Semantic Web technologies provide powerful tools for annotating knowledge, but they also add extra steps to the research process and are less intuitive for researchers than writing a paper. Improved procedures and tooling are necessary to encourage the creation of semantically-annotated research artifacts - not just papers, but also datasets and code. This early stage Ph.D. shall explore current practices for research documentation, focusing on the energy systems domain. It will establish a conceptual process model for research where documentation with semantic annotations is performed continuously throughout a project, and will explore potential impacts of the model’s adoption. To support the application of this new process model, a user-friendly tool will be developed for the semantic annotation of energy system simulation code and data, capable of transforming a research project into a machine-readable format ready for use in Semantic Web applications.