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The Effortless Academic

Working with PDFs in Obsidian: Annotation masterclass

Published over 1 year ago • 1 min read

Dear Scholar,

The number of yearly published papers increased by > 47% since 2016, strongly outpacing the growth in PhDs awarded per year, as this 2024 study found. AI is expected to "fill the gap", making us read more, publish more and be more productive. If this feels daunting, you're not alone.

Writing with AI feels magical, yet often unsatisfying because the depth of understanding is missing. Those who use AI for coding, for example, know the experience of being able to follow the result and the certainty of being unable to produce the solution themselves. Fully trusting AI, therefore, might take away our agency and satisfaction.

A way out is to use AI to augment our knowledge and access the information we have processed and understood, focusing on the access/search part rather than the understanding part.

I am currently working on developing an approach to using AI on my notes and on ways to create better AI-ready academic notes. The first step of this journey are PDF annotations because they link my interpretation (i.e. notes) to the facts (i.e. papers), and together, they form a unique fingerprint of my thinking, that AI can help me access. In this week's article, you can learn how to do it in Obsidian:

Additionally, this article dives into AI-driven full-text PDF search and a few hacks for academic note-taking in Obsidian.

(If you aren't yet taking digital notes in Obsidian, join the free 8-day note-taking course, where I explain how to get started and what you miss out on.)

Reminder: Note-taking Course 2.0 update

In case you missed the announcement last week on the update of the note-taking course, here is a reminder to check your email if you previously purchased the course and want the free update. The update includes:

  • Merging your PDF annotations and digital notes
  • Working with Zotero7 (newest update)
  • Connecting Paperpile with Obsidian (my favourite reference manager)
  • Working with Obsidian in 2025
  • Synchronizing across multiple devices
  • Advanced mind maps for academic projects
  • Updated starter vault with explanations and examples

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,
​
Ilya Shabanov, The Effortless Academic​

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The Effortless Academic

Literature Review Tools, Note-Taking Strategies and AI tutorials for the modern academic. Publish more with less effort and supercharge your career.

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