Useful apps for academic research
Useful apps for academic research
Embedded Files
In my second post, I'd like to share a short list of tools that may come in handy when working in research. I believe that choosing the best app is a personal choice and it should always suit the user's needs. However, I invite you to explore each of the possibilities I present. I wish I had started using them at the beginning of my research journey.
January 20, 2022
It's never too much to state the importance of keeping up-to-date with the new literature of the field you're interested in. However, this task is often very time-consuming and challenging. That's where Researcher comes in and makes the process smoother.
The app is structured the same way as a social media feed. You can choose to follow specific journals or create search strings based on keywords. It gives you the direct link to the papers, shares the abstract, and allows you to bookmark them. Researcher is free and brings together more than 15,000 journals, so you'll probably find the leading journals in your area. Oh, and it's available for Android, IOS or you can use it in your browser!
Connected Papers, Citation Gecko, Litmaps and ResearchRabbit
These four apps are great for literature mapping. They all share similar features and draw on almost the same sources of metadata. You start your search by providing them with one or more "seed papers" (seminal or relevant papers). The apps will automatically find similar papers and provide you with a cool visualization containing information on citations and publication year.
In the case of Connected Papers, you'll be getting papers based on their similarity of references with the seed provided. Thus, the connecting lines do not necessarily show a direct citation relationship. This may not be the case for the other apps. For instance, Citation Gecko will show you papers cited-by the seed papers or papers citing the seed papers.
This is an example of Connected Papers. The seed paper provided was "The Impact of the Mariel Boatlift on the Miami Labor Market" a seminal paper on the impacts of immigration by David Card.
Reference managers are the first steps in any research project. They help you collect and organize all your references. The best part is that they allow you to generate citations or bibliographic references automatically in the word-processing program (LaTeX, MS Word, Google Docs, Markdown, etc) and style (APA, MLA, etc) of your choice. On one hand, they can be for one-time use, where you provide information (for example, PDFs of your references) and generate a full bibliography. On the other (which I strongly recommend), they can act as a cloud based repository for your reference files.
I've been personally using Zotero which is open-source, intuitive and lets you install a browser-based plugin to download citation information while you're accessing the reference online.
Try them out, let me know what you think and share them with colleagues if you find them useful.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse