The development of information technology has affected the way researchers deal with information in the production of knowledge. A study was carried out to identify the strategies and resources used by Brazilian education researchers to organise their collections; check whether the difficulties in handling these collections affect the scientific production of these researchers and investigate the influence of demographic variables on these activities. For the collection of data, an electronic questionnaire was applied to researchers linked to the ten Brazilian universities best placed in the ranking of the Folha de São Paulo in three subsequent evaluations. 205 replies were obtained, but only 163 questionnaires were considered valid because they were fully or partially answered. The others contained only the respondents’ demographic data or were blank. The collected data were analysed quantitatively using the ki-square statistical test to verify the association of participants’ response distribution among the study variables. The results showed that the minority of participants uses specific tools to manage their collections. It was also found that the difficulty in managing their collections has had an impact on researchers’ scientific production and that those who have spent some training on tools to organise and store their documents face fewer difficulties in recovering materials from their personal collection. It is intended that the search results can serve as a basis for preparing librarians for answering this group of researchers and for adapting and proposing information products and services related to Personal Informantion Management.