The Annotative Practices of Graduate Students: Tensions & Negotiations Fostering an Epistemic Practice

This research explores the annotation and note-taking practices of graduate students and reports on the sets of activities, habits, objects, tools and methods that define the practice. In particular, this empirical study focuses on understanding the integration of annotation practices within larger scholarly processes. This study therefore aims to describe and analyze annotation not only as material externalities of the research process, but also as crucial epistemic practices allowing students to progress from one research activity to the other. Interviews are supplemented by document collection and analyzed using a multi-perspectival framework. The findings describe an annotation lifecycle and suggest a new model of the scholarly process using annotation practices as units of analysis. The study further discusses annotation as a primitive epistemic practice and examines the productive tensions fostering the student’s progress towards her goals. This research finally proposes requirements for future tools supporting scholarly practice.MAS