Academic Research and Writing Tools

Google scholar is great but when you want a deeper insight into your field. the web version feels limited and google scholar doesn't provide api. I used this to list out relevant articles and save them. Then i used vosviewer for finding the cluster of people with high research and high ranking keywords. These helped me get better results afterwards. P.S. the default search for google scholar is set at 500. But i think google started limiting at 200 (v7.12). After that the result was very slow, better change it to 200.

Use this to visualize the research field. Data can be captured from Web of Science, Scopus. In my field Scholar was better.

Although it is in the testing stage, it does help to reduce reading time of a paper. if a paper is longer than 10 pages, put it through digest first. this will identify important lines. Then search for those lines and understand their meaning and context.

Excellent to search contents inside files and pdfs.

It is a swiss knife. Mind mapping + Annotation importing + reference management. Annotation Importing was the best feature, Mendeley or qiqqa can also annotate but it has to be done in the app, but not here. Any pdf reader can annotate so I don't have to read all papers. When my supervisor sends me highlighted pdf, they can be imported directly. Reference management is also very easy and docear4word makes citation easier. The best feature is Mind Mapping, Helps to keep ideas and facts separate but interconnected. I can really see how an idea is developing and if anyone else has done similar thing. I would have preferred Sankey more than mind map but haven't found good Sankey software. the file .mm is also an XML so many tweaks can be done with a text editor (e.g. searching in the file, builtin search is a bit difficult. text editors have better searching features). I have tried mendeley, zotero, qiqqa also and i find this the best. Although, because of its discontinued development, qiqqa might also be a good option.

Basically it is a companion for docear as it fulfils all the recommended features for docear. Adobe is also good, but in free versions, this has more features.

Distraction is an enemy. Many times I have found myself in youtube or in amazon. Giving enough time to research is vital. There are other tools which can enforce discipline, but i outgrow them eventually. This one is like a nice friend who will just track active programs and at the end of day you can see how you spent time. Self imposed discipline is better than external.

Usefulness is same as Procastitracker but these two have different interfaces. I like procastitracker as i am more used to it, but AW is also good.

Tex studio is easy to use and manage. It shows sections in files and links the include files and subtitles. This was the goto feature that I did not find in other tex editors.

Overleaf is limited in many areas but i found it best for sharing with supervisors. They could provide comment and feedback directly in tex file. Others can also directly collaborate, this is very useful when latex throws errors and you need help from an expert friend.

Although I did not use it integrated with other Softwares. Even standalone it provides very good feedback on language, grammar, and thesaurus. The UI is little laggy but the functionality makes up for it.