Organizing scientific research files

Until now, most of my scientific papers were written in a background context, like my MSc thesis or a course. So, all the conference and paper related files were stored in a subdirectory of the broader subject.

Now, I want to advance to a more research-centered approach to my work, so I need to organize my files in a more structured way for this purpose.

After some thinking and experimenting, the outline of the directory structure I’m using is the following:

/Research

-/ Conferences
-- disapproved.doc (list of disapproved conferences, for their questionable scientific merits)
--/
--- agenda.doc (list of incoming conferences for the year, including all relevant dates, including, sorted by submission deadline)
---/ (ex. IEEE ICWS)
---- url.txt (web address of conference web page)
---- desc.txt (conference name and topic keywords)
---- … (other conference related files: forms, rules of submission, templates etc.)

-/ Journals
… (similar to conferences)

-/ Researchers
--/ me (my research)
---/ presentations
----/
---- …
---/ publications
----/
---- … (my papers)
--/ other
---/ ,
---- …

I hope this way I can more easily store my files, helping me to work in a more practical approach, similar to what happened in the final stages of my MSc. If I target specific publications, I can use the conference’s deadlines as Occam’s razors for my work – keep it simple, keep it focused, reach results!

Let’s see if it works ;-)