r/CondensedMatter

I am a physics MSc student working in condensed matter theory, and I’m aiming to submit the paper to PRB. The actual research, calculations, plots, and figures are mostly done, but I haven’t properly kept track of all the references I’ve used along the way ( is that bad?!)

I’d really appreciate advice from people who regularly write research papers, particularly in physics:

1. How do you organize and manage references, especially if you haven’t kept track of them properly from the beginning?
2. What conventional tools do you use for writing/editing papers? I know about Overleaf/LaTeX, but I’d like to understand the overall workflow.
3. I used MATLAB for plots, but I’m less familiar with how researchers conventionally make things like lattice structures, and multi panel figures.

I’m specifically interested in conventional tools and workflows used by researchers rather than AI tools that write or generate the paper for you.