Academic PKM Template: Knowledge and Project Management Template for Obsidian

This is a template of the Obsidian system I have developed over the course of several years to effectively manage both my personal and professional life as an academic. This comprehensive system combines project and knowledge management, designed to support a wide range of academic activities, including research, teaching, and learning.

At its core, this system is built around the concept of a Zettelkasten, an approach to personal knowledge management that facilitates deep understanding and creative thinking by organising information in a flexible and intuitive manner. By taking a systematic approach to personal knowledge management, this system enables the user to work more efficiently and effectively while enhancing creativity.

One of the key benefits of this system is that it seamlessly integrates research, teaching, and learning activities, which are often closely related. For example, you can easily track progress on research projects, while also keeping track of notes and materials related to specific courses you are teaching or taking. This helps maintain a holistic view of your work and ensures that you are able to make meaningful connections between different areas of your professional life.

Overall, this Obsidian system has been an invaluable tool for me as an academic, and I am confident that it could be a valuable resource for others who are looking to streamline their work and manage their personal and professional lives more effectively.

Template Guide

This template contains:

• My system of interlinked databases: Areas, Projects, Tasks, Maps of Content, References, Zettelkasten, Meeting notes, Resources, and Rolodex.
• Custom scripts to automate the interlinking of these databases.
• A suite of pre-configured plugins developed by the Obsidian community that I find indispensable for my work, including the Obsidian Zotero Integration, Dataview, Metadata Menu, and Linter.
• Example notes to demonstrate the structure of the system.

How to install the Academic PKM Template

Upon purchase you will receive a link to download a zip file of the Academic PKM Template. This template is designed specifically for Obsidian, a free note-taking app built on plain text Markdown files stored locally on your computer. If you don't already have Obsidian you can download it from this link. To install the Academic PKM Template:

1. Unzip the Academic PKM Template zip file and save it as a folder on your device (I recommend saving it to a file synchronisation service if you use one, like Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive, to benefit from automatic back-ups and version history.)
2. Open the Obsidian application and click the "Open another vault" button in the bottom left corner.
3. Select the "Open folder as vault" option and select the folder you created for the Academic PKM Template.
4. When you first open this folder, you will be asked if you trust the author of this vault. You'll need to select "Trust author and enable plugins" for the Academic PKM Template. (Otherwise the vault will open in "Restricted Mode" meaning the community plugins won't work.)

Structure of the Academic PKM Template

The primary components of the Academic PKM Template are the interconnected databases designed for managing all aspects of work and life as an academic. These databases contain notes of different types that relate to one another via custom metadata, and are grouped according to three families:

Actionables

• Areas: Areas represent the ongoing responsibilities and spheres of activity in my life, such as teaching, research, academic service, family, etc. This folder contains overview notes for each area, and these notes in turn link to the projects, tasks, resources, etc. that relate to this area. I use the Dataview plugin to present filtered views of related databases - for instances, tasks that relate to the area in question.
• Projects: Projects are focused endeavours with a specific goal and end point, like writing a paper or planning a conference. Each project gets its own note where I collect all relevant tasks, ideas, references, and resources.
• Tasks: Tasks are specific, defined actions. Each task note includes metadata like due date, priority level, associated project or area, etc.

Knowledge management system

• References: This folder contains literature notes, with each note representing a paper, book, or other source I've read and want to capture. I use metadata like author, year, and related project to make it easy to search and filter my references later.
• Zettelkasten: This is where I keep my atomic "zettels" - discrete notes containing a single idea, insight, or argument derived from my reading, thinking, and writing. These notes link to the relevant literature references as well as to other related zettels, forming a dense web of interconnected knowledge over time. See more on my Zettelkasten workflow below.
• Maps of content (MoCs): MoCs are emerging notes that curate and stitch together content from my Zettelkasten to help me navigate my knowledge base, develop my thinking on a topic, and outline writing projects. Each offers one possible way of structuring my knowledge management system without implying that this is the only way the system can be structured or requiring that this structure be reproduced going forward.

Project management system

• Resources: Of course academic references are not the only resources we need to keep track of in academic work - the Resources database offers a place to store admin documents, webpages, important emails, etc.
• Meeting notes: Meetings notes are a type of resource, a key element of any collaborative project or area, so I've found it important to keep these Resource notes in their own database.
• Rolodex: These "people notes" help me keep track of information about particular people, from those I work with day-to-day to those long-dead scholars I engage with in my writing.

Other elements of the Academic PKM Template

• Home: The Home page is designed to serve as day-to-day "working memory" as well as offering a customisable entry point to other aspects of the system. It uses the Dataview plugin to present views of the above databases filtered to display just the most relevant notes - for instance, tasks yet to be done with a do date on (or before) today's date.
• Obsidian Admin: This folder contains all of the bits and bobs needed for the system to run, like the icons that help distinguish one type of note from another, and the templates that determine what sorts of metadata and content structure is used for each note type.

Database entry templates

The system comes with templates for each of these databases to enable quickly capturing new tasks, resources, zettels, etc. with consistent formatting and metadata. These metadata fields are used by the Dataview plugin to present relevant database entries throughout your vault - this is how the above databases are interconnected. Custom scripts automate the filling of metadata by allowing relevant properties to be inherited by one note from another.