Whereas an annotated bibliography is often used in academic settings to demonstrate and synthesize your readings, annotated research notes are used more often in the professional scientific world to convey the main points and relevancy of a paper to your colleagues and share the main points as you see them.
There are several parts to writing a well done set of annotated research notes:
1. Citation - Include a complete and proper citation to the work you will be discussing to allow for your audience to be able to refer back to the original source if they want to find more information for themselves and so that they know exactly what piece you are examining.
2. Summary - Write a short summary of the paper as it was written by the author. This is the author's views NOT your own. You are summing up what was written not giving any opinions of the writing or presentation or the paper's usefulness in your current pursuit.
3. Notes - Direct notes from the source. This is the place for statistics or direct quotes. Make sure that you use quotation marks as needed and in-text citations to refer to exact locations within the original text where the information was found.
4. TRAPP analysis - Use this worksheet or another format to analysis the quality of the article.
5. Reflective writing - This is the place for your thoughts on the usefulness of the article. What are your thoughts on what you have read? What do you think of the quality, credibility, usefulness, and value of this article to your particular need? What are your concerns with the article? What surprised you about it? Which part(s) do you need your colleagues to read for themselves.
