My house is rather messy with hard copies of huge amount of research papers that I printed out for my PhD. Although they are all kept nicely in folders - but they have taken rather lots of space in the house.

Although I have soft-copies of most of the research papers but personally I prefer to read from hard copies rather than computer (my eyes hurt when I read too much on computer).

I don't know what I want to do with my career yet (post PhD), and I am not sure whether it's worth to keep the hardcopies of research papers.

I wonder how many of you actually kept the stuff that you used for PhD (after the completion of your PhD). Are they worth to keep? If so, how long do you keep them?

Hey,

Your supervisors may find these papers very useful for new and existing members of their research group. My research group has filing cabinets full of papers organised into respective research students from past projects. I would ask your supervisors if they want them, however I would only do this if they were organised in the first place as you don't want to spend the next few weeks sorting them out!! From what you have said they are already organised though so kudos there!

They're all in a couple of folders on my shelf, and haven't been looked at in the year since my viva. Am thinking of recycling the lot as I have most of them in electronic form anyway and can get hold of them again online.

LOL i never thought anyone would bring up this topic. with the interest in green technology i find it VERY apt.

i use all of em printed papers to sketch ideas for my next research.

u know, the page is printed only on one side so i'm using the unprinted side to draw and brainstorm any new ideas that i have on research.

what can i say, use recycled paper and save the trees!

If it were me I"d keep them... Vac pack 'em and store them in the attic/under the bed or wherever possible, at least until I knew I was not going to stay in academia. I hate waste and off you do decide to pursue the academic career, they're the foundation of your research and teaching. Why give it away to a mega-bucks uni? That's my tuppenth worth - I still have all my undergrad notes from 15 years ago and I have found them useful for research and teaching ideas.