I have to say, Word and Zotero served me well through my degree for production of submitted works. It just worked once I set up the styles.
For research/note-taking I initially used OneNote (where I also kept journals, clippings, annotations). It was fine, but I replaced it with Zotero’s own annotation and note-taking features, which were recently released, and Obsidian.
Obsidian. Devonthink. Bookends. Perfect combination in my experience as an academic. Then something like Ulysses or scrivener (the latter I rarely use now as the iPad version is rather frustrating)
I’m about to start on a Masters in Biblical and Theological Studies as well. DEVONthink is the core of my system for linking , storage and retrieval. Playing with Obsidian for not taking with notes store in DT.
If I might ask, why Scrivener versus Pages or Word?
Scrivener is not a word processor. Its a writing tool kit. The idea is that it’s a suite of tools, including a text editor, but also outlining, a cork board, note taking, research storage (.pdf files, web pages, images). It’s a writing and editing work space, meant to help you research, plan, and draft your text, then export it for editing/formatting in Pages or Word or whatever.
Go to literature and Latte and watch some videos; Scrivener is vast and can be over whelmimg, but you don’t have to use all the tools.
Welcome to the community! Glad I could be a part of your reason for posting.
I didn’t use Scrivner myself, I used Ulysses and the typically put it into Pages for styling and then exported as a PDF for submission. (Sometimes I went Ulysses to Word depending on the professor).
I personally liked the writing environment of Ulysses, but in reality, I probably would have been just as happy using Pages.
@Medievalist says it all about Scrivener. It might be useful for writing your thesis which might be a long and complicated document. I say might only if you find it useful to you. Check with your student friends if any use it and what they think. Build a support network.
Check out Scrivener yourself now (while you presumably have time) with a free trial that has liberal terms for how long you can use it before having to buy a license.
I have used Scrivener (and Word, and Pages) for years and I find Scrivener (and Word, and Pages) incredibly useful. I wish I had Scrivener for my dissertation (decades ago).
Literature & Latte runs an online forum and there are some terrific people posting there that you can learn from.
That being said, as I said above, keep things simple and productive, but focus on your studies. No need to put a fine-tooth comb on these tools. Use what you know, what you can learn, and what you can benefit from.
FYI, the price for Scrivener, and Scapple will be going up soon (per their tweet), so if you’re on the fence…
Good advice, thank you
One other point for Scrivener - semi-related -if you end up teaching, Scrivener’s Corkboard mode (which I rarely use otherwise) is unbeatable in my experience as a tool for creating syllabi - export potential readings one per document and you can start with a big messy brainstorm and end up with neat lists by day and week without leaving Scrivener.
Could you elaborate a bit on what you are doing here and how the corkboard is helping please? What you describe you are using it for sounds interesting and potentially quite useful, but i haven’t understood properly.