand 🪄 button and paste it there. It will automatically download the corresponding bibTex. With the help of a plugin called Better bibTex, you can do much more. You can label these entries and organize them in folders. When you are LaTeXing a paper, simply select the relevant entries in your personal library, copy them using ⌘+shift+c and paste it in your bib file. Voilà! you have just pasted a clean bib entry which has every field that you want, with a nice citation key (that you can customize).
There are many more tools I’d love to discuss, such as using Git with Overleaf, integrating Copilot in VSCode, better calendar apps, and more. I’ll save those for a later post. If you need any help setting up Zotero or NetNewsWire, feel free to shoot me an email. Also, don’t hesitate to share your favorite tools in the comments!