There are several steps to follow in order to carry out research on the internet, but at the same time there are certain free software that helps you save valuable time while carrying out your research work.
There are several steps to follow in order to carry out research on the internet. However, help is not far away. Certain software available for free will make you more productive in the midst of conducting research in the virtual world.
elink.io
Research often involves going through hundreds of links and articles and compiling them in one safe space for future reference or publishing them for your audience. This is why many researchers use bookmarking and curation tools like elink to quickly save their links under one roof and share them with their peers. elink makes it easy for researchers to save content from around the web. They can save article links, videos, cloud files, social media posts, and much more!
Researchers have the option of saving content to their link library or add them directly to content collections and share their research with their peers. To make the bookmarking process a breeze, elink also has a chrome extension. Simply click on the extension or right-click on any webpage to save the content directly to your elink dashboard. Researchers can edit the title and description to add their own voice or notes. They can even bundle links together and share their link collection with others as a newsletter or embed the collection on your blog/website!
Key Features of elink:
- Save links quickly using chrome extension
- Create and share research links as a newsletter or embed it on your website
- Easy user-interface
Pricing:
- Free with limited functionality
- Paid plans start at Pro Monthly ($15/month), Pro 1 Year ($12/month), Pro 2 year ($10/month).
Grammarly
Research work often involves hours of proofreading and spellchecking to make your research professional. Grammarly, a writing enhancement tool will save you a ton of time and effort doing this dreaded task! Apart from basic spellchecking and corrections, Grammarly includes a grammar checker, a punctuation checker, a vocabulary enhancer, and even a plagiarism checker tool!
This awesome tool scans your research for more than 250 types of grammar mistakes in six distinct writing genres and leaves you with error-free writing. With thorough explanations for all your errors and weekly progress reports. Grammarly is a must-have tool for researchers. It’s available as a browser extension, a desktop app, a web-based app, and a Microsoft add-in. Many of the Grammarly alternatives are also available in the market that are equally good.
Key Features of Grammarly:
- Works with the majority of online tools like Word, Slack, etc.
- Plagiarism checker tool
- Tone detector
Pricing:
- Free with limited functionality
- Paid plans start from: Premium ($11.66/month), Business ($12.50/month)
Scrivener
Scrivener is another great tool for research writing and keeping your notes organized. Used by researchers, screenwriters, novelists, non-fiction writers, students, journalists, academics, lawyers, translators, and more, Scrivener is a tool made for long writing projects. On signing up, you are quickly presented with its editor, with a sidebar to keep everything in place. You can also break your content into manageable sections of any size and leave Scrivener to join them together.
For novelists and storytellers, there’s also a corkboard to visualize your storyline and move cards around as you like. The outliner keeps a synopsis of what you have already written, along with word count data and metadata. Users can arrange their research articles and other files in folders and subfolders.
Key Features of Scrivener:
- Desktop and mobile apps
- Outline creator
- Easy organization
Pricing:
- Free with limited functionality
- Paid plans start from $40.84/one-time fee
Endnote
Endnote wants you to research smarter by simplifying the tiresome work of formatting bibliographies, finding full text, and searching for references. Endnote is collaborative in nature as it allows you to share selected groups of references, manage team access, and track activity and changes from one single dashboard. With smarter insights, Endnote automatically finds the impact of your references and finds the best-fit journal for your papers.
The platform also enables users to automatically create, format, and update bibliographies. Quickly export your references and full-text PDFs into EndNote and start working instantly. With a bunch of EndNote templates and plug-ins, researchers can enhance their Endnote experience and get the most of the platform.
Key Features of Endnote:
- Import filters for prior research
- Track your teammates’ activity on your shared library
- Automatic reference and link updating
Pricing:
- Free with limited functionality
- Paid plans start from $249
Mendeley
Mendeley is a reference management software that allows researchers to create references, citations, and bibliographies in multiple journal styles with just a few clicks. Quickly access your library from anywhere – from anywhere. Windows, Mac, Linux, etc and add papers directly from your browser with a few clicks or import any documents from your desktop to your library.
With its research network, researchers and connect and network with over 6 million users. Users can create groups to carry out discussions, discover research, and follow curated bibliographies. There are also over 250,000 + science, technology, and health jobs to advance your career and grant info from over 5000 organizations to fund your next research!
Key Features of Mendeley:
- Annotate and organize documents
- Find and create groups with fellow researchers
- Grant information from over 5000 organizations
Pricing:
- Free with limited functionality
- Paid plans start from $55/year for 5 GB to $165/year to unlimited storage
ResearchGate
The last tool on our list of awesome tools for researchers is a platform called ResearchGate. ResearchGate gives you access to over 135 million publication pages, allowing you to stay up to date with what’s happening in your field. With a built-in community, researchers can share their research, collaborate with peers, and discover new papers and bibliographies.
ResearchGate also provides deep analytics on who’s been reading your work and keeps track of your citations. With over 17 million users, ResearchGate is a research community to join!
Key Features of ResearchGate:
- Share and find researchers
- Analytics to see who’s reading your work
- Citation tracking
Pricing:
- Free
MarginNote
License: Commercial
MarginNote is a powerful reading tool for learners. Whether you are a student, a teacher, a researcher, a lawyer or someone with a curious mind to learn, MarginNote can help you quickly organize, study and manage large volumes of PDFs and EPUBs. All in one learning app enables you to highlight PDF and EPUB, take note, create the mind map, review flashcards, and saves you from switching endlessly between different Apps. It is available on Mac, iPad, and iPhone.
RefWorks
License: Free
RefWorks is a web-based commercial reference management software package. Users’ reference databases are stored online, allowing them to be accessed and updated from any computer with an internet connection. Institutional licenses allow universities to subscribe to RefWorks on behalf of all their students, faculty and staff. Individual licenses are also available. The software enables linking from a user’s RefWorks account to electronic editions of journals to which the institution’s library subscribes.
Readcube
License: Commercial
ReadCube is a desktop and browser-based program for managing, annotating, and accessing academic research articles. It can sync your entire library including notes, lists, annotations, and even highlights across all of your devices including your desktop (Mac/PC), mobile devices (iOS/Android/Kindle), or even through the Web.
Docear
License: Free
Docear offers a single-section user-interface that allows the most comprehensive organization of your literature; a literature suite concept that combines several tools in a single application (pdf management, reference management, mind mapping, …); A recommender system that helps you to discover new literature: Docear recommends papers which are free, in full-text, instantly to download, and tailored to your information needs.
REF-N-WRITE Academic Writing Tool
Ref-N-Write is a fantastic research tool for beginner writers and non-native English speakers. This is a Microsoft Word add-in. This tool allows users to import research papers into MS Word. Then the tool allows you to search the research documents while you are writing your research paper or academic essay. In essence, this tool is similar to Google search engine; the difference is that instead of searching the internet you are searching research papers and academic documents stored on your computer. REF-N-WRITE functions within MS Word and the search results are displayed in a panel that pops up from the bottom. You can expand the search results and jump to the exact location in the source document in a few clicks. This research tool is fantastic to lookup for writing ideas from related research papers or documents from your colleagues. The REF-N-WRITE tool also comes with a database of academic and scientific phrases. You can use this to polish your writing by substituting colloquial terms and informal statements in your text with academically acceptable words and phrases. REF-N-WRITE also features text-to-voice option that helps you pick up grammatical errors and sentence structural issues.
Microsoft Excel
One of the widely used tools for research is Microsoft Excel. MS Excel has plenty of features that will come in handy when you are doing a research project. Excel is a must have research tool if your study involves a lot of quantitative analysis. Excel offers a wide range of statistical functions such as AVERAGE, MIN, MAX, SUM, etc that you can apply to the cells in a few clicks. You can visualize your data using a wide variety of chart types, for example, bar plot, scatter plot, etc. You can use pivot tables to organize and generate summaries of your data easily. For complex statistical analysis, you can use Data Analysis ToolPak Excel add-in. This add-in comes with a wide variety of statistical analysis tools such as Descriptive statistics, Histogram, F-test, Random number generation, Fourier analysis, etc.
Conclusion
There are tons of free online tools for research, but not all are made equal. Some are simple to use, some are packed with features just for business users, and some are just poorly written.