Paper notes and line notes

Capture your thinking with whole-paper notes and notes attached to specific passages.

Highlights mark what matters in a paper. Notes capture what you think about it. researchwith.ai gives you two kinds of notes: paper-level notes for thoughts about the whole paper, and line notes attached to a specific highlighted passage. Both live together in the Notes panel. If you haven't used highlights yet, start with the Highlights guide.

Opening the Notes panel

In the Reader, the right sidebar has two tabs: Chat and Notes. Click Notes to open the panel.

At the top of the panel are three filters:

All shows every note and highlight together.
Highlights shows only highlighted passages and notes associated with them.
Paper Notes shows only whole-paper notes.

Items are listed newest first, each with a relative timestamp.

Paper notes

A paper note is a free-form note about the paper as a whole, not tied to any particular passage. Use it for a summary, a verdict, questions to follow up on, or how the paper fits your project.

To add one, navigate to the notes section in the Chat Sidebar - Click on Paper Notes and type into the "Make a note about the paper" box at the top of the panel and click Add Note. It appears in the list immediately, tagged as a Paper note.

You can add as many paper notes as you like. Click the edit icon on a note to revise it, or the trash icon to delete it.

Line notes

A line note is a note attached to a specific highlight. It's the right place for commentary on one claim, one result, or one sentence.

To add a line note:

Select text in the paper to create a highlight.
Click pencil icon and Add note.
You can also add a note to a highlight afterwards by opening the Notes panel navigating to the highlight and editing it with a note.

The highlighted passage is shown above your note, and the note sits with it. Highlights with line notes also show a page number when one is available.

Jumping back to the passage

In the Notes panel, click the quoted passage on any highlight to scroll the paper straight to that spot. This makes the panel a quick index of every passage you've annotated.

Editing and deleting

Edit: hover over a note and click the pencil icon to change the text.
Delete a paper note: the trash icon removes just that note.
Delete a line note: removing a highlight's note removes the highlight too, since the two belong together. You'll be asked to confirm.

Tips

Use paper notes for the big picture and line notes for specific evidence; the filters then let you read each layer on its own.
Click a quoted passage to jump back into the paper instead of scrolling to find it.
Notes pair well with highlight colors: color-code passages, then explain the why in the note.
For a long literature review, group related papers into folders so their notes stay together (see Highlights).