phd writing software

7 Must-Have Thesis Writing Tools in 2021

Writing tools like Grammarly, Mendeley online, Thesaurus, BibMe, Evernote, Plagiarism checker, Hemingway Editor, Stay Focused and Dissertation authors have significant importance in thesis writing.

Traditionally, writing a thesis for either PhD or dissertation was a tougher task, needing huge manual writing, Proofreading, correction, re-writing, and editing things manually.

So, it was tedious, time-consuming and depressive and therefore no one wants to go for a doctorate. However, the recent scenario is totally different, now we have computers, mobile phones and a lot of apps.

Things can be done at a fingertip, with one click and all done! Thanks to high-power computers and apps. “Useful” apps make tasks, work and everyday life easy for us.

We now have apps for writing, proofreading, arranging documents, taking instant and important notes, doing citation & referencing and other stuff during your research. This article explains how a PhD student can utilize apps that are useful. I will also explain how you can use it.

Features of Mendeley:

How to use mendeley , how to cite the work , features of evernote , how to use evernote , features of bibme are: , how to use bibme, how to use thesaurus , how to use dissertationauthers , features of grammarly: .

How to use Grammarly?

Features of Hemingway Editor:

Wrapping up: , 7 must-have thesis writing tools in 2021, mendeley: .

Citing articles and enlisting references orderly isn’t an easy task; it’s time-consuming and tiresome. But what if a tool can do all this work seamlessly, effectively and precisely? Mendeley is that one tool you need.

Every PhD must have Mendeley- a reference manager tool. This app or web portal is exclusively designed to manage bibliography and citations therefore it must be there on every PhD students’ laptop.

Four amazing features of Mendeley are,

You can store articles, PhD, journal reads on your Mendeley.
It automatically creates a reference format.
It can cite every bit of information seamlessly and precisely when integrated.

Meaning just read the article from Mendeley, write your content in MS word and just do insert a citation. It automatically inserts the related citation and reference at the end of the page.

Besides, several other features are,

It automatically generates a bibliography
You can import a pdf and research papers from other sources
You can find the relevant articles to what you are reading
You can collab with other researchers online
You can access all your article libraries from anywhere by logging in to your account.

The Mendeley is developed by Elsevier Publication available on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Go to www.mendeley.com from your computer
Click on “create a free account”.
Enter your email address and continue your work.
Download the ‘Mendeley for desktop’ software
Start adding reading materials, pdfs and research articles or create your own library.
To use Mendeley for citation and referencing, first from your Mendeley app for tools and click on ‘Install MS word Plugin’.
Go to MS word>> referencing and insert citation using the Mendeley.

Now you are ready to use, write literature from the article and just click on insert citation and your work is ready.

We are planning to write a whole article on the present topic, how to use it and how helpful it is, that article’s we will provide you later.

In summary, the very first software or app or tool every PhD student is required is Mendeley to write a thesis. It’s a citation and reference manager tool.

“Notes” as writing, images, pdf, article, news paragraph is an everyday part of a PhD student . Whatever you read, whenever you find things related to your PhD topic, you have to keep a note.

And trust me keeping notes isn’t so easy. If you fail to make it up, you will forget it the next morning. Evernote- is a tool that keeps your notes from desktop, mobile or any other device and syncs them.

You can scan and save documents, label them, make important sentences underline and create pdf.
You can even save rich notes, save images, record audio, capture ideas.
You even can save entire or partial web pages.
You can mark, highlight, underline, and pinpoint every note you capture.
And guess what you can excess it from anywhere.

Go to www.evernote.com and click on sign in.

Now click on ‘create account’ and create one using your email address.

Or you can download the desktop apps.

In summary, to keep notes seamlessly and organized, the Evernote tool is required. Moreover, users can create keyboard shortcuts, note links, anchor notes to remember and share notes.

BibMe:

BibMe- The online writing center is the tool or service developed by Chegg. It has many features to improve your academic writing and PhD work.

One of the best features it has is it cites your work using different styles, even using their recent version of the style.

You can create accurate citations in multiple styles
Insert citation and references in your article or paper
Improve your writing by improving sentence structure, grammar and spelling
It can also detect plagiarism and can correct it.

Go to www.bibme.org .

Click on ‘Create account’. Create your account using your email address and use their features.

In summary, a BibMe app is an excellent tool, however, it isn’t available as a plugin for MS Word. You can use the free version or can use the paid version to explore more features.

Thesaurus:

Academic writing should be professional and precise, one needs to choose the correct word as per the sentence requirement. Using Thesaurus you can find synonyms of various words.

Besides, You can find antonyms and choose acronyms and abbreviations.

Go to www.thesaurus.com .

Click on synonyms and type your word in the search box.

In summary, Thesaurus makes your writing impressive when you use synonyms and transient words.

Disserationauthors:

Writing a research paper, review article or thesis is quite hard for a novice, you may feel helpless sometimes when your writeup is rejected multiple times. Even if you don’t understand what is wrong with your part.

If you feel so, don’t worry you can hire writers, experts or writing assistance who helps you. Dissertationauthors hire expert writers for you basically from the USA and UK.

Go to www.dissertationauthors.com .
Fill the order form
Pay for your write up or paper
Reach your personal writer
Download your completed work

In summary, students have to write their own stuff, however, if your writing isn’t of that level you can use this service.

Grammarly:

Grammar, spelling and synonyms are common problems every research student faces, specifically those who aren’t from a pure English background. Imagine, what if some software or tool can do all stuff automatically!

Grammarly is exactly that one tool. They have free and paid plans available, however, the free version is enough for most students.

It has many services in which the Google chrome “add on” extension is the best. When activated it automatically detects and corrects English problems to all documents.

Related article: Grammarly: Your PhD writing assistant

Correct spelling and Grammer
Correct wordy sentences
Suggest punctuations
Structurize the sentence
Check plagiarism
Adds more transient words and synonyms
And a lot more…

Read more: How to Check Plagiarism for PhD Thesis?- Top 10 Plagiarism Checkers

How to use Grammarly?

Go to www.grammarly.com
Sign in or sign up for your account.
Go to the Google chrome extension search for Grammarly.
Add Grammarly to your chrome extension.
Do a quick setting as per your requirement.

In summary, Grammarly is the one tool or software that must be present on every PhD fellow’s laptop. Its technology is based on AI, meaning as you write more, it understands your style more and suggests accordingly.

Moreover, it also mails you your performances, common problems and how you can improve.

Hemingway Editor

This software is somehow similar to Grammarly, however, it has something unique in it. It’s an online editor you can use to quickly edit your article. It finds common errors, sentence structure, and grammatical mistakes.

It corrects it precisely. Several common features are enlisted here,

Highlight lengthy and complex sentences, and corrections
Finds common writing errors
Finds active or passive voices.
It denotes each error with a different color quote.
It can also add headings, count the number of words and other things.

In summary, It’s not that impressive software for the students but can help especially to correct complex sentences. It is useful for bloggers.

Apps and Softwares make your everyday life easy and when you are in PhD, it becomes so important to make things easy. You should visit and use all this Softwares and its tools.

However, as per my opinion research candidates should have at least Grammarly, Mendeley and Evernote. These three are enough to do a lot of work.

Use Mendeley for citation, bibliography generation and other PhD stuff, Grammarly for writing assistance and Evernote for keeping notes and important things.

Dr. Tushar Chauhan is a Scientist, Blogger and Scientific-writer. He has completed PhD in Genetics. Dr. Chauhan is a PhD coach and tutor.

About The Author

Dr Tushar Chauhan

Grammarly: Your PhD writing assistant

How to Avoid Plagiarism in Your PhD Thesis?

11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers

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For many people, the academic writing process can be a daunting and exhausting experience. Papers and reports can take hours or days to complete and require intense dedication to perfect. However, there are tools that can make the process much easier for those who need them most.

If you find yourself struggling with long-form writing projects, these tools will help you work smarter instead of harder.

This article is organized into roughly 3 stages of writing:

Writing and editing a draft
Rewording/ Paraphrasing
Organizing the manuscript

Table of Contents

I. Best Writing Software for Researchers

#1. jasper (formerly jarvis) – game-changing ai writing bot.

Jasper is a clever AI that can help you with different parts of your writing. Jasper can identify the core argument in your writing and will provide an outline, create a title, and offer to write introductions and conclusions.

This tool is relatively new. And, I have become a heavy user. I can see how this tool will be VERY useful for knowledge work like professors and researchers. It takes a bit of a learning curve to master the tool. But, it’s absolutely worth it.

We recently negotiated a deal for our readers to get 10,000 words for free. You can grab it here.

But, let me say this first: this tool is great if you know when and how to use it (like most tools really…). And, no, this AI won’t replace you, yet… Your role as the researcher is to guide the AI. Be clear about the central thesis, arguments, and guide it through the process.

Here is the deep dive review article on Jasper .

The writing document comes with the basic editing functions e.g.., Grammar, Rephrase, and Explain-it-to-5th-grade
Great tool for writing a cover letter or email to editors that show a bit of your personality (e.g., using its tone of voice function
Help you promote your work on social media with the “Quora Answers” template
Help you do polls and surveys with the “Poll Questions & Multiple Choice Answers” template
Help you write an opening paragraph of a press release that people will want to read “Press Release Title” Template
Flexible pay-as-you-go. To start with, Jarvis gives you some credits (5,000 in my case) for free. So, test Jarvis and pay for what you use
This tool is not ready yet to stand on its own. As I said, you will need to guide it through the process, so you will have to be more involved than with some other tools.
It does take a bit of learning like using a typewriter when most people are still using pen and paper. (Eventually, most people use a keyword to type. And, I believe it’s only a matter of time until most people realize they can do more and better with AI…)
Unused credits are not allowed to carry over to the next month. I wish it’s more like the Audible model, where you can save up the credit later on.
The paraphrasing function only works for a short paragraph (<30 words) and often misses quite a lot of points once word count exceeds that

Update: Jasper is giving a one-off 10,000 words for free for five days to our readers. Check it out before it expires.

#2. ProWritingAid – Your paper enhancer before submission

As someone who works in academia, I understand the importance of producing quality writing that is clear, concise, and accurate. That’s why I love using ProWritingAid, an AI-powered writing tool that helps me perfect my work before submission.

The rephrasing tool allows me to improve any sentence in just a few clicks. The AI-powered grammar checker catches even the trickiest mistakes, ensuring my ideas shine without any easy-to-miss errors.

The learning tool for students provides in-depth analysis to get work publish-ready. ProWritingAid’s analytical language goals and power verb suggestions help me write professionally without sacrificing readability.

I would suggest you test this tool out using its guaranteed refund for 14 days.

One of the things I love is its unique 20 reporting functions from ProWritingAid (see image below), especially the Sticky, Overused, Pronouns, and Alliteration.

Overall, ProWritingAid is a powerful tool that can help you produce quality writing quickly and efficiently.

Comprehensive grammar checker that can catch and fix even the trickiest issues
Offers a rephrasing tool that allows you to improve any sentence in just a few clicks
Learning tool for students that provides in-depth analysis to get your work publish-ready
Analytical language goals and power verb suggestions to help you write clearly, concisely, and accurately
Can be used by both students and professionals for all types of academic writing
The free version has limitations, and you need to upgrade to access all features
While I love the detailed report feature, some users may find these functions overwhelming at first
Can be time-consuming to use for long documents or research papers as this is not designed with the paper organization in mind

#3. Trinka – Designed for Academic and Technical writing

Trinka is an AI-powered English grammar and plagiarism checker, which we have covered in this article . It also doubles as a language enrichment writing assistant.

We have been testing Trinka recently and fell in love with it. Trinka is founded by Enago, an established academic service provider. So, they are well-versed in the needs of academic papers or technical writing.

Using real-time writing recommendations, Trinka corrects contextual spelling problems and sophisticated grammatical issues.

It aids academics and professionals in ensuring that their writing is clear, succinct, and interesting.

Below is a comparison of its performance against Grammarly from a Trinka whitepaper. Trinka wins in Domain, Usage, and Style.

We are also delighted to see its Publication Readiness feature included in the free plan. If you have issues with publishing your paper, chances are something is wrong with your manuscript. This Publication Readiness Checker may just be that difference maker.

More suited for academic and technical writing
Consistency Check that’s made for scientific writing
Publication readiness check is a lifesaver (included in the free plan!)
Flexible – credit-based pricing. Free-credits every month
No desktop or mobile app
Free version limits word count to 10,000 words/month

#4. Hemingway Editor – free and powerful

Hemingway Editor is one of my favorite writing tools. It helps you to simplify your writing. And, it’s free and easy to use.

It highlights problems with your writing based on the idea that dense, complex sentences are hard to understand. The program takes these long, winding sentences and breaks them into chunks with periods in between.

This makes it easy to see where you can cut out unnecessary words or phrases. You can also use the Hemingway Editor mobile app, which is available for free on iOS devices!

Helps you spot your prose’s pitfalls, e.g., passive voice and convoluted sentence structure
Free tool that also checks grammar
Software can be downloaded so you can access it without the internet
Aids in finding alternatives for difficult sentences
Can make a large difference to the clarity of your writing
Helps improve reading comprehension and understanding
Is available as a free mobile app on iOS devices
Great for essay writing
Sometimes the alternatives require the reader’s attention
Can’t export to MS Word or PDF files
There is no browser plugin for this great tool
Not ideal for checking really long research or paper
You need to know what is the right reading level to set it

II. Best Re-Writing Software

#1. quillbot – best paid option for the professional .

QuillBot is a cutting-edge paraphrasing software that may reword part of the text or the entire article. After you’ve entered a sentence or piece of text, hit the paraphrase button, and QuillBot will rephrase your material while preserving its original meaning.

One of the primary strengths of this tool is that it uses machine learning to understand, reword, restructure, and improve on the paraphrases it makes. Besides paraphrasing and cutting your writing time, QuillBot offers a built-in thesaurus function to help you find the perfect word every time and change individual words.

Writing modes are included to help you enhance clarity and meaning, and a Word Flipper helps you change your writing instantly.

The free version can paraphrase up to 700 characters, but you can purchase a premium account and paraphrase up to 10,000 characters. The premium plan also paraphrases text faster, has more writing modes, and shows you a single sentence in multiple modes so you can compare results.

High-quality results that preserve the original meaning
Has a slider to adjust the level of synonyms and different writing modes to help you enhance clarity and meaning, as well as style, tone, and grammar tools
Good interface that shows you the words that have been spun, not just shows you the result
Works with the writing tools you already use, like Microsoft Office, Google Docs, and Google Chrome.
Has a co-writer function that can rival Jarvis as a writing tool
Has a Citation Generator that can be handy with your academic paper
Has a Grammar Checker that rivals Grammarly with a one-click fix-it function
The free version allows only 125 words (paraphraser) and 1,200 words summarizer
The absolute price of $15 per month may scare many people off (until you have experienced the power of an AI writing tool, an editing tool like Grammarly, and a paraphrasing tool like WordTune – coming into one).
Premium starts with $15 billed monthly and $9.99 per month (billed every 6 months)

#2. WordTune – The most convenient option

WordTune can generate rewrite suggestions by analyzing vast amounts of text and finding human language patterns. As a result, it may occasionally change the meaning to convey a more common idea or to include information it believes is implied.

During the rewrite suggestions, Wordtune is learning to preserve the meaning of your input text as best as possible. It may occasionally, however, offer suggestions that seem to be out of context since the tool is built with some creative freedom. Sometimes, it may misinterpret your text and give incorrect or irrelevant suggestions.

Best onboarding process that allows you to feel the tool – has a floating W icon that follows
Works as a Google Extension which I use for my daily needs
Free version shows impressive rewording results with the highlighted changes
Most rewarding options I have seen from a tool (vs. others that don’t offer options)
Offers 40% discount to students and educators with a valid academic email address, or those who work for a non-profit or NGO
To change the tone to casual or formal requires an upgrade
To use the shorten and expand function requires an upgrade
Can’t work on a mobile or tablet function
The normal price of $10 a month may be too much for casual writers

We tested Wordtune and find the Quillbot to be a more powerful tool with more functions mentioned above. Who knows, Wordtune may change after seeing user feedback like ours one day.

#3. Spinbot – Best free option for starters

Spinbot is a free summarizing tool that converts the substance you paste or write directly into an editorial manager. When you submit a request, the Spinbot framework modifies the text automatically.

Spinbot does not capitalize words, which protects uppercase terms like titles, professional people, places, and things while also preserving the main phrase of each sentence. You may modify this setting by checking the Spin Capitalized Words box.

Free version that works up to 10,000 words which is quite amazing compared with QuillBot’s 125 words
The interface is simple, spotless, and straightforward to use, but it includes offers. When you get past the commercials, though, the summarizing method is simple
User experience is interrupted by ads sometimes
The results is not as transparent as the QuillBot which shows you what has been changed
The result can sometimes be quite bad (makes no sense) and you can’t adjust the rewording level like you can with QuillBot

III. 3 Best Writing Organization Tools

#1. scrivener – best for academic researchers.

Scrivener is great for researchers who need to handle a large volume of research. Academic writing is more complicated than a grad school writing assignment. This tool costs a little bit of money. But, many top researchers use it for their research papers.

It’s helpful that it has a mobile app, too. If you want to walk around and research ideas or write on your phone, Scrivener can sync with your device so everything is in one place.

Scrivener is very easy to use and helps you organize your writing. You can create chapters that have subpages for all of your research. You can also add images or text boxes that relate to your writing. It’s a great tool for organizing your research and thoughts, so you can produce a better academic research paper.

Scrivener also has a great free trial period – 30 days of use . So, if you use it 3 days a week, then you could have the trial for 10 weeks. Check the Discount here .

Ease of use – allows you to easily rearrange your chapters and organize your research paper later without worrying about the order
Many guides along the research process
Free app trial that most students can access and test
Able to help you turn random articles and documents into a thesis and great research paper
Interface in the documents can be a bit confusing for first-time users

#2. Authorea – Best for Alternative Publication and Exposure

Authorea is this writing tool is a one-stop-shop for you to a) create/upload, b) disseminate your research paper, and c) get published in top journals. Authorea is great for young researchers who want to publish their academic work.

You can also use Authorea with Scrivener!

That’s right, you won’t have to leave your writing tool if you need to upload a research paper or just an article.

One of the best features is that Authorea officials allow you to publish your work on their website, free of charge. You can also get a DOI from them so it’s easier for people to cite your original research paper.

One-stop shop for creating, disseminating, and getting published in top journals
Great tool for young researchers who want to do their academic work and publish their research paper without having to handle the document and other admin tasks
Can use Authorea with Scrivener
May be difficult to get published in top journals

#3. Reedsy – Best for Aspiring Best-Selling Authors

Reedsy is a publishing company that helps authors and publishers connect with professionals to help them create beautiful books. They offer powerful tools and free educational content to help people become top researchers and have more academic success.

Reedsy’s Book Editor is a powerful digital tool used for writing and editing eBooks, print books, journals, and articles. It gives you all the features you need to write your manuscript, including unlimited revision history with comments sent via email; automatic backups; dynamic word count; advanced character filtering; track changes; export to .docx or .txt files; the ability to collaborate on your manuscript with several people at once; and much more.

Reedsy’s eBook Editor has all the features of an advanced word processor, meaning you can write your eBook with the same high-powered tools that are used by best-selling authors.

Reedsy offers a wide range of professional services to help you create a beautiful book
They have a lot of free educational content that can help you improve your research and writing skills
The Reedsy Book Editor is a powerful, yet easy-to-use, tool for writing and editing manuscripts
Reedsy is quite expensive compared to other publishing companies
More of a next-level tool for people who have some success or resources

#4. LaTeX – Great tool but difficult for non-coder

LaTeX is one of the most widely used academic writing tools that are free and reliable. We have even created a LaTex tutorial, where we help with the minimal programming knowledge that you need to use this too.

Use LaTex if you haven’t started writing your research paper, have some time to learn it, and want to learn one of the absolute classic writing tools.

Download the LaTeX program here , and don’t forget to check out our guide on how to use it here .

LaTeX is free to use, which helps students on tight academic budgets.
The ability to create your own bibliography using Latex’s site function saves time for you and your librarian.
Creates a technical barrier for researchers who know how to use LaTex and those who don’t
It takes some time to learn how to use Latex and can take a few hours or even months for beginner writers
Certain word processing programs such as MS Word cannot be used with LaTex

#5. DraftIn – Minimalistic and free for laser-focus writing

If Steve Jobs creates an academic writing tool, Draftin might be it. The tool is designed for people who just want to focus on words. It embraces Hemmingway’s motto of “Writer drunk. Edit Sober.”

I work with other people all the time, using Google Docs. But, sometimes there are issues with version control. This tool solves that problem by holding the version updated by the user in the user’s environment. So, you should review it first before accepting it.

This is different from Google Docs’ showing the updated version and you figure out what has been changed. And, revert them one by one.

The downside of being minimalist is that you can’t embed links in the text.

One of the good free online writing tools
Minimalist design with the Hemingway Mode that encourages “write first, edit later”
Version control is very helpful for keeping track of edits and updates
Great when you have co-authors to work on the same documents
Help you focus on the quality of your writing and notes
You can’t embed links in text in the document
Limited functions (by design) compared with other tools

Final Thoughts

The best academic writing tools don’t have to be expensive or complicated.

The most important thing you can do is use your time wisely.

We are also curious about your experience with what works and what doesn’t.

What are the top three things you wish someone had told you about academic writing when you were starting out?

Share them with us below!

Why should I use LaTeX?

One important but less obvious benefit is that LaTeX allows you to clearly distinguish the substance of your academic papers from the format. As a writer (scientist, researcher or not), this frees you up to concentrate on “what” rather than “how” will it look when printed out on paper (that is the job of LaTeX document class designers).

One big caveat is that the learning curve is quite steep. So, be sure to check out our tutorial here .

What are the best tips for academic writing?

1. Make sure to spell-check and proofread
2. It’s not enough to merely quote your references
3. Try using different words than the ones you found in your research
4. You have to accurately summarize and synthesize their ideas in a new way
5. Write clearly and simply
6. Avoid cliches
7. Vary your SENTENCE STRUCTURE
8. Mix it up in terms of PUNCTUATION
9. Be CONCISE
10. Use the VOCABULARY that you know
11. But also work on expanding your VOCABULARY
12. ***Be open mind and learn to use the tool that you need, not what others recommend

What are the tools for effective writing?

The most important tool is your mind as a researcher.

Good academic writing relies on clear thinking, orderly presentation, and sustained focus.

To be an effective researcher, it’s important to have a set of clearly defined priorities for how you will spend your time in the library or office, what questions you’re devoting attention to, which ideas are worth pursuing in more depth.

Brainstorming is often part of drafting a paper in rhetoric, but in these earliest stages, it is also about figuring out one’s attitude toward the subject at hand. Who am I writing this essay for? Who am I disagreeing with? What are they saying about my topic that I need to refute – all this has implications when deciding where to look next or what hypothesis to pursue.

One major problem for researchers is to actually “see” how much they know. Scapple can be a great tool for organizing knowledge and connecting the dots. You can find out more about how we reviewed >30 mind mapping software here .

There is more.

Check out our other articles on the Best Academic Tools Series for Research below.

Learn how to get more done with these Academic Writing Tools
Learn how to proofread your work with these Proofreading Tools
Learn how to broaden your research landscape with these Academic Search Engines
Learn how to manage multiple research projects with these Project Management Tools
Learn how to run effective survey research with these Survey Tools for Research
Learn how get more insights from important conversations and interviews with Transcription Tools
Learn how to manage the ever-growing list of references with these Reference Management Software
Learn how to double your productivity with literature reviews with these AI-Based Summary Generators
Learn how to build and develop your audience with these Academic Social Network Sites
Learn how to make sure your content is original and trustworthy with these Plagiarism Checkers
Learn how to talk about your work effectively with these Science Communication Tools

10 thoughts on “11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers”

Does quiltbot,save the changed text on its server, and then creata the problem of plagerisim.

Here is what it says about its plagiarism checker: “QuillBot stores your content in order to run the plagiarism report, so you can access your reports in the future. Our third-party vendor, CopyLeaks, does not store your content. QuillBot will never share your content with any third parties outside of CopyLeaks.”

Please provide information on resources for systematic review and meta-analysis; for conducting literature review

No it does not

i am a research scholar.i request you to kindly let me share information on rewrite cum plagiarism check, removal tool for best performance. Thank you all

Thank you, Dear Writer. It’s very much helpful.

These are very important for research students. Thank you very much for this piece of information. Great work Joannah.

Thank you for the kind words!

Thanks for sharing this well-researched article.

Nice article, might I suggest Writefull also, they have a number of tools designed for academic/technical writing…

7 Essential Dissertation Writing Apps & Tools

By: David Phair (PhD) & Kerryn Warren (PhD) | October 2019 (Updated March 2022)

Completing your dissertation or thesis requires a hearty investment of time, effort and hard work. There’s no shortcut on the road to research success, but as with anything, there are ways to optimize the process and work smarter.

In this post, we’ll share with you a handful of apps, software and services that will make your life a little easier throughout the research process.

Overview: Essential Thesis Writing App s

Grammarly (language editing)
Evernote (note taking & productivity)
Otter (dictation/transcription)
Dropbox (cloud storage)
Canva (graphic design)
Mendeley (reference management)
Freemind (mind mapping)
Bonus – MOOCs (learning & development)

#1: Grammarly Premium

Let’s face it – the spell checker in Microsoft Word just plain sucks. False positives and negatives abound, missed errors, ridiculous suggestions – you’re often better off spell checking yourself. Thankfully, you don’t need to do that, thanks to Grammarly .

Grammarly app for proofreading your dissertation on the fly

Grammarly is more than just a spelling and grammar checker – it picks up far more complex issues such as:

Inconsistent writing style and unclear sentence structure
Overuse of specific works and ineffective vocabulary
Impolite, insensitive or non-inclusive language
Inappropriate tone or formality level

Simply put, Grammarly is the closest thing you’ll get to having a real-time editor and proofreader looking at your work. Of course, it doesn’t replace human-based editing , but its ideal for cleaning up your early drafts prior to submitting them to your supervisor/advisor for feedback. Grammarly integrates directly into Word, Google Docs and Chrome, so it’s extremely versatile.

Grammarly offers both a free and premium version. For dissertation writing purposes, we recommend the premium version as it includes a plagiarism checker , which is very handy.

#2: Evernote & Penultimate

No doubt, you’ll be taking an endless stream of notes throughout the research process. Some will be written notes, some will be photos, some might even be audio recordings. You’ll need a way to stay on top of it all and keep things organized. Enter Evernote .

Evernote app for taking notes during your thesis

Evernote is the ultimate note-taking app, as it allows you to take notes in various formats, including text (typed and handwritten), photos (snap that workshop slide) and audio (record that interview). You can also attach files of any format (for example, an Excel data set), so absolutely everything stays in one place. The text in any note is fully searchable, and all data is synchronized across your phone, laptop, desktop and tablet.

Writing up a good dissertation or thesis requires a lot of, well, writing. Spending hours upon hours hunched over a keyboard can be really draining (and potentially physically harmful). Imagine you could just speak instead of type. Well, now you can, thanks to Otter.ai

The number of times we’ve seen students lose hours, days or even weeks’ worth of hard work (and even miss the submission deadline) due to corrupted flash drives or hard drives, coffee-soaked laptops, or stolen computers is truly saddening. If you’re not using cloud storage to save your work, you’re running a major risk.

Cloud storage apps for your dissertation backups

If you take only ONE thing from this post , let it be this point. Go sign up for any of the following cloud services (most offer a free version) and save your work there:

Google Drive
iCloud Drive

Not only will this ensure your work is always safely stored (remember to hit the Save button, though!), it will make working on multiple devices easier, as your files will be automatically synchronized. No need to have multiple versions between your desktop, laptop, tablet, etc. Everything stays in one place. Safe, secure, happy files.

Need a helping hand?

Even the most well-written dissertation or thesis will suffer if the visuals cause retina damage to the reader’s eyes. Sadly, badly designed conceptual frameworks and document visuals are all too common in academic work. This needn’t be the case, thanks to Canva .

Canva is an intuitive, easy to use, fully web-based graphic design service that lets anyone design high-quality graphics . And yes, we mean anyone . You don’t need to have a background in graphic design or visual arts to make good looking graphics with Canva. Just drag and drop . Canva also offers a wide variety of pre-made templates, so it couldn’t be easier to create visuals for your dissertation or thesis.

6: Mendeley

Correctly formatted citations and references are essential to a polished dissertation or thesis. Even the highest quality piece of research will lose credibility (and marks) if the referencing is not on point. It’s such a shame to see students lose marks on this , as its such an easy thing to get right with reference management software like Mendeley .

Mendeley is a free reference management software that takes care of all your citations and references in Word. Simply load up your journal articles in Mendeley and then just drop in your citations as you write up in Word. Mendeley then automatically builds your reference list according to whichever format you choose (e.g. Harvard, APA , etc). Sure, there are many similar pieces of software out there, but personally I find Mendeley to be the most feature-rich. See the video above for a taste of the functionality.

7: Freemind

When you’re undertaking your research, especially your literature review , you’re going to be dealing with a wide-ranging number of theories, models and frameworks, and it can be difficult to see the big picture and connect all the dots. Mind mapping is a highly effective way to visualize (and connect) all the information, but doing it on paper is so old fashioned. Enter Freemind .

8: Udemy & Coursera

Okay, so this is not an app or piece of software, but we couldn’t resist including it…

While you’re undertaking your dissertation, chances are that you’re going to need to learn about some niche topic very quickly in order to complete some part of your research. For example, how to use SPSS or NVivo analysis software, how to develop statistically sound survey scales , how to undertake structured interviews, and so on. However, these sorts of skills are typically not included in the university syllabus and will have a major impact on the quality of your research. Enter Udemy and Coursera .

Udemy and Coursera both provide a wide-ranging variety of super-short, highly digestible online courses. These courses are a great way to pick up specific skills (especially software skills) in a very short amount of time (many courses are less than 10 hours total).

Recap: Dissertation Apps

And there you have it – 8 apps, software and services that will undoubtedly make your life easier come dissertation time.

Have a suggestion? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Simply leave a comment below and we’ll consider adding your suggested app to the list.

Psst… there’s more (for free)

This post is part of our dissertation mini-course, which covers everything you need to get started with your dissertation, thesis or research project.

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Dissertation and thesis writing services

13 Comments

It seems some of the apps mentioned are not android capable. It would be nice if you mentioned items that everyone could use.

Thanks for the feedback, Gale!

Yet to explore some of your recommended apps. I am glad to commend on one app that I have started using, Mendeley. When it comes to referencing it really helps a lot.

Great to hear that, Maggie 🙂

I have got Mendeley and it is fantastic. I have equally downloaded Freemind but I am yet to really understand how to navigate through it.

Based on your YouTube lessons,my literature review and the entire research has been simplified and I am enjoying the flow now,more than ever before.

Thank you so much for your recommendations and guide.It’s working a great deal for me.

Remain blessed!

Thank you for all the amazing help and tutorials. I am in the dissertation research proposal stage having already defended the qualifying paper. I am going to implement some of your advice as I revise chapters 1 & 2 and expand chapter 3 for my research proposal. My question is about the writing– or specifically which software would you recommend. I know MS Word can get glitchy with larger documents. Do the “reference” apps you recommend work with other options such as LaTeX? I understand that for some programs the citations won’t be integrated or automated such as cite while you write etc.. I have a paid version of endnote, and free versions of mendeley and zotero. I have really only used endnote with any fidelity but I’m willing to adapt. What would you advise at this point?

Thanks for your comment and for the kind words – glad to hear that the info is useful.

Generally, Word works reasonably well for most research projects and is our first recommendation. As long as one keeps the document clean (i.e. doesn’t paste in loads of different styles, ultra high-res images, etc), it works fine. But I understand that it’s not perfect for absolutely huge projects.

Regarding referencing with Latex, this article covers how to use Mendeley with Latex – https://blog.mendeley.com/2011/10/25/howto-use-mendeley-to-create-citations-using-latex-and-bibtex/ . Perhaps it will be useful. I hesitate to tell you to adopt software X or Y, or to move from Endnote, as each software has its strengths and weaknesses, and performs better in certain contexts. I’m not familiar with your context, so it’s not possible for me to advise responsibly. Mendeley works well for the vast majority of our students, but if there’s a very specific bit of functionality that draws you to Endnote, then it may be best to stick with it. My generic advice would be to give Mendeley a try with some sample references and see if it has the functionality you need.

I hope this helps! Best of luck with your research 🙂

Thank you for your amazing articles and tips. I have MAC laptop, so would Zotero be as good as Mendeley? Thank you

Derek would you share with me your email please, I need to talk to you urgently.

I need a free Turnitin tool for checking plagiarism as for the tools above

I have been going crazy trying to keep my work polished and thesis or dissertation friendly. My mind said there had to be a better way to do literature reviews. Thank God for these applications. Look out world I am on my way.

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Software, Tools, and Apps that PhDs Must Have

We often are asked to recommend some of the must have software programs, tools, and apps for PhD students, professors, and academics, so we have put together a comprehensive list. These selections are based on our experience using some of them and recommendations made by several of Stephanie’s colleagues via Facebook. Interestingly, for some of the tools listed, there was a lack of consensus about their usefulness so in some instances we provided a few pros and cons to help you make the best decisions based on your needs.

This post was written by Stephanie A. Bosco-Ruggiero (PhD candidate in Social Work at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service) and Jessica Russell ( freelance writer) on behalf of Dave Maslach for the R3ciprocity project (Check out the YouTube Channel or the writing feedback software ). The R3ciprocity Project started out as a side-project, where David Maslach created an App to help others get feedback on their work (r3ciprocity.com – it is seriously inexpensive and easy to use. You have to try it!) , but it is beginning to grow into a real movement. R3ciprocity helps students, faculty, and research folk by providing a real and authentic look into doing research. It provides solutions and hope to researchers around the world.

As a PhD candidate, a professor, or academic much of your time is spent doing research, so it’s important to do as much as possible to ensure your projects and tasks run as smoothly as possible. The list below includes software, apps, and tools to help you take notes, manage projects, do statistical analysis, edit and cite your writing, convert files to and from PDF and eBook format, survey respondents, help you concentrate, and aid in graphic and art creation. We also threw in some tools to help with self care including mindfulness and meditation apps.

This list is not all inclusive. If there is another app or tool you think people should be aware of, let us know in the comments.

Check out this article on what PhD students do all day. You will be surprised.

Here’s a vlog Dave recording on how to speed up research productivity that you might want to check out as well.

Note Taking

There are times when an idea or inspiration pops up in the moment and you need to jot it down, or you’re focusing on one task and you think of something that will help with another. Note taking apps and software programs help you jot down those ideas to save for later. Check out this amazing post on how professors check for plagiarism – it is pretty helpful). They also help you organize your notes for teaching, research, and other projects. Get a program that is web based so you can sign on anywhere, including your phone. Most allow syncing via multiple OS and Browsers. Of course, you may always also benefit from a simple electronic post it app that you can install on your desktop (don’t go too crazy though, I once crashed my laptop by having like a hundred notes). Phones of course also have handy note taking and reminder apps. But we recommend the following apps and tools for more comprehensive academic note taking:

Google Keep

In July 2021, I polled the R3ciprocity YouTube community about the best note-taking software, and here is the results from 174 responses! Thank you! As you can see, the best note-taking software is OneNote or Evernote, but many people have others that they use.

Check out this article on how many years it takes to do a doctorate degree. It goes into quite a bit of detail.

Word Processing

Writing will take up a bulk of your time and using software that has a great UX and is easy to navigate will reduce the time you spend with unnecessary editing and fumbling with tools that slow you down. The software we recommend are staples of the industry and are most popular among writers. Make sure you explore Microsoft Word online as well. It is useful when you have work across multiple devices. Microsoft can be seamlessly integrated with OneDrive but make sure your settings are right so you don’t lose anything! The usefulness of Good docs and drive also cannot be understated.

Stephanie resisted Google Docs for a long time because I feared I would lose something or the document would not look as polished as a Word document, but you can download your file as a Word document, plain text, PDF, etc. The thing that really sold me on Google Docs though was the ability to work with a team to collaborate on writing, provide suggested edits, accept or reject edits, and be able to do all of this real time. You can also easily chat to the side of the document as you collaborate and edit. You can keep your documents in shared drive and designate who has permission to access and edit.

Microsoft office/Word

Google Docs/Drive

Libre Office – Open-source, but uncommon.

I did a poll on the R3ciprocity YouTube community in July 2021 on the most popular word processing software, and here are the results:

You might want to watch this video about writing Apps for PhDs:

Grammar Checking, editing, and Proofreading

Hey, did you hear about this neat proofreading and editing program called r3ciprocity 😉 It allows you to pay forward the favor of proofreading and reviewing by collecting credits which you can then use when you need your work reviewed. You can also buy credits if needed. Check out Dave’s platform at https://www.r3ciprocity.com/ The platform is also building a community of scholars that can be helpful to you when you need scholarly work reviewed or just need to bounce around some ideas.

(Here is a good blog post on getting feedback on your work – you will love it.)

Be careful using automated proofreading or editing software or tools as they may not pick up on the nuances of your work or the points you are trying to make. Also, try to use alternatives before you hire a pricey writing consultant, proofreader, editor, or coach. Sometimes hiring someone is needed, but if you need lighter editing and reviewing check out r3ciprocity.com and contact Dave if you have any questions about the platform.

Check out how to log-in to the R3ciprocity platform.

Here is Dave discussing how and when to purchase credits on his proofreading and editing platform R3ciprocity:

There are a number of other resources for grammar checker Apps and editing resources that you might want to check out in this blog post.

Statistical Analysis

Of course you are going to need statistical analysis software to complete that thesis or dissertation, and as an academic, analyze your data and produce manuscripts. Many doctoral programs train their students using IBM’s SPSS but some also or alternatively train their students in R or Stata. Stephanie personally prefers the point and click functionality of SPSS which also allows advanced coders to exclusively use syntax to conduct analyses. Personally, she prefers to use a mix of point and click and syntax. There is a plethora of guidebooks and manuals, print and online, to help you become fluent in SPSS. New versions are released regularly and students can purchase SPSS inexpensively (read more below). However, for those who prefer to code and use syntax R and Stata may be more challenging and enjoyable to use.

SPSS (Paid, easy to learn)

R (Free, open-source, and powerful)

Stata (Paid, combination of open source and paid, powerful) – Dave’s Pick

Since, there is confusion and it matters a lot about what software you should choose early in your career, I (Dave) polled the R3ciprocity community on YouTube in February, 2021 to find out the most common statistical software that researchers use. 106 people responded. Here are the results:

I was actually quite surprised by these results. I knew that R and SPSS would be rated fairly high, but I was surprised by the fact that Stata only got 16.2% of the votes. Stata is such a powerful, and underrated tool. However, I suspect that it is fairly uniquely used by more economics, finance, and business folks. As someone who has used all of these software (other than R), I would highly suggest it. The instructions material alone is a great benefit.

EBook Converter/PDF Converter

Publishing your manuscript may require turning it into a readable digital format that will translate easily to multiple electronic devices. Whether you are self-publishing, want to convert your work into a polished format, or need this capability for another reason we’ve found that these are some of the best tools out there.

Epubor Ultimate

Foxit Phantom PDF Editor/Reader

MikTex LaTex – LaTex is preferred in the basic sciences.

Project Management/Task Management

Research and writing can be overwhelming with the minutia of details you need to record and track. You may also need to keep these details on behalf of or with a writing or research team. Project and task management software will help you stay on task and warn you when you are falling behind. Additionally these programs help when you’re collaborating with a team. Everyone using these tools can get both a big picture view of the project timeline as well as dive into the details to understand how to best manage the project.

Survey Research/ Experience Management

At some point you will send out a survey for your research, or perhaps for another purpose. These survey and experience management tools help you gather that data as well as measure and analyze the results. They both allow you to export to statistical analysis software and have different levels of functionality and pricing. Make sure your university does not have a license before you spend your own money on these tools. Survey Monkey might be more accessible for beginners but Qualtrics is not difficult to use. You might even give Google forms a try for quick, basic surveys of students or another smaller group of respondents.

Survey Monkey

Google Forms – Great for small tasks.

We conducted a poll of the R3ciprocity YouTube community about the most popular survey tool in March 2021. 56 people responded. The most popular survey tool for researchers is Google Forms. 55 percent of the respondents preferred Google Forms. Honestly, this surprised me because I thought it would be Qualtrics, however this might be explained by the younger and more international audience on the R3ciprocity channel.

Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis

Stephanie does not have a whole lot of experience with qualitative data analysis but has heard that the following programs are quite helpful. They provide some free training and practice modules as well as manuals and guides. Find out which software your department uses and whether you can use it on campus to complete your research. A personal license may be expensive. If you are doing qualitative data collection such as interviews or focus groups you should also download a handy recorder for your device such as Audacity.

Reference/Citation Managers

Make your life easier by using a citation manager. These programs help you to manage your sources as well as help you build your reference lists. Doing this task manually is silly if you are an advanced researcher. You must have a citation manager if you are completing a dissertation and it is highly recommended for a thesis. Your university may offer a specific program for free so you might go with that one, but others are often either free or low cost, especially the web based versions. Endnote has Endnote Web and Zotero is very easy to integrate into your word processing programs, use collaboratively, and use only. Some people feel that Mendeley and Endnote are clunky. Stephanie personally really likes Endnote but recommends taking some in depth tutorials to learn how to use it properly.

Endnote (Dave’s and Stephanie’s preference)

Don’t know which is best for you? Check out our survey on the best citation software for PhDs.

Illustration/Graphics

Your writing may require graphics, diagrams, and other forms of art. Some people rely on the tools native to Microsoft products, but we’ve found that the following programs help further and enhance creativity. Additionally they make creating graphics to support your writing easier and look more professional. Stephanie especially recommends Canva. She discovered it when her students kept mentioning that they were using it to create graphics, brochures, and other illustrated products for social policy advocacy class. It is super easy to use and the library of images is great. You can make business cards, social media posts, infographics, brochures, and more! It’s the hot tool in illustrated document creation today.

If you need a website for your organization or you want to develop an academic profile site you could use Canva for ideas, photos, and structure. WordPress takes some getting used to but it is inexpensive and versatile. For an academic profile/portfolio you might simply use Academia.com’s template which allows you to feature your writing, projects, interests, experience, etc.

Strata 3D Modeling

Canva (Dave’s pick).

Microsoft Visio (Good for schematics).

Lucidchart (Dave’s pick).

AutoDesk (A favorite for CAD).

Meeting Software

These days we are all familiar with meeting online. From job interviews to meeting with colleagues, the following are the most used software programs for online collaboration with video and sharing tools. One of these platforms may be available to students for free so investigate before paying for any of them. Stephanie prefers Zoom but has heard great things about Teams. WebEx is great for delivering webinars.

Microsoft Teams

Google Meet (reliable, but less functionality than Zoom)

Skype (Seems to be losing ground)

FaceTime – Reliable, but only works with other FaceTime users.

In July 2021, I (Dave) polled the R3ciprocity YouTube community about the meeting software that they most use. It turns out that Zoom is a by far the most popular, with 67% of responses selecting Zoom. Most PhDs tend to use Zoom. However, 17% use Google Meet as well.

Programming

What would a PhD without programming? It seems that more and more of us are doing programming during grad school. Here are some best picks that you will use:

Python (Open-source).

Microsoft Visual Studio C++

MatLab (Scientific computing – Dave’s pick).

MapleSoft (Scientific computing).

MathCad (Pretty awesome Engineering software).

In August 2021, I polled 124 PhDs on the R3ciprocity community on YouTube on what is the best programming language for PhDs. Here it is: The most common programming language for PhDs is Python. Around 60% of PhDs use Python as their favorite programming language for their research projects. Python is preferred to Matlab 4 to 1.

Self Care/ Mindfulness

It’s important to practice self care during your doctoral studies or as a professional academic. Taking time out daily with these self care apps will help you center yourself and reduce stress. In addition they will help you stay on task and make your life one in which you can find a calm space to just be mindful wherever you are. If you have a VR headset there are some mind blowing meditation apps you can use to fully immerse yourself in a blissful meditative state.

White Noise Generator

Some people need complete silence when writing, while some need a portion of their brain to be occupied by music or white noise. When it’s important that nothing distracts you from focusing, especially outside noise from loud environments, we recommend the following to help you stay focused and block out the noise.

MyNoise.net

Don’t forget that your finances are super important during your PhD. You have to keep your financial life together to get through your PhD Program. Here are some that Dave suggests:

Mint.com (Free, Dave uses it everyday).

Every Dollar (Dave Ramsey’s product).

Data Transparency

Don’t forget to use tools for data transparency. For example, the Open Science Foundation (OSF) offers a suite of tools designed to facilitate transparent and collaborative research. These tools include project management platforms, data repositories, and preprint archives, all aimed at enhancing the rigor and reproducibility of scientific work. Check it out: Open Science Foundation website .

Gaining access to software and tools for free

We hope you found this list of suggestions helpful. Remember, do not spend a lot of money on software or other tools if you can get them for free through your university. Most schools now provide a Microsoft suite of tools, including OneDrive, to students for free. Check your IT department’s web page and list of free downloads. Of course, Google apps are free as well. Often, you can’t go wrong with Google but there are apps and tools that may be better that you have to purchase, just don’t spend a whole lot of money, especially if you’re a student.

When it comes to survey or data analysis software your university may have purchased a license making the software free for students, faculty, and staff users situated on campus. In certain cases, you may also be able to access these software programs for home. What comes to mind is a university wide or department based Qualtrics license or a comprehensive Zoom license. Just check with your department or university before you purchase anything. If you must purchase SPSS for use at home as a student or university affiliated researcher go to studentdiscounts.com . They offer a full array of options for purchasing SPSS licenses for personal use on your own PC or Mac at a deep discount. You just have to provide proof of your university affiliation.

One more recommendation is to definitely take advantage of a cloud based file storage tool such as OneDrive or Dropbox. If you are not in the habit of backing up your local computer files on a thumb drive, you must back them up on the cloud. Stephanie likes Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox. Which one works best for you might depend on whether you often collaborate, which word processing software you are using, where you access your files, and which one you use for free. Many universities include limited free OneDrive storage as part of the Microsoft Suite offerings.

Did you benefit from this post? Do you know of anyone at all that could use feedback on their writing or editing of their documents? I would be so grateful if you read this post on how to get feedback on your writing using R3ciprocity.com or let others know about the R3ciprocity Project. THANK YOU in advance! You are the bees knees.

If you enjoyed this blog, you might be interested in reading these other posts on blog.r3ciprocity.com .

Self-Care for Ph.D. Students: 10 Tips to Reduce Stress and Boost Productivity While Writing Your Dissertation

R3ciprocity.com is Built by a Community of Writers and Editors

How To Analyze Data From A Questionnaire For A Research Paper?

R3ciprocity_Team

Thesis and Dissertation: Getting Started

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

The resources in this section are designed to provide guidance for the first steps of the thesis or dissertation writing process. They offer tools to support the planning and managing of your project, including writing out your weekly schedule, outlining your goals, and organzing the various working elements of your project.

Weekly Goals Sheet (a.k.a. Life Map) [Word Doc]

This editable handout provides a place for you to fill in available time blocks on a weekly chart that will help you visualize the amount of time you have available to write. By using this chart, you will be able to work your writing goals into your schedule and put these goals into perspective with your day-to-day plans and responsibilities each week. This handout also contains a formula to help you determine the minimum number of pages you would need to write per day in order to complete your writing on time.

Setting a Production Schedule (Word Doc)

This editable handout can help you make sense of the various steps involved in the production of your thesis or dissertation and determine how long each step might take. A large part of this process involves (1) seeking out the most accurate and up-to-date information regarding specific document formatting requirements, (2) understanding research protocol limitations, (3) making note of deadlines, and (4) understanding your personal writing habits.

Creating a Roadmap (PDF)

Part of organizing your writing involves having a clear sense of how the different working parts relate to one another. Creating a roadmap for your dissertation early on can help you determine what the final document will include and how all the pieces are connected. This resource offers guidance on several approaches to creating a roadmap, including creating lists, maps, nut-shells, visuals, and different methods for outlining. It is important to remember that you can create more than one roadmap (or more than one type of roadmap) depending on how the different approaches discussed here meet your needs.

Baylor Graduate Writing Center

Helping Grad Students Become Better Writers

Five Essential Writing Apps & Software for Graduate Students

Software: Add-ons, Widgets for Office and Browsers

Website: https://www.grammarly.com

I would be remiss as a writing consultant if I didn’t start this list out with Grammarly (arguably the #1 writing software we recommend to all GWC clients). Grammarly is a communications assistance software that handles multiple levels of revision at once: spell-checks, punctuation, grammar, tone, level of formality, clarity, consistency, passive versus active voice, etc. You can also download add-ons that integrate Grammarly into your Microsoft Office applications and your browsers.

The free version is fantastic and will get you serious mileage on your writing projects for quite some time. However, I would strongly recommend paying for the Premium version once you’re in the final stages of writing and revising your master’s thesis or dissertation document. The paid version adds plagiarism checks, citation formatting, full sentence rewrites, and word choice suggestions: all invaluable tools for the overwhelmed, exhausted graduate student trying to limp across the finish line of their Final Tech Review.

Software & Application: iOS & Andriod, Mac and Windows Desktop

Website: https://www.notion.so

In high school, I can remember carrying around a massive three-ring binder filled with notes, handouts, and assignments for all seven class periods. By mid-year, I swore the binder weighed more than I did – I gave up toting it in my backpack, as its weight caused the straps to dig into my bony shoulders, and instead carried it in front of me like the tome from the Lost Ark. This was the only way I could stay organized, keep track of my calendar, and hold my notes all in one place.

You do not have to suffer this indignity, dear reader. Notion will do all of this FOR YOU.

Think of Notion as your three-ring binder. You can take notes, store pictures and videos, create calendar items, track deadlines, and more. As a graduate student, you are constantly being pulled in so many different directions. Why not give yourself a digital organization system that’s easily accessible and syncs across all of your devices?

Academic Phrasebook

Website: https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: academic voice is not natural . One doesn’t launch into graduate coursework with the ability to “posit” and “synthesize” in APA with ease. The ability to discuss theoretical frameworks in relation to your research comes with time. And practice. So much practice. But… while you become more comfortable finding your own academic voice, the Academic Phrasebook is here to help you jumpstart your writing in the right direction.

This website is priceless for the early-career graduate student looking to polish and refine their academic prose. Created by Manchester University, this site provides formal academic terms, phrases, and sentence starters based on what area of your thesis, article, or dissertation you are working on.

How many times have you gone to a thesaurus to look up another word for “examine” or “investigate” because you feel like you’ve used it 60 times in your writing? This website can help you diversify your vocabulary and sound like a seasoned academic scholar.

Website: https://otter.ai

Otter.ai is a dictation software that allows you to convert audio or spoken words into text. In the fledgling stages of my research prospectus, I would often find inspiration when driving to and from work. I’d do my best to try and hold onto these moments of clarity until I got to my office to write them down. This rarely went well. I’d be left bereft of inspiration and cranky at my failing memory the rest of the day. If I had known about Otter.ai, I could have used it during my morning commutes to dictate my thoughts and save them on their cloud storage system for easy access later.

Otter.ai is also quite helpful when you find yourself stuck in a particularly difficult section of your writing. Using Otter.ai allows you to soundboard and record your ideas without the hinderance of word/page count paralysis or visual imposter syndrome getting in the way.

Calling all qualitative researchers! If you are conducting a qualitative student and plan to conduct several interviews with study participants to collect your data, Otter.ai can provide you with hands-free recordings and transcriptions of your conversations! However, be mindful that transcriptions will not be perfect and WILL need to be cleaned up later.

Dropbox / Google Drive / Apple / Skybox / OneDrive, etc.

Do not–I repeat–DO NOT save your documents on your laptop or computer and call it a day. I cannot tell you how many nightmares I’ve had as a graduate student that my computer crashed and I hadn’t saved the lasted version of my dissertation in my Google Drive. I literally woke my husband up screaming.

Get into the habit now of backing up all of your files onto a cloud storage system of some kind. I don’t care which one you choose. There are several now available, often for free or low monthly rates. Choose what works best for you and your devices.

I began using Dropbox in the beginning to catalogue copies and screenshots of research for my literature review. What I didn’t account for was running out of room. I had already used a large portion of my Dropbox space to store my digital music library of repertoire for studio teaching. This meant jumping ship mid-program to Google Drive, which provided larger storage capacities at a much lower cost. Google Drive also was the preferred cloud for many of my colleagues and professors, which meant it was easier to share and collaborate on research together.

Don’t use your personal data to get through your graduate studies. Upload and store to a cloud system and sleep easy knowing your work is secure!

Best Academic Writing Software: 21 Top Options (2024)

In this article, you’ll discover the best academic writing software options based on their features, prices, and usability.

I remember spending countless hours in my University’s library, desperately trying to format my thesis correctly, surrounded by half-empty takeaway coffee cups. If only I had known that the right academic writing software could have helped me save time and improve the quality of my work.

Whether you’re a university student struggling to finish your thesis like I was or a researcher with deadlines looming, you can rest assured that the right academic writing software will take an enormous weight off your shoulders. What is academic writing? Read our guide to find out!

Academic writing requires meticulous attention to detail which is why we’ve scoured the web looking for software that will support you in the following areas:

Concise sentences
Readability improvements
Chapter, footnotes, and bibliography automation

The academic software options in this article will help you unlock your true potential as an academic writer by improving your grammar, structure, style, and planning.

1. Grammarly

2. prowritingaid, 3. scrivener, 4. google docs, 9. obsidian, 11. microsoft word, 13. mendeley, 14. endnote, 16. turnitin, 17. copyscape, 18. chatgpt, 20. authorea, best academic writing software: the final word, why should you trust me , our testing criteria, is grammarly good for academic writing.

Pricing : Free version available, Premium $12/month, Business $15/month Use for : For plagiarism and grammar checks of academic writing

Grammarly is the most popular writing software on the market, and it’s being used by all types of writers, from high-school students to academic writers in top institutions and universities.

I personally never submit work to my clients without running it through Grammarly first, and I’ve even shelled out for the yearly premium subscription to get access to the plagiarism checker. To find out more, read our Grammarly review .

Some new students also wonder if it’s ok to use this tool to edit their essays and papers. It’s fine to use but if you need more context, in this article, our writer answers the question, is using Grammarly cheating ?

Grammarly is user-friendly, allowing you to either copy and paste your work directly into the application or have it check your documents while you type
Makes Suggestions to improve sentence structure and explains why the change has been suggested
Picks up on adjectives that could lead to exaggeration
Encourages you to write in the action instead of the passive voice
Works for British English, American English, and Australian English
Plagiarism checker is only available to premium customers
Plagiarism checker doesn’t cover academic papers
Live checker is not available for Microsoft Word

We tested dozens of grammar checkers, and Grammarly is the best tool on the market today. It'll help you write and edit your work much faster. Grammarly provides a powerful AI writing assistant and plagiarism checker.

Pricing: Free version, $20/month, $79/year, $300/lifetime Use for: As an alternative for grammar and plagiarism checkers of academic writing

ProWritingAid is an affordable grammar checker that leverages artificial intelligence and a personal support system to help you improve your writing by pointing out specific areas of weakness.

ProWritingAid presents suggestions similarly to Grammarly through bold pop-up boxes that are easy to navigate. However, this software targets professionals looking to make fundamental changes to their writing style. To find out more, read our ProWritingAid review .

Reasonable prices, especially with the lifetime option
Compatible with Microsoft Word
Includes a digital writing coach
Style score gives you a guide regarding the quality of your work
Plagiarism is not included in the free version
PLagiarism checker less accurate than Grammarly

ProWritingAid is a powerful, accurate grammar checker and style editor. It's suitable for non-fiction and fiction writers and doesn't require a monthly subscription. Save 20% per month or year.

Price: 30-day free trial, student/academics discount $50, IOS $19.99, Standard macOS and Windows $58.99 Use for: For managing large academic papers, organizing research, and references

Webpage of Scrivener are seen on a laptop computer

Scrivener may not be as well known as the last two software options, but it has much to offer academic writers. For example, the platform will help you get your references in order, and it will help you integrate large chunks of text into one, which is useful when you’re moving big paragraphs.

Although bloggers and journalists overlook Scrivener, if you’re someone who is dealing with long research papers, this could be the ideal software choice. To find out more, read our Scrivener review .

Great formatting tools for academic writers
Affordable prices, especially with the academic discount
Helps organize your reference
Keep all your files, including PDFs and web pages, inside your Scrivener account
Take a snapshot of your work and return to early versions if you want to make retrospective changes
No plagiarism checker
No live checker for editing on external platforms such as Google Docs and Word
A learning curve

Scrivener is our go-to app for long-form writing projects. It's popular with best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more.

Price: Free Use for: General writing, collaborative writing, and editing

Google Docs is a free Web-based application in which documents and spreadsheets can be created

Google Docs is probably the most well-known writing software, and it’s used by professional writers, bloggers, and academics worldwide. I’m personally using Docs to write this post, as its sharing feature makes sending your work to an editor a breeze.

Docs offers many valuable features for academic writers, including headers and footers, collaborative comments, citations, and the new document comparison tool.

This platform is useful when combined with Grammarly, its spell checker, and writing tips are highlighted clearly in Google Docs, and you can accept and reject suggestions with one click.

Easy to use, familiar software
Collaboration made easy
Easy to format text with citations, headers/footers, and Headings
Grammarly compatible
Export in PDF
Document comparison does not make up for the lack of a plagiarism checker
Native spell checker is a little unreliable, but adding Grammarly makes up for this

Price: Free Use for: For writing scientific papers

LaTex is a writing software designed to help people improve the structure of their academic papers. It’s worth noting that LaTeX doesn’t offer a spell-checking service, so you’ll want to use it in combination with Grammarly or ProWritingAid.

The software interface may not boast a high-quality-looking interface, but the underlying features are impressive, especially considering the software is free to use.

Automatic indexing and bibliography generator
Automatic chapter and paragraph macros
Math typesetting
No spelling and grammar checker
Not as user-friendly as some competitors

Price: 30-day free trial, $3/per month for students, $5/month for academics, $10/month for business Use for: To manage, read, annotate, and share your research references

Papers help you gather your research materials across multiple devices, making your books, articles, and journals easy to access and organize.

If you’re writing a long research paper, manually collating all your references into one library would be extremely time-consuming. Papers automate the process, letting you focus on writing,

Although Papers isn’t a stand-alone academic writing software due to the lack of most expected features, it will be handy for academic writers struggling to organize their references and sources.

Low price for academics and students
Import references to your library from multiple platforms
Access all your research sources in one place
Collaborative annotation of notes and sources
$10/month is a little expensive, considering you don’t get plagiarism or a spell checker

Price: Free Use for: As a markdown editor and for organizing academic notes

Zettlr is an open-source markdown editor software that lets you focus on your writing without worrying about making it HTML compatible manually. Zettlr is excellent for academic writers looking to include citations or export their work in multiple formats.

Export in multiple formats
Citation system.
Tags to help you organize information
Writing goals tracker
Preview documents without opening them
You may need some CSS coding knowledge to get the best out of the software.
No plagiarism checker.

Price: $5.99/month or $39.99/year Use for: Writing on IOS devices

Ulysses is a writing software designed for use on Mac, iPad, and iPhone, so if you aren’t an Apple user, then this one isn’t for you.

Although academic papers are usually full of data, graphs, and charts, you sometimes need to focus on your text, which is where Ulysses can help. Ulysses is minimalist in design with a clutter-free interface, so if you’re someone that quickly gets distracted from writing, it could be a great option. It supports Markdown. You can also use it to prepare an academic paper for publication. To find out more, read our Ulysses review .

iCloud synchronization
One payment plan for three devices
Minimalistic design.
Set and track writing goals.
Lacks academic writing features such as a bibliography, references, and chapter organization
No option for collaborative writing
Not available for Windows

Price: Free, but you can make a one-time payment of $25 for special developer features and a yearly $50 for commercial use rights Use for: Note taking and organizing

Obsidian is a note-taking and personal knowledge management tool for improving how research writers organize ideas and notes.

Academic writing often involves developing complex ideas and presenting them clearly. Obsidian can help you develop your theories by organizing your ideas and notes into mindmaps and information stacks.

Obsidian won’t be the standalone app you use as an academic writer, but it can help you develop ideas and connections within your papers. To find out more, read our Obsidian review .

Unique mind mapping system
Many plugins offer features such as voice recording, formatting, and writing templates
If you have some knowledge of coding HTML or Java, you can customize parts of the software for your specific needs
It will take some time to get to grips with all the features
Lack of specific academic writing needs such as a plagiarism checker

Price: Free Use for: Organize your notes across various platforms

Joplin is an open-source note-taking software that operates across various devices and has a thriving community developing free tools to improve the platform. You can share your notes from Joplin across different platforms, and it runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Android.

For academic writers, Joplin offers a space to collect web clippings and notes from online sources and access them from multiple devices.

Accessible on all major operating systems
Web clipping system is excellent for researchers gathering notes
The community is constantly developing new features
No collaborative feature
No free storage/cloud
Like other note-taking apps, it doesn’t check for plagiarism or spelling

Price: $6.99/Month Use for: General writing, editing, and note-taking

Microsoft Word is one of the most widely used word-processing applications for academic writing. Known for its user-friendly interface, it offers various formatting options and tools. It has an inbuilt spell checker, dozens of fonts, and various formatting options.

It’s a fairly general writing tool that lacks some of the more specialized features of some of those mentioned in this article. Nonetheless, Word is a tried and tested writing companion you should consider using with a good referencing software from this list.

Robust formatting tools for academic writing
Familiar to most writers
Available on almost all PCs
Solid offline writing tool
Collaboration features are not as good as other options
Additional cost for extra cloud storage
Outdated UI
Lack of specialist tools

Price: Free Use for: Organizing references

Zotero is an open-source reference management software ideal for anyone struggling to keep their bibliography neatly ordered. If you’re writing a lengthy academic paper and haven’t settled on a referencing software, Zotero is worth a try, especially as it’s free.

If you’re working on a group project, Zotero’s collaborative features are helpful when organizing citations in various formats, including Chicago and APA. Naturally, as this is citation software, you’ll want to combine it with a writing platform such as Docs or Word.

Free version
Over 10,000 citation styles
Collaboration features
PDF reader built-in
Compatible with Google Docs and Word
Limited customer support
Limited offline access without a paid subscription
Not the easiest to use without spending several hours practicing

Price: Free with optional premium plan Use for: Researching and referencing

Mendely is a free-to-use reference management tool that PhD students created. You can tell from the software that the people who created it had wasted hours manually referencing and wanted a more streamlined and efficient way to add citations to their papers.

The Mendeley Library has millions of papers and can be easily browsed from tablet, PC, and mobile. Combining it with a reference management tool will help you organize your research.

Social networking for research collaboration
Over 100 million articles in the database
Clean UI, even on smaller screens
It can be used to generate bibliographies
Storage is limited in the free version
Reports of poor synchronization on collaborative documents
The downloadable version for PC is no longer available

Price: $269.95/Full License Use for: Referencing, annotating, and journal matching

EndNote is a premium academic research and writing software that is a market leader in providing reference management, citations, and bibliography creation. The premium price tag might be worth swallowing if you’re a serious academic writer.

EndNote can help you match your research papers with potentially compatible journals via its Manuscript Match tool. This software is easy to integrate with popular writing software like Google Docs and makes reading and annotating PDFs very easy, even on your phone.

Excellent reference management
Smooth integration with word processors
Top-class PDF reader and annotator
Novel journal matching tool
Collaboration is made simple
The price tag is out of most people’s range
The learning curve for new users
The student discount isn’t very generous

Price: Free trial or $1000 Use for: Collaborative reference management and writing

Citavi is an academic writing and reference management tool. The software combines a seamless collaborative writing experience with an automatic citation tool with over 10,000 styles.

The software automatically links citations, creates a bibliography, and allows you to export directly to Microsoft Word. The software is impressive and has received great reviews, but the price tag naturally means most people will probably settle for something cheaper.

Covers citations and writing
Easy export process to Word
Collaborative writing is as good as with Docs
Complex academic search queries can be narrowed down with several filters
The price is high as the product is aimed at companies, not individuals
Lacks Google Docs compatibility
The free trial is very limited

Price: Free Use for: Plagiarism checker

Turnitin is a plagiarism detection tool that anyone writing research papers should consider using. Most major research institutions use Turnitin to ensure they don’t publish plagiarized work.

The software is easy to use and rates the uniqueness of academic rating based on its massive pool of papers. Turnitin doesn’t just give a yes or no answer. It points out sections of your work that may be plagiarized and links them to citations of the work that appears to be being copied.

Trusted by major institutions and leading universities
Easy to use
The feedback system gives a detailed breakdown of where you’ve plagiarized and helps you avoid it in the future
Not the most modern user interface
Does occasionally flag non-plagiarized copy as plagiarized
No in-depth writing support or cross-compatibility

Price: Free version or pay per word Use for: Plagiarism checker

Copyscape is a plagiarism checker designed for online content creators and anyone who runs a blog or a website. Although it’s probably less helpful for academics than Turnitin, it’s still worth mentioning, as it can help academics in the early stages of research that involves collecting information from sources other than official journals.

The software is straightforward to use as it is a simple copy-and-paste system. There is a limited free version, but even the premium per-word rate is very reasonable.

Great for someone running a blog that posts academic content from multiple writers
PDF compatible
Generally, Turnitin is more appropriate for academics
The website has a very cheap feel

Price: Free version or $20/month Use for: AI-enhanced writing, editing, and researching

Screen with ChatGPT chat with AI or artificial intelligence

ChatGPT has been the most talked about technological innovation this year. Its impact on the world of research and writing is still evolving, and the model is still developing. It’s a fantastic tool for researching if you’re willing to spend a few hours learning how to create effective prompts.

ChatGPT can rapidly search the web for content published before 2021 and present it concisely. Regardless of the topic you’re researching, this software is going to be able to help you research and write more efficiently.

If you want an in-depth review of ChatGPT and how you can use it to become a better academic writer, check out our ChatGPT review .

Rapid response to even very niche research requests
Finds sources from all over the web much faster than a traditional Google search.
Speeds up the writing and editing process
It is a useful tool to master, considering the likelihood of more large language models hitting the market in the future
It does make factual mistakes.
Sometimes, the AI suffers from so-called hallucinations that can result in very strange answers.
Its access to the web was cut off in 2021, so it can’t find the latest research papers.
You’ll need to spend some time learning about writing prompts to get the best out of ChatGPT

Price: Free version or $4.99/month Use for: Spelling and Grammar

Ginger is a spelling and grammar software that offers an interesting alternative to Grammarly. This software is compatible with most popular writing platforms and goes beyond basic grammar and spelling checks.

Ginger offers unlimited rephrasing suggestions and can translate documents into dozens of languages. In addition, they’ve managed to undercut Grammarly’s prices, so this could be worth a try if you feel Grammarly is too expensive.

Solid grammar and spell checker
Very nice UI
The rephrasing tool will help you add new life to your writing
Well priced particularly if you pay for a yearly subscription
The translation feature makes it stand out from the crowd of grammar checkers
The free version isn’t as comprehensive as the one offered by Grammarly
Only available on three browsers

Price: Free version available Use for: Writing and publishing

Authorea is a collaborative writing tool designed for researchers working in small teams. Importantly, Authorea goes beyond just helping you write by offering several tools that help researchers publish their papers once it’s completed. Beyond the basic collaborative writing features you may expect, it also offers automatic citation formatting even when multiple people are editing one document.

The software can automatically format research papers to suit 40 of the biggest publishers in the world. The free version is fairly comprehensive, but frustratingly, it’s unclear how much they charge for the premium service, as the price has to be negotiated directly via email with the team. It appears to vary depending on the insulation you work for and the size of your team.

The publishing feature will be beneficial for academic writers.
Free to use
Elegant website and UI
Collaborative writing and automatic formatting of citations
The premium pricing plan is not clear
It’s specialized software, so using it will require some practice
If you only publish in one journal, then the formatting feature won’t be that useful

Price: Free version available Use for: Specialized academic spelling and grammar checker

Trinka is an AI-powered technical writing grammar and plagiarism checker. This is essentially a more technical version of Grammarly that’s been designed specially to help academic writers. It can help you create a more formal tone, introduce technical terms, and even have the option to focus suggestions on specific scientific areas such as medicine, chemistry, and physics.

In addition, it has a publication feature that can help you get your paper into the format required by most publishers. If you’ve been using Grammarly as an academic writer but feel that its suggestions are too general, then Trinka could be a great alternative.

A spell checker designed for academic writers
Suggestions tailored to your scientific field
Formatting tool and an in-house plagiarism checker
Tone enhancement designed for academic papers
Premium version reasonably priced at $80/year
The free version is slightly limited
Only 5,000 words per month with the free version
Slow response times from customer support, according to some reviews

If you need a good grammar checker, Grammarly is our top choice due to its accuracy and speed. Scrivener excels at managing long-form papers, but Ulysses is easier to use. Obsidian is great for managing research as it Papers.

My work as a journalist has been published in major news outlets such as The Daily Mirror, Newsweek, Zenger, and Yahoo. In a hectic newsroom, there’s no time to waste, and mistakes are rarely forgiven, so I’ve spent hundreds of hours using writing software to guarantee accuracy and clarity in my copy.

In my opinion, you can make the best use of academic writing software by combining different options based on their individual strengths. I recommend using Google Docs if you collaborate with a team combined with Grammarly or ProWritingAid for spelling and plagiarism and then adding something like Papers to help organize your sources.

We update this roundup of the best academic writing tools regularly. We test key features by checking MS Word documents, blog posts, essays, articles and even book chapters.

These writing samples range from several hundred to several thousand words. Typically, we use the web, desktop and browser apps and plugins, factoring in price, ease of use, and functionality. We’ve reviewed many of these tools individually and included links to those reviews.

FAQs About The Best Academic Writing Software

Grammarly is useful for checking academic writing for grammar and spelling mistakes. It can also help academic writers improve the readability of their reports or papers. However, Grammarly isn’t meant to function as a tool for planning and writing academic papers. For that use, a traditional word processor or a dedicated academic writing app.

Peter is an experienced journalist and tech-lover who has spent years hunting for the best writing software. He firmly believes that we all need a helping hand crossing our Ts and dotting our Is and takes great pride in sharing his opinions on the best writing software out there.

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AI for thesis writing — Unveiling 7 best AI tools

Writing a thesis is akin to piecing together a complex puzzle. Each research paper, every data point, and all the hours spent reading and analyzing contribute to this monumental task.

For many students, this journey is a relentless pursuit of knowledge, often marked by sleepless nights and tight deadlines.

Here, the potential of AI for writing a thesis or research papers becomes clear: artificial intelligence can step in, not to take over but to assist and guide.

Far from being just a trendy term, AI is revolutionizing academic research, offering tools that can make the task of thesis writing more manageable, more precise, and a little less overwhelming.

In this article, we’ll discuss the impact of AI on academic writing process, and articulate the best AI tools for thesis writing to enhance your thesis writing process.

The Impact of AI on Thesis Writing

Artificial Intelligence offers a supportive hand in thesis writing, adeptly navigating vast datasets, suggesting enhancements in writing, and refining the narrative.

With the integration of AI writing assistant, instead of requiring you to manually sift through endless articles, AI tools can spotlight the most pertinent pieces in mere moments. Need clarity or the right phrasing? AI-driven writing assistants are there, offering real-time feedback, ensuring your work is both articulative and academically sound.

AI tools for thesis writing harness Natural Language Processing (NLP) to generate content, check grammar, and assist in literature reviews. Simultaneously, Machine Learning (ML) techniques enable data analysis, provide personalized research recommendations, and aid in proper citation.

And for the detailed tasks of academic formatting and referencing? AI streamlines it all, ensuring your thesis meets the highest academic standards.

However, understanding AI's role is pivotal. It's a supportive tool, not the primary author. Your thesis remains a testament to your unique perspective and voice.

AI for writing thesis is there to amplify that voice, ensuring it's heard clearly and effectively.

How AI tools supplement your thesis writing

AI tools have emerged as invaluable allies for scholars. With just a few clicks, these advanced platforms can streamline various aspects of thesis writing, from data analysis to literature review.

Let's explore how an AI tool can supplement and transform your thesis writing style and process.

Efficient literature review : AI tools can quickly scan and summarize vast amounts of literature, making the process of literature review more efficient. Instead of spending countless hours reading through papers, researchers can get concise summaries and insights, allowing them to focus on relevant content.

Enhanced data analysis : AI algorithms can process and analyze large datasets with ease, identifying patterns, trends, and correlations that might be difficult or time-consuming for humans to detect. This capability is especially valuable in fields with massive datasets, like genomics or social sciences.

Improved writing quality : AI-powered writing assistants can provide real-time feedback on grammar, style, and coherence. They can suggest improvements, ensuring that the final draft of a research paper or thesis is of high quality.

Plagiarism detection : AI tools can scan vast databases of academic content to ensure that a researcher's work is original and free from unintentional plagiarism .

Automated citations : Managing and formatting citations is a tedious aspect of academic writing. AI citation generators can automatically format citations according to specific journal or conference standards, reducing the chances of errors.

Personalized research recommendations : AI tools can analyze a researcher's past work and reading habits to recommend relevant papers and articles, ensuring that they stay updated with the latest in their field.

Interactive data visualization : AI can assist in creating dynamic and interactive visualizations, making it easier for researchers to present their findings in a more engaging manner.

Top 7 AI Tools for Thesis Writing

The academic field is brimming with AI tools tailored for academic paper writing. Here's a glimpse into some of the most popular and effective ones.

Here we'll talk about some of the best ai writing tools, expanding on their major uses, benefits, and reasons to consider them.

If you've ever been bogged down by the minutiae of formatting or are unsure about specific academic standards, Typeset is a lifesaver.

Typeset specializes in formatting, ensuring academic papers align with various journal and conference standards.

It automates the intricate process of academic formatting, saving you from the manual hassle and potential errors, inflating your writing experience.

An AI-driven writing assistant, Wisio elevates the quality of your thesis content. It goes beyond grammar checks, offering style suggestions tailored to academic writing.

This ensures your thesis is both grammatically correct and maintains a scholarly tone. For moments of doubt or when maintaining a consistent style becomes challenging, Wisio acts as your personal editor, providing real-time feedback.

Known for its ability to generate and refine thesis content using AI algorithms, Texti ensures logical and coherent content flow according to the academic guidelines.

When faced with writer's block or a blank page, Texti can jumpstart your thesis writing process, aiding in drafting or refining content.

JustDone is an AI for thesis writing and content creation. It offers a straightforward three-step process for generating content, from choosing a template to customizing details and enjoying the final output.

JustDone AI can generate thesis drafts based on the input provided by you. This can be particularly useful for getting started or overcoming writer's block.

This platform can refine and enhance the editing process, ensuring it aligns with academic standards and is free from common errors. Moreover, it can process and analyze data, helping researchers identify patterns, trends, and insights that might be crucial for their thesis.

Tailored for academic writing, Writefull offers style suggestions to ensure your content maintains a scholarly tone.

This AI for thesis writing provides feedback on your language use, suggesting improvements in grammar, vocabulary, and structure . Moreover, it compares your written content against a vast database of academic texts. This helps in ensuring that your writing is in line with academic standards.

Isaac Editor

For those seeking an all-in-one solution for writing, editing, and refining, Isaac Editor offers a comprehensive platform.

Combining traditional text editor features with AI, Isaac Editor streamlines the writing process. It's an all-in-one solution for writing, editing, and refining, ensuring your content is of the highest quality.

PaperPal , an AI-powered personal writing assistant, enhances academic writing skills, particularly for PhD thesis writing and English editing.

This AI for thesis writing offers comprehensive grammar, spelling, punctuation, and readability suggestions, along with detailed English writing tips.

It offers grammar checks, providing insights on rephrasing sentences, improving article structure, and other edits to refine academic writing.

The platform also offers tools like "Paperpal for Word" and "Paperpal for Web" to provide real-time editing suggestions, and "Paperpal for Manuscript" for a thorough check of completed articles or theses.

Is it ethical to use AI for thesis writing?

The AI for writing thesis has ignited discussions on authenticity. While AI tools offer unparalleled assistance, it's vital to maintain originality and not become overly reliant. Research thrives on unique contributions, and AI should be a supportive tool, not a replacement.

The key question: Can a thesis, significantly aided by AI, still be viewed as an original piece of work?

AI tools can simplify research, offer grammar corrections, and even produce content. However, there's a fine line between using AI as a helpful tool and becoming overly dependent on it.

In essence, while AI offers numerous advantages for thesis writing, it's crucial to use it judiciously. AI should complement human effort, not replace it. The challenge is to strike the right balance, ensuring genuine research contributions while leveraging AI's capabilities.

Wrapping Up

Nowadays, it's evident that AI tools are not just fleeting trends but pivotal game-changers.

They're reshaping how we approach, structure, and refine our theses, making the process more efficient and the output more impactful. But amidst this technological revolution, it's essential to remember the heart of any thesis: the researcher's unique voice and perspective .

AI tools are here to amplify that voice, not overshadow it. They're guiding you through the vast sea of information, ensuring our research stands out and resonates.

Try these tools out and let us know what worked for you the best.

Love using SciSpace tools? Enjoy discounts! Use SR40 (40% off yearly) and SR20 (20% off monthly). Claim yours here 👉 SciSpace Premium

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes, you can use AI to assist in writing your thesis. AI tools can help streamline various aspects of the writing process, such as data analysis, literature review, grammar checks, and content refinement.

However, it's essential to use AI as a supportive tool and not a replacement for original research and critical thinking. Your thesis should reflect your unique perspective and voice.

Yes, there are AI tools designed to assist in writing research papers. These tools can generate content, suggest improvements, help with formatting, and even provide real-time feedback on grammar and coherence.

Examples include Typeset, JustDone, Writefull, and Texti. However, while they can aid the process, the primary research, analysis, and conclusions should come from the researcher.

The "best" AI for writing papers depends on your specific needs. For content generation and refinement, Texti is a strong contender.

For grammar checks and style suggestions tailored to academic writing, Writefull is highly recommended. JustDone offers a user-friendly interface for content creation. It's advisable to explore different tools and choose one that aligns with your requirements.

To use AI for writing your thesis:

1. Identify the areas where you need assistance, such as literature review, data analysis, content generation, or grammar checks.

2. Choose an AI tool tailored for academic writing, like Typeset, JustDone, Texti, or Writefull.

3. Integrate the tool into your writing process. This could mean using it as a browser extension, a standalone application, or a plugin for your word processor.

4. As you write or review content, use the AI tool for real-time feedback, suggestions, or content generation.

5. Always review and critically assess the suggestions or content provided by the AI to ensure it aligns with your research goals and maintains academic integrity.

What is a thesis | A Complete Guide with Examples

Training videos | Faqs

Academic Writing Tools and Research Software – A Comprehensive Guide

Overview | Writing Software | Reference Management Software | Research Tools | Grammar Checking Tools

In this blog, we review academic writing tools and software that students, academics, researchers and PhD students can benefit from. We have categorised the tools into four broad areas: writing tools, referencing tools, research tools and grammar checking tools. The motivation behind this blog is to provide readers with a snapshot of popular tools in each category.

1. Writing Tools and Software

Whether you are writing an article, research paper, essay, blog, and dissertation or PhD thesis, it is important to choose an appropriate writing software tool for your work. The choice of writing software comes down to your personal taste. Everyday users are happy to shed a few dollars to purchase a well-known writing tool such as MS Word. Tech savvies welcome open source projects such as OpenOffice and LibreOffice. Whereas, the research community is much more adventurous and has embraced the type-setting system, Latex as their writing medium. Blog writers and journalists use online writing tools such as GoogleDocs and DropBox Paper as they find these tools perfect for collaborating with others. Novel writers use more fancy writing tools such as Scrivener to organize their ideas and create a storyboard to help them write. In this blog, we review some of the common writing tools and software used by writers.

Microsoft Word
LibreOffice
DropBoxPaper

Click here to visit the blog on Writing Tools and Software…

2. Referencing Tools and Reference Management Software

Referencing tools are handy to organize and format references so that you can easily incorporate them in your essays, research papers, dissertations and PhD thesis. There are many terms used for such tools such as referencing software, referencing tool, reference management software, citation software, citation app, paper software, citation manager, research paper management tool, bibliography software, literature review software, literature management software and research paper organizer. These all refer to a piece of software or an online tool that allows you to store and format references. It is very important that you choose a right tool for your research and stick to it. We have reviewed some of the popular referencing tools used in the scientific community below from an academic writing perspective.

Click here to visit the blog on Referencing Tools…

3. Research Tools and Software

If you are conducting research, it is very important that you have appropriate methods and tools to carry out your research. If you are a non-native English speaker, then you need a research tool to help you with your written language. If your research involves data analysis, then you need a good statistical research tool for your work. It is also important that you keep tabs on what other people in your research arena are doing, so you need research tools such as Google Scholar and ResearchGate to collaborate with your peers. You also need a good plagiarism checking software to avoid academic misconduct. Finally, you need a research project management software to stay on top of the deadlines. In this blog, we review some of the useful tools for research that researchers can use to be more productive.

REF-N-WRITE
Online Statistical testing tools
Microsoft Excel
Google Scholar
ResearchGate
Plagiarism Checker
Project Management Tools

Click here to visit the blog on Research Tools…

4. Grammar Checkers and Sentence Correction Tools

When you are writing your paper or essay, it is very important to ensure that your document does not contain typos, grammatical errors, and bad sentence structure. Your work will be badly judged if English is bad despite the good content. For non-native English speakers, it presents a particular challenge because of the difficulties in mastering English, vocabulary, grammar, and usage. A brief review of grammar checking software, grammar correction apps, online grammar checking sites, punctuation checker, sentence structure and construction checkers are given in this blog.

MS Word Spelling & Grammar checker
ProWritingAid
CorrectEnglish
StyleWriter
Ginger Software
Online Grammar checking sites

Click here to visit the blog on Grammar and Sentence checking Tools…

Popular Writing Tools and Software for Authors and Researchers

In this blog, we review some of the common writing tools and software used by writers, and discuss their pros and cons in detail.

Self-Plagiarism – Similarity Checker Tool to Avoid Academic Misconduct

In this blog, we explain the differences between self-plagiarism and plain plagiarism, and demonstrate the benefits of Ref-n-write’s similarity checker tool.

Top English Grammar Checkers and Sentence Correction Tools

In this blog, grammar checking software, grammar correction apps and online grammar checking sites are reviewed along with the discussion about various features.

Top Research Tools and Software for Academics and Research Students

In this blog, we review some of the useful tools for research that researchers can use to be more productive.

Scholarly Paraphrasing Tool and Essay Rewriter for Rewording Academic Papers

In the blog, we focus on academic and scientific paraphrasing software tools that help students to rewrite their essay into an academically acceptable format.

Plagiarism Checker and Plagiarism Detector Tools – A Review of Free and Paid Tools

In this blog, we review the most popular plagiarism checking tools available in the market from the perspective of cost and ease of use.

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Top 11 Software Tools for Thesis Writing: Boost Your Research

Crafting a thesis may seem challenging, but employing suitable software tools transforms it into a more structured and approachable undertaking. Delve into these potent resources to simplify your research, elevate your writing, and excel in your academic pursuits. This post elaborates on several tools commonly utilized for academic thesis writing.

Citavi is a comprehensive reference management and knowledge organization tool. It allows you to manage references, create citations, and organize your research materials. Citavi is commonly used by students and researchers.

Docear is a unique solution to academic literature management, i.e., it helps you organizing, creating, and discovering academic literature. This unique literature management tool designed specifically for academics when it comes to discovering, organizing and ultimately creating academic literature. 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.

3. Paperpile

Paperpile is a software for reference management that is just like Zotero and works like an extension for the Google Chrome browser, making it accessible for Linux, Mac, and Windows users. We suggest that you use it to discover and import information from stage platforms such as PubMed, arXiv, and Google Chrome. You can undoubtedly trade all the PDF archives and information to Google Drive, which implies you will have the chance to edit your papers collaboratively. This collaboration will not end, as you can send data back and forth between P Zotero and Paperpile, such as Mendeley.

4. RefWorks

RefWorks is accurate; select from thousands of customizable citation styles to use within authoring tools. Generate bibliographies and citations in a snap with any authoring tool. Use our integrations to insert citations in Word and Google Docs. Leverage thousands of pre-built citation styles and request new styles. Customize citation styles or create your own from scratch with the citation style editor.

5. SpellCheckPlus

SpellCheckPlus applies the same concept to the writing process. Rather than simply correcting your mistakes, it summarizes them into distinct categories. SpellCheckPlus offers feedback that not only improves your current project but also your writing and grammar at large. In other words, SpellCheckPlus is no mere editing tool; rather, it’s a teaching tool. And as even the very best writers know, there’s always room for improvement when it comes to how you deliver your message.

MindMup acts as an online mind-mapping canvas, perfect for representing ideas and concepts visually. Capture ideas at the speed of thought using a mind map maker designed to help you focus on your ideas and remove all the distractions while mindmapping. MindMup is also a terrific collaborative tool.

7. iA Writer

iA Writer gives you the essence of pure writing by providing an unobtrusive interface that lets you concentrate on your text. Despite its minimalistic approach, the application offers a variety of distinctive features that are specifically designed for writing-focused tasks. With iA Writer, you can gain unparalleled insight into your writing structure, detect superfluous words and clichés, and navigate through your documents and notes with ease.

Elicit uses language models to extract data from and summarize research papers. As a new technology, language models sometimes make up inaccurate answers (called hallucinations). They reduce hallucinations and increase accuracy by: training our models on specific tasks; searching over academic papers; and making it easy to double-check answers. Elicit only shows you papers that actually exist and are part of the scientific literature.

9. Lucidchart

It is an online diagramming tool to create flowcharts, diagrams, and visuals. Lucidchart is an intelligent diagramming application that brings teams together to make better decisions and build the future. Lucidchart helps users sketch and share professional flowchart diagrams, providing designs for anything from brainstorming to project management.

10. Trinka AI

Trinka is an online grammar checker and language correction AI tool for academic and technical writing. Trinka finds difficult errors unique to academic writing that other grammar checker tools don’t. From advanced English grammar errors to scientific tone and style, Trinka checks it all! Trinka goes beyond professional grammar checks and enhances your writing for vocabulary, tone, syntax, and much more. Make your point confidently with Trinka.

11. WhiteSmoke

WhiteSmoke renders you with the highest quality proofreading abilities available, correcting not only simple spelling mistakes like old-fashioned word processors but everything from grammar, word choices, and even style mistakes, all without breaking a sweat.

https://www.ref-n-write.com/blog/academic-writing-tools-and-research-software-a-comprehensive-guide/

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Thesis Apps: Best Applications & Software for Graduate Students

The process of writing a thesis requires a lot of time and patience. Custom-writing.org experts are willing to make this task easier for you. We’ve compiled a list of thesis writing apps and software. These tools will help you make plans and self-organize. There are also free apps to improve your productivity, help you carry out the research, boost your vocabulary, and check your work for mistakes.

Our specialists will write a custom essay specially for you!

With the thesis apps on this list, you won’t ever have to wonder how to write a dissertation because you’ll know the answer – it’s easy!

📑 Word Processors
⏰ Time Managers
🚀 Productivity Apps
🎓 Dictionaries
🔬 Research Tools
🔤 Grammar Checkers

1. 📑 Word Processors and Note-Taking Apps

This should be a no-brainer, but writing is one of the essential parts of creating a thesis. So it’s evident that you need to have the best thesis apps to deal with this task effectively.

Here are some apps that you might want to check out.

Google docs . This is probably the first app that comes to mind when you think of alternative free word processors. It has all the functionality and capabilities you’ll need to write and format your thesis. It also allows users to work together on the same document in real-time. It’s available for Android, iOS, or as a web app.
WPS Office . This multi-platform solution includes not only a word processor. It’s also a full-fledged office suite that allows you to create and work with spreadsheets, presentations, and PDF documents. What else could you need to create a perfect thesis?
Office Online . This one is for those who want to get the most out of Microsoft Office for free. This one is as good as it can get — an online version of Office. Enough said.
Jarte . This is a free word processor based on the WordPad engine. It has all the necessary functions and provides a comfortable way to work with text—and it’s free. This app also can export your documents to PDF and HTML files.
Evernote , Google Keep , and OneNote . The reason why we put these three together? They’re all note-taking apps. Do we know that there are many other similar apps too? Yes, we do. But there’s a reason why these three are so popular. They all offer the same thing – a way to keep all your notes in one place. The difference between them is how it’s all organized, along with some extra features. All of these thesis writing apps are free, too.

2. ⏰ Time-Managing Thesis Apps

With all the steps you need to complete to write a good thesis, it’s not hard to get lost. You can quickly get stuck in one place without knowing what to do and end up making no progress at all.

Or you can use one of the dissertation apps in this category to build a plan and organize your workflow!

Just in 1 hour! We will write you a plagiarism-free paper in hardly more than 1 hour

Pocket . Pocket brings order to the chaos of posts and articles you want to read or use to write your thesis. You can easily save them all in one place and look through them later. Then you can decide whether or not you’ll need a particular piece of information.
Todoist . This one is a free time manager (though it also has paid plans with extra features). With this app, you can set deadlines for each stage of your thesis creation process, and it will remind you of them beforehand. This app will help you stay on track of what plans are waiting for you next.
Wunderlist . This to-do list app indeed does wonders. It lets you build short- and long-term plans and keep them all in order. You can set notifications to stay on track and always be sure that you’re performing according to your schedule, whether it’s a particular stage of your thesis writing or some other assignment.

3. 🚀 Thesis Apps to Improve Productivity

We all have days when things don’t work, and everything is a distraction. So how can you deal with this all-too-common problem?

There’s a good selection of productivity apps that can help you out. With one of these, you’ll finish writing your thesis in no time.

Any.do . This one is a task manager that’ll help you stay on track of whatever your current tasks are. It will help you build a habit of reviewing your tasks and make sure that you know which assignments you need to pay the most attention to at the moment. With this app, you won’t miss deadlines or find yourself wondering what to do next.
IFTTT . This tool allows you to create short automation sequences without any coding skills. It will remember every little thing that you tend to forget. On the one hand, you’ll get those things done; on the other—you won’t get distracted by those tasks and will be able to concentrate on what’s important right now. The app supports plenty of services and is easy to use.
RescueTime . This app will track the time you spend completing tasks. It will also report all the websites you visit, the apps you use, and breaks you take during the day. By doing so, it helps you create greater self-awareness. As a result, you’ll immediately see whether something is going wrong and keeping you from following your plan.
StayFocusd . This Chrome extension helps you stay focused on your current task (which, of course, explains its name). It will block all those distracting sites that tend to get in your way while you’re working. You can set a specific time for blocking or choosing a time limit for a certain time during the day.
Write or Die . This one is a web-based tool. It is also available for iOS, with an Android version coming soon. The tool helps you eliminate writer’s block. Within the app, you can set a specific period and the word count you need to reach within this time. It also features stimuli and rewarding images.

4. 🎓 Vocabulary Boosters and Dictionaries

At this stage, dictionaries and vocabulary boosters come into play.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary . This is one of the most well-known dictionaries out there. Apart from listing definitions and offering a thesaurus, it also features word games. These word games aim to increase your vocabulary, which will come in handy when writing a thesis. Apart from having a web-based version, there are also apps available for Android and iOS.
Cambridge Dictionary . This is another famous dictionary listing almost every aspect and sphere imaginable. In long-term perspective, it’s even more useful than the best thesis statement generator , as it can potentially provide you with knowledge you’ll keep forever. All of the resources are available from the site, widget, or official mobile apps. A wide selection of available dictionaries and thesauruses will surely meet all of your writing needs.
The Free Dictionary . There are many things to discover under this simple name. This web service provides dictionaries on a variety of topics. It also features a thesaurus, idioms, acronyms, a grammar book, and encyclopedia articles. What else can you ask for?

5. 🔬 Tools for Conducting Research

Another essential part of writing a thesis is research. Without properly researched sources and data , everything that’s written in your thesis will be highly questionable.

To avoid poorly supported arguments , and to be able to conduct outstanding research, consider using one of the following tools.

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Mendeley . Once you try this tool, you won’t believe that you ever researched without it. It will help you complete any type of research, come up with a topic for your paper, organize your literature review , make annotations, and manage your research materials. This multi-platform tool also allows syncing across all your devices.
Mindmup , Bubbl.us . Both of these apps are great tools for mind mapping. They’ll help you get all of your thoughts and ideas in order. This organization will significantly help your research, as everything will be neatly organized and accessible. Both of these tools have free plans and web versions. They only differ with their extra features.
WolframAlpha . This is a go-to source of expert knowledge on a wide variety of disciplines. This answer engine is also available on mobile platforms. Instead of just giving a list of documents or web pages that may or may not answer your question, it comes up with results from a curated knowledge base in response to your query.

6. 🔤 Grammar Checkers

Everyone makes mistakes. But it’s not a bad idea to make sure that there’s none in your thesis. The apps described below can help you with that.

Hemingway Editor . This tool aims to improve your writing style and make it as straightforward as possible. It makes colored highlights to indicate long or very complicated sentences. As a result, you get a clean piece of content that’s understandable and easy to digest.
Ginger . This multi-platform solution helps you find and correct all types of grammar mistakes. It also makes it easier to edit text, which improves your overall productivity, as you’ll spend less time correcting errors.
Grammarly . This tool has gained so much popularity that it probably doesn’t even require an introduction. It finds and corrects mistakes that no word processor can spot. The tool has a browser extension, offline software, and a premium version with extra features.

Hopefully, you’ll get some thesis help by using these free tools. With these apps at your disposal, you’ll be able to craft a fantastic thesis easily.

Did we miss something? Are there any free thesis apps that you like to use that aren’t on this list? Tell us about them in the comments!

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10 Best Apps for PhD Students | 2024

Best Mobile Applications for Researchers

10 best android apps for phd students, 10 best ios apps for phd graduate students, best apps for phd students, what is the mendeley app, how to use it for research, 2. flipboard, what is a researcher app, what is plagiarism checker app, what is google keep app, what is curiosity app, how to use it for research , what is paperity app, what is slack app, what is dropbox, what is camescanner app, you might also love, video: 10 types of plagiarism.

There are millions of mobile applications available in the Android play store, but still, there are very few useful apps only available for researchers. We analyzed more than 50 applications and identified the 10 most appropriate applications for researchers based on daily activities like research collaboration, data collection, document reading, updating real-world issues related to their domain, resource gathering, daily schedule maintenance, and journal reading. This post gives an explanation to use the top 10 Useful Mobile Apps software 2024 for PhD Scholars that are really the best apps for PhD Students.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose – Zora Neale Hurston

Here are 10 of the best Android apps that can be extremely helpful for graduate students in their academic pursuits. I’ll also provide some insights on how these apps can benefit you.

These apps are essential for creating, editing, and presenting documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
Store and sync your documents, making them accessible from any device. Collaboration features are a plus for group projects.
A reference manager and academic social network. It helps you organize your research, collaborate with peers, and discover the latest research.
An excellent note-taking app that allows you to capture and organize ideas, research notes, and web clippings.
Another robust reference manager that simplifies the process of collecting, organizing, and citing research materials.
Enhance your writing by checking grammar, spelling, and style. It’s an indispensable tool for proofreading.
Manage your projects and tasks effectively. Great for keeping track of deadlines and staying organized.
Boost your productivity by using the Pomodoro technique. Stay focused and limit distractions during study sessions.
Access a wide range of educational content in various subjects, making it a great resource for learning beyond your coursework.
Turn your smartphone into a portable scanner. Scan and digitize documents, notes, and books for easy reference.

Here are 10 iOS apps that can be incredibly helpful for graduate students:

An excellent note-taking app that allows you to write, draw, and annotate PDFs.
A reference management tool that helps you organize and cite your research materials.
A writing assistant can help you improve the clarity and correctness of your writing.
Another powerful reference manager with a mobile app for on-the-go access to your research library.
A versatile note-taking app that syncs across devices and allows you to organize your thoughts and research.
If you struggle with staying focused, this app helps you stay on track by growing virtual trees when you avoid your phone.
A comprehensive digital notebook that’s great for organizing your research notes.
Access a vast database of scholarly articles and research papers.
A project management app that can help you organize your tasks and deadlines.
If your research involves multiple languages, this app can help you learn and practice them.

These apps cover a range of functions, from note-taking and reference management to productivity and language learning. They can be valuable tools for graduate students in various disciplines.

1. Mendeley

Mendeley is a free reference manager and PDF reader crafted especially for researchers. It helps you to organize your literature in a proper manner so you could effectively use it during your thesis writing or dissertation. Mendeley is available in both mobile and desktop applications, It will help you to read your collected articles wherever you go.

Create a free account at www.mendeley.com and download a desktop version in your system.
Add all your Journals , Magazines, Book Chapters, Thesis , and other materials in an organized manner.
Segregate the files based on year, author, publication, and domain using TAG option.
Download the Mendeley mobile application and log in with the same account.
Allow the application to synchronize with your account.
Now you can see all the files that you saved on your desktop that will appear in the mobile application.

Organizing Resources is the first step towards the solution

What is Flipboard App?

Flipboard is the most popular mobile application used by millions of people every day, It helps you to keep yourself updated with your domain-related information and also read the daily news, blog posts, and trending topics all together in one place. Flipboard allows the user to collect posts based on their passion and interest. The powerful and smooth user interface gives a pleasant feel to reading more articles.

Download the Flipboard mobile application and create your account.
Flipboard will give a virtual tour to learn the basic features of the application.
Click “WHAT’S YOUR PASSION?” Next to the Flipboard icon.
Search for your domain. Ex: Machine Learning.
It will show many sub-categories inside the topic. Based on your requirement personalize the magazine. That’s it!
Keep up with the news related to your domain every day with The Daily Edition.

Don’t be outdated, Because you are working for the future!

3. Researcher

Researcher is a free journal-finding mobile application that helps you to read new journal papers every day that are relevant to your research. It is the most popular mobile application used by more than 3 million scientists and researchers to keep themselves updated with the latest academic literature.

Download Researhcer mobile application on your mobile.
Open and search for your required journal in the search bar.
You can follow any number of journals and you can read new articles as well.

4. Plagiarism Checker

Plagiarism Checker is a free application that works with Plagiarisma.net. It will detect duplicate content in your papers from more than five popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Babylon, Google Scholar, and Google Books.

Download Plagiarism Checker mobile application.
No need for registration so you can directly go into the app.
Scan your essay, article, term paper, or dissertation with a single tap of your smartphone.
It also has voice support and direct URL support.
Save results to HTML, PDF, EPUB. That’s it!

5. Google Keep

Google Keep is a free remainder application from Google LLC, It helps researchers quickly capture what’s on their mind and get a reminder later at the right place or time.

Download Google Keep mobile application.
Log in with your Google account.
Record a voice memo and Keep will transcribe it so you can find it later.
Take quick notes.
Schedule your daily plan and enable the remainder.
Take handwritten notes.
Capture important results using the camera and save them.
Access it when you working on a desktop or laptop as well.

6. Curiosity

Curiosity is a very popular mobile application from curiosity.com, it helps researchers to learn new scientific inventions in a more detailed way with videos.

Download the Curiosity mobile application.
Create an account to access the app.
Read inspiring articles from your topics.
Watch smart videos from millions of creators.
Personalize your favorites, then follow your favorite categories.

7. Paperity

Paperity is a free mobile application for researchers from www.paperity.org. It helps you to aggregate various open-access journals through your mobile.

Download Paperity mobile application.
Browse the most recent articles.
Browse journals and their Tables of Contents of Open Access papers.
Search papers and their full text for specific keywords, phrases, authors, publication dates, languages, and countries of origin.
View and read full-text PDFs of more than one million articles. All for FREE!

Are you doing Collaborative Research? Then Try this useful mobile application Slack it brings team communication and collaboration into one place so you can get more work done, whether you belong to a small lab or doing collaborative research with researchers from another part of the world. Make effective conversations on different topics using #TAG.

Download Slack mobile application.
Include your lab members using their Email-ID.
Communicate with your lab mates and organize your conversations by topics, projects, or anything else that matters to your work.
Message or call any person or group within your team.
Integrate into your workflow, the tools, and services you already use including Google Drive, Salesforce, Dropbox, Asana, Twitter, and Zendesk.
Customize your notifications so you stay focused on what matters.

Dropbox is a free another free mobile application for researchers to make creative collaboration space, store all files together in one central place, and safely sync them across all your devices.

Download Dropbox mobile application.
Create a Dropbox account and choose a free version. (Limited space only but more than enough for document files).
Work on files with others through shared folders.
Use the document scanner to turn receipts, whiteboards, and notes into PDFs.
Comment on files to share feedback with your team
Sync, share, and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

10. Camscanner

Camescanner is a mobile document scanning and sharing application, It helps you to scan, store, sync and collaborate on various contents across smartphones, iPads, tablets and computers.

Download the Camscanner application and Create an account.
Use your mobile camera to scan and digitize all kinds of paper documents.
Using smart cropping and auto-enhancing ensures the texts and graphics in scanned documents.
Easily share documents in PDF or JPEG format with friends in various ways.
Instantly print out any documents in CamScanner with a nearby printer via AirPrint.

Hope, this article would help you to know about the 10 Best Apps for PhD Students.

10 Simple Online Drawing Tools for Effective Thesis Diagrams

How to Download Free Mendeley Datasets?

10 Free Plagiarism Checker Tool for Thesis

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Hello, I loved this article! All of your resources listed here are spot on, thank you for taking the time to write this. I sent you an email about a tool we created by (a team of researchers) that is free for PHD and graduate students to use. We started this no-code app to help our own academic research students and faculty, and would love to help more people. Thanks again! – Pathverse Team

Mendeley App was removed in 2021 – the mobile web version is sadly close to unusable. If anybody finds a proper workaround or a usable third party app, please include that in the article.

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Artificial intelligence

5 best free productivity apps for research students

Completing a research degree is less like a 9 to 5 job and more like a 5 to 9 one. With the high workload and other life commitments it’s important you have all the help you need to boost your productivity and ensure you can carve some time out for yourself.

Take control of your studies with five of the best free productivity apps for research students.

1) Save time referencing with Mendeley

Staring at a mile long reference list is enough to give even the most seasoned researchers a headache, so be sure to avoid bibliographic burnout with Mendeley.

This free reference manager automatically generates bibliographies as you write and even helps you find papers relevant to your subject, meaning you can spend more time writing and less time referencing.

2) Stay off your phone with Forest

Forest gamifies your focus by rewarding 25 minute intervals of uninterrupted work with your own virtual tree. Stay focused on your work for longer periods and you’ll be able to grow a whole forest.

It’s a simple incentive that stops you from hoping onto social media via your phone and increases productivity. If you leave the Forest app, the tree you were growing starts again from a seedling, resetting your progress.

If that’s not enough, growing trees will reward you with virtual coins which can be spent to plant real trees through charity group Trees for the Future.

3) Save your distractions for later with Pocket

Endless open browser tabs are the guilty secret of every researcher, but can make your actual work much harder to navigate. Say goodbye to your endless labyrinth of open webpages with the free productivity app, Pocket.

Pocket is a browser plugin which stores and catalogues everything you want to read, whether it’s an important paper for your next thesis chapter or a review of a film you’ve been dying to see.

The tool makes your life easier by allowing you to focus on what’s important right now and keeps your workspace clean and focused.

4) Get past your writer's block with 750 Words

Despite all the planning and data you’ve compiled throughout your research, starting to write your thesis or next chapter can still be a daunting prospect.

750 Words is a tool designed to get you free-writing. Just write 750 words a day and commit to writing without editing, allowing you to get your thoughts down on paper and clear your head.

This type of writing is often unusable, but can sometimes contain useable gems and get you in the right mindset to write that first paragraph.

5) Keep on top of your tasks with Trello

As a researcher, there’s a good chance you’re keeping lots of balls in the air. To keep track of all your jobs (both-PhD related or otherwise) it’s a good idea to find a task management app that works for you.

There are many free apps out there, but Trello is perhaps one of the most visual and user-friendly.

The tool allows you to create work boards and fill them with tasks, assign deadlines, make updates and so much more. You can also share your board with collaborators or supervisors to make team working easier.

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For writing. And writing. And writing.

Scrivener is the go-to app for writers of all kinds, used every day by best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more. Scrivener won't tell you how to write—it simply provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing.

Available for

Grow your manuscript your way.

Tailor-made for long writing projects, Scrivener banishes page fright by allowing you to compose your text in any order, in sections as large or small as you like. Got a great idea but don't know where it fits? Write when inspiration strikes and find its place later. Grow your manuscript organically, idea by idea.

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Image: The ultimate creative writing tool

See the forest or the trees

Whether you plan or plunge, Scrivener works your way: hammer out every last detail before typing a word, or carve out a draft and restructure later. Or mix your methods and do a bit of both. In Scrivener, everything you write is integrated into an easy-to-use project outline. So working with an overview of your manuscript is only ever a click away, and turning Chapter Four into Chapter One is as simple as drag and drop.

Research within reach

Need to refer to research? In Scrivener, your background material is always at hand, and you can open it right next to your work. Write a description based on a photograph. Transcribe an interview. Take notes about a PDF file or web page. Or check for consistency by referencing an earlier chapter alongside the one in progress.

Getting it out there

Once you're ready to share your work with the world, compile everything into a single document for printing, self-publishing, or exporting to popular formats such as Word, PDF, Final Draft or plain text. You can even share using different formatting, so that you can write in your favorite font and still satisfy those submission guidelines.

Who uses Scrivener?

Autobiographers
Biographers
Children's Authors
Journalists
Screenwriters
Translators

I genuinely think this is the biggest software advance for writers since the word processor. Michael Marshall Smith , NYT best-selling author.

Scrivener gives you the freedom to make a mess, the confidence to know you’ll clean it up, and the semantic relationships to tie it all together in whatever way makes the most sense to you. Merlin Mann , indie writer, speaker, and broadcaster.

If there was a list of the top five greatest apps of all time in the Mac App Store, it would start with Scrivener and then there would be four other things. Andy Ihnatko , technology columnist.

As a writer's application, Scrivener is damn near perfect; it means outlines, treatments and then first drafts can be put together in the same application. Neil Cross , author and screenwriter.

Scrivener is worth every penny: quite simply, it’s the best writers tool there is. Zoe Margolis , best-selling author.

Scrivener is the biggest leap forward in writing software since the venerable days of WordPerfect, and believe me, I’ve tried them all. Antony Johnston , comics writer and novelist.

Scrivener has so many useful features, there’s almost too many to list. Mike Sussman , Writer-Producer.

I'd thought it was yet another hobby app at first but this is genuinely for working writers with real deadlines and monster workloads. Karen Traviss , #1 NYT best-selling author.

Scrivener 1.2.4 Requires iOS 12+ Release Notes

Scrivener 3.3.6 Requires macOS 10.13+ Release Notes

Scrivener 3.1.5.1 Requires 64-bit Windows 10+ Minimum display resolution 1024x768px Release Notes

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Research toolkit

12 PhD tools to supercharge your literature review

Professor dawid hanak.

May 24, 2022
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A literature review is an inherent part of each research project. This is because it helps you to understand the relevant background of the broader research area and the associated political, environmental, societal, technological and economic contexts.

Why is literature review important? Do I have to include a literature review in my research proposal? Do I have to do it at the very beginning of the project?

These were the main questions that revolved around my head when I was at the very beginning of my academic career. And it seems that it was not just me asking such questions. I often hear them in discussions with current PhDs and others doing research.

It may seem that the literature review is a daunting challenge. I have seen recommendations to outsource your literature review or leave it until the very of your research project. It is sometimes regarded as an unnecessary activity that “prevents” you from doing the actual research, which may be draining your motivation. Read how to stay motivated here!

If you think in this way, I want you to ask yourself the following question and answer it honestly:

“Do I want to contribute towards the scientific discovery, or do I just want to get a PhD title?”

Believe me, there is a massive difference in the attitude between these goals.

A comprehensive literature review is THE FOUNDATION of your research project because it enables you to:

understand the context and fundamental knowledge associated with your research;
understand what work has already been done in the area of your project;
notice any trends and correlations in the past work;
determine research gaps and underlying challenges that need to be solved;
identify the best (or worst) approach to tackle particular challenge; and finally,
scope your project, clearly define your aim and objectives that when completed, will push the boundary of knowledge!

I trust you now agree with me that the literature review is essential! When executed competently, it will set a clear direction for your project and enable you to complete it on time and to a high quality.

Now, to reduce the burden associated with searching for the literature and organising your references, there are several tools that will improve your productivity when writing a literature review for your project.

Below I present the tools that I currently use (or used to use) when writing a literature review. I hope you will find it useful.

If there are any tools that you use to do a literature review, please share them in the comment!

Table of Contents

Where to start the literature review?

As already indicated in its name, a literature review aims to survey or overview the published literature in your chosen area of research.

When performing one, you will also efficiently synthesise the information in that literature in an organised manner and critically analyse the published information and data. Such a critical analysis will help you identify and gaps, limitations and contrasting points of views.

I want to emphasise here that in academic writing, the peer-reviewed information carries the most value and should be a primary source of your information. But there are also other sources that you may, and sometimes should consider.

Therefore, understanding where to look for the literature is crucial to performing the literature review efficiently.

Scopus (owned by Elsevier) is the largest database of peer-reviewed literature that includes titles, abstracts and citation information. It is a comprehensive source of the literature in science, engineering, technology, medical sciences, social sciences, and art and humanities.

It includes approximately 38,060 journals and allows you to understand the journal standing by presenting a total number of citations, cite score, and journal ranking in a specific research area.

Below you can see how you can assess the quality of the source on an example of Applied Energy, one of the prestigious journals that are highly regarded in my field of study.

An exciting feature of Scopus is that you can set up regular alerts for specific search strings. These will get delivered directly to your mailbox!

Web of Science

Web of Science is an independent platform run by Clarivate Analytics (Thomson Reuters) that gives you access to multiple databases with comprehensive citation data for 12,000 high impact journals and 160,000 conference proceedings .

Similarly to Scopus, it covers a broad range of research areas, from social science, arts and humanities, through science to engineering.

Large databases are usually the best place to start your literature review!

A useful feature is that in addition to information on what scholarly papers cited your work, it gives you an indication on where your research was shared or used (i.e. as a reference on Wikipedia!).

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is very similar to the conventional Google search engine, but its primary aim is to provide a search for academic literature.

In addition to peer-reviewed literature, you may find there doctoral theses and master dissertations, white papers, technical reports, preprints, books and other documents from scholarly websites.

I want you to be aware that there is a risk that some of the documents in the Google Scholar search results may not be peer reviewed or accurate. Therefore, as always, be critical in your assessment of the literature.

An interesting feature of Google Scholar is the option to follow the academics whose work is relevant to your project.

Most of us use Google on a daily basis. I believe you have already tried to use it for searching scholarly sources for your literature review. You can use it in a similar way to Google Scholar.

However, you may be directed to other depositories, publisher websites and grey literature. In my research, I tend to use it when I want to explore a particular topic, without going into many details.

ResearchGate

ResearchGate is a professional network for scientists and researchers, with over 17 million members worldwide. It aims to support knowledge sharing, networking, and collaboration.

It can be seen as an extensive database of papers, presentations and information on projects in your research area. It also stimulates academic discussion via the option to ask questions and help others to solve their problems.

An interesting feature of ResearchGate is the fact that you can simply request a copy of the academic paper or a conference paper directly from the author if it is not available elsewhere.

Moreover, you may also find job opportunities that fit your profile!

Academia is a professional network for academics to share research papers. At the time of writing this blog, over 123 million academics already signed up to this platform.

Similarly to ResearchGate, Academia enables you to download papers that are not available elsewhere and see who is reading your articles.

ArXiv is a popular preprint service in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering, systems science and economics.

It currently comprises about 1.7m of scholarly articles. Although you may access these manuscripts for free, it is essential to highlight that, most likely, these have not been peer-reviewed or are currently being peer reviewed.

Preprints is a multidisciplinary platform for sharing preprints in vast areas of science, technology, engineering, art and humanities.

By sharing the early version of research outputs, you may stay more up to date with your research area. As in the case of ArXiV, when writing your literature review bear in mind that these sources are not peer-reviewed.

How to write the literature review efficiently?

As you start exploring the literature in your research area, you should ensure that you can keep track of what you have read and organise the research data. This will help you to increase the efficiency of writing the literature review!

There are lots of tools available that can help you to become more productive when writing your literature review and your papers overall.

Here are the tools that I use to manage my literature sources when I write the literature review for my research.

Mendeley is a free reference management tool that can help you to capture the bibliographic information of the articles you read, keep their copies in PDFs, highlight and comment on the most relevant information.

It is easy to integrate with browsers for data capture and MS Word for adding the references into your text as you go along writing the literature review. You can say goodbye to juggling the references manually and wasting hours of your valuable time just to re-number all references. And it will generate bibliography for your literature review automatically!

It is also a professional network that will support your networking and collaboration activities and will enable you to discover the latest research. Importantly, you can directly import that research to your reference list!

Endnote is a commercial reference management tool which enables you to capture, manage and organise your references when writing your literature review.

It does pretty much similar work as Mendeley, but its free version is somewhat limited.

MS Excel is a tool within MS Office where you can use a spreadsheet for calculations, data analysis, visualisation, and programming.

As it lets you create tables, it is a perfect tool for collecting, organising and analysing data for your literature review.

If you keep your spreadsheet updated throughout your literature review, you may even include it in your final review as a summary table. These are very handy for the readers!

Google Sheets

Google Sheets is a similar tool to MS Excel but is available free of charge with your Google account. It will be equally useful for your literature review, as it lets you prepare summary tables and analyse your data. The only difference is that it runs only in Cloud.

Key takeways…

I want you to remember that the literature review does not need to be a tedious exercise that you “have to do” in your project. This part of your research project will help you to scope and drive your project forward.

The research tools I included here are the ones I use in my work. I trust you found the list useful and will use some of them to improve your productivity!

If you are using research tools that are not listed here, I would be more than happy to hear about them. Make sure you share them in the comment!

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PhD Editing Services

Phd proofreading services.

Your PhD, Polished By Professionals

Expert Support Throughout Your PhD

A PhD is the sum of years of research and writing. And as well as your final thesis, you may need to prepare a lot of papers during your studies. But whatever stage of your PhD you’re at, your written work needs to be clear and concise so you can make a strong argument. And this is where proofreading can help. So to give yourself the best chance of success, try our expert PhD editing services today.

Expert Editor

Proofreading Professionals

Our team has a world of experience with academic research, making us experts at polishing PhD theses. And to ensure the best results possible, we can even match you with a specialist PhD editor who knows your subject area.

Make sure your writing is the best it can be with our expert English proofreading and editing

PhD Proofreading Example (After Editing)

As part of our service, your specialist PhD editor can help you:

Perfect your punctuation, spelling, and grammar
Maintain an academic tone and vocabulary in your writing
Check that documents are clear and well structured
Make sure your referencing is correct
Improve your writing style via helpful feedback

And when we check a document, we provide two edited copies:

A “Clean” copy in the original file format
An MS Word Track Changes copy with all edits highlighted

You can then review our work using this “Track Changes” copy, so you’re always in control of the final draft. And if you’re using a file format that doesn’t support Track Changes, we can adapt our process to match.

Lightning-Fast Delivery

You’ll never miss a deadline with our speedy services: our Next-Day Guarantee means we’ll return any document up to 10,000 words long within 24 hours

And if you need a faster turnaround, simply select your desired delivery speed when you submit your document. We have three options:

We can also meet custom deadlines! Just let us know what you need.

*For documents up to 8,000 words

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How We Work With Academics

You’ll never miss a deadline with our speedy services: our Next-Day Guarantee means we’ll return any document up to 8,000 words long within 24 hours.

And if you need a faster turnaround, simply select your desired delivery speed when you submit your document. We have three options

We can also meet custom deadlines! Just let us know what you need.

* For documents up to 8,000 words

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Great Pricing

Our pricing is affordable and transparent – the cost is based on the exact length of your document. Check out our pricing calculator for an instant quote, and rest assured that you’ll receive the highest quality proofreading and editing for the best value on the market.

Referencing Expertise

Our team includes experts in various referencing styles and systems, including AMA, APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, and IEEE. No matter what style you’re using, though, we can check that your citations and references are correct and let you know if any information is missing. Visit our referencing page to learn more.

Subject-Matter Experts

Our team includes over 750 professional editors with backgrounds in a wide range of disciplines, so we’ll always match you with the best editor for your writing, whether you need help with a sociology dissertation, handouts for a music theory lecture, or a biology research paper.

24-Hour Support

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Looking For The Perfect Proofreader?

We can help you improve everything from journal articles to theses. Let us show you how!

Here is the BIG LIST OF recommended BOOKS FOR RESEARCHERS as a google document that I add to continuously .

New books and products will appear as I discover them. If you have a book or product you think I should explore, you can contact me via my About page.

Disclaimer: if you buy books via the links I provide, Amazon gives me gift vouchers, which I use to buy books to review on the blog. It’s the academic gift that keeps on giving! Thesis Whisperer runs on a “not for loss” basis. I raise money to pay for operating costs, side projects and upgrades. There are a number of ways you can directly support my work, which I have outlined here .

I did not invent Shut up and Write, Thesis Bootcamp and the Three Minute Thesis!

But yes, I know all about them and am an active participant and booster in all three movements 🙂

Peta Freestone, Liam O’Connell and Katherine Firth invented bootcamp – find out more about their PhD survival guide here . I run the largest bootcamp program in the world for PhD students and researchers at ANU (sadly, not open to non-ANU folks). Find out more about the ANU program here.
For more information about Shut up and Write, read this page on Thesiswhisperer or go straight to the official page Shut up and Write page , hosted by the Writing Partners foundation, supporting spreading the movement of writing in community.
You can find out more about the Three Minute Thesis, better know as as the 3MT on the offical site at the University of Queensland.

Scrivener (not a paid endorsement)

Oh Scrivener. What would I do without you? Designed by a PhD student, this software is purpose built for the busy writer. Unlike MS Word, or other conventional word processing software, Scrivener treats your writing as a series of ‘chunks’ which can be moved around at will. Scrivener gave me a writing speed boost that made me at least four times faster. You can read my glowing review here.

Omnifocus2 (not a paid endorsement)

The mother, father and parent of no specific gender of all project management software. I have a saying: “If it’s in Omni, it happens”. If it’s not captured in Omni, it doesn’t – it’s that simple. Omnifocus is only available on Mac. I still believe there is nothing comparable on PC – sorry. Buy a Mac? You can read my review of Omnifocus here .

Timing (not a paid endorsement)

Another product only available on the Mac. Timing learns how you work, watches you and shows a real time dashboard your various activities. Why? So you can better estimate your time on projects going forward and meet your deadlines with ease. If you want a fitbit for your work-life, this is it people!

Riverside (I get a free subscription for this endorsement)

Ever thought of podcasting as a way to share your research and passions? I love the format and record a regular podcast with my friend Jason Downs called ‘On The Reg’. We’ve been going a few years now. You can listen and Subscribe at our On The Reg home page.

If you’re thinking of starting your own podcast there’s a couple of Thesiswhisperer posts on how to start one of your own . These are old posts, back when it was more complicated. Now there are some great platforms. If you’re thinking of starting a podcast, may I suggest riverside.fm? Jason and I live in different cities and use Riverside to record and mix our pod – it’s the best platform to avoid sound problems. Riverside are offering Thesiswhisperer readers a discount: enter code: ONTHEREG for a 15% off your subscription.

Downloadable worksheets and materials

The Thesis Whisperer blackline masters series are materials I use in my workshops with research students. These blackline masters are free to use under creative commons share a-like attribution license. Each blackline master listed below has text, which you can lift for your own purposes, and an attached PDF formatted for easy photocopying. You can see more of my teaching materials on the right side of the site under ‘learn with the Whisperer’. If you want me to visit your university and teach, go to my workshops and training page

Support Networks

There is some evidence that PhD students can struggle with mental health more than other student groups. Unfortunately it is relatively common to have low periods during your PhD, but it’s important to be able to distinguish between ‘the PhD blues’ and a developing mental health condition that is potentially serious and needs treatment. Here are some resources to help:

If you are worried about how you feel, here’s a useful self assessment checklist for anxiety and depression . Please see someone if you think you need help.
Need to talk someone immediately? Unsuicide offers a global directory of helplines you can call or text.
More mental health resources and a hotline are available from Beyond Blue .
The academic mental health collective enables PhD students to share stories of their experience of mental health issues.
Effects of exercise on depression
Physical inactivity and depression
Tips to get started
At our thesis bootcamps we have found that mindfulness exercises can help people refocus back on writing with less anxiety. Here’s a mindfulness tip sheet to get you started.
Chronically academic is a network of scholars affected by disabilities and chronic illnesses.

Ethical Service Providers

There are a number of dodgy companies out there offering to write your thesis in, publish your work or do proof reading – don’t get sucked in. Below are some reputable providers:

The Freelance Editors Network (Australia)
Thesis bootcamps in the UK by Dr Peta Freestone
Janene Carey – thesis editing services (Australia)
Erin O’Dwyer – thesis editing services (Australia)
Karin Hosking – editor: [email protected]
Tricia Dearborn is my own editor and is highly recommended if you need a book done!
Jo Van Every – academic life coach (Canada)
Docs Finishing Early – USA
Hillary Rettig – USA
Professor is IN – USA
Dissertation coach Noelle Sterne (Ph.D) USA ([email protected])
Qualitative Research support with Dr Kruikow

Employment specialists

Did you know over 50% of PhD graduates go on to careers outside academia? I have a special interest in employability and helping people find jobs where they can use their research skills. Here is a small list of consultants and specialists you might find useful. I am working on a new app called PostAc to help you find jobs you might be interested in – stay tuned!

APR Interns is a program for Australian PhD students to get paid experience in industry BlueFin Resources are an Australian based company that specialise in placing PhD graduates in science Mexec Careers have a special interest in, and experience with PhD graduates in Australia Amy Bohren – individual career coaching, Australian based (email [email protected]) The resilient researcher offer individual coaching and workshops to Australian based graduates and PhD students Dr Richard Huysmans provides Australian based workshops

Other Useful (or fun) places on the Internet

Awful Library Books
Journal of Universal Rejection
Piled Higher and Deeper comic
The most beautiful libraries in the world
A List of Fallacious Arguments
Altmetrics – other ways of measuring research impact
How to make a cornell note taking template
How to focus in the age of distraction
Learning to work (pdf)
Missed periods and other grammar scares
Optomising your citations
Presentation Zen
Typography with Tex and Latex
Manchester Academic Phrase Bank
Manchester methods database
Unsplash – free high quality photos for bloggers

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COMMENTS

20 Best Academic Writing Software in 2024
1. Microsoft Word: Write Like a Pro. Microsoft Word is a popular word-processing program used for writing an essay, a dissertation, or other written academic requirements. It's a 1983 Microsoft Office application and is a widely-used office program. Its integration with Office 365 and Microsoft OneDrive makes it versatile and allows for collaboration among students and professors.
7 Must-Have Thesis Writing Tools in 2021
In summary, the very first software or app or tool every PhD student is required is Mendeley to write a thesis. It's a citation and reference manager tool. Evernote "Notes" as writing, images, pdf, article, news paragraph is an everyday part of a PhD student. Whatever you read, whenever you find things related to your PhD topic, you have ...
45 Software Tools for Writing Thesis
1. Reference Management Software. Comprehensive reference management software, such as Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote, is a must-have tool for any thesis writer. These tools help you organize and manage your references efficiently, generate citations in different formats, and create a bibliography effortlessly. They save time, eliminate the risk ...
11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers 2024
II. Best Re-Writing Software #1. QuillBot - Best paid option for the professional QuillBot is a cutting-edge paraphrasing software that may reword part of the text or the entire article. After you've entered a sentence or piece of text, hit the paraphrase button, and QuillBot will rephrase your material while preserving its original meaning.
7 Essential Apps For Writing A Dissertation Or Thesis
3: Otter. Writing up a good dissertation or thesis requires a lot of, well, writing. Spending hours upon hours hunched over a keyboard can be really draining (and potentially physically harmful). Imagine you could just speak instead of type. Well, now you can, thanks to Otter.ai. Otter is an app that allows you to simply speak into your ...
Software, Tools, and Apps that PhDs Must Have
This post was written by Stephanie A. Bosco-Ruggiero (PhD candidate in Social Work at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service) and Jessica Russell (freelance writer) on behalf of Dave Maslach for the R3ciprocity project (Check out the YouTube Channel or the writing feedback software).
Getting Started
Thesis and Dissertation: Getting Started. The resources in this section are designed to provide guidance for the first steps of the thesis or dissertation writing process. They offer tools to support the planning and managing of your project, including writing out your weekly schedule, outlining your goals, and organzing the various working ...
Five Essential Writing Apps & Software for Graduate Students
I would be remiss as a writing consultant if I didn't start this list out with Grammarly (arguably the #1 writing software we recommend to all GWC clients). Grammarly is a communications assistance software that handles multiple levels of revision at once: spell-checks, punctuation, grammar, tone, level of formality, clarity, consistency ...
Best Academic Writing Software: 21 Top Options (2024)
Price: $269.95/Full License. Use for: Referencing, annotating, and journal matching. EndNote is used by academic writers to manage citations and references. EndNote is a premium academic research and writing software that is a market leader in providing reference management, citations, and bibliography creation.
AI for thesis writing
Justdone. JustDone is an AI for thesis writing and content creation. It offers a straightforward three-step process for generating content, from choosing a template to customizing details and enjoying the final output. AI for thesis writing - Justdone. JustDone AI can generate thesis drafts based on the input provided by you.
Scribbr's Dissertation Editing Services
Your one-stop-shop for dissertation editing services. Bring your PhD dissertation to the next level with the help of Scribbr's experienced dissertation editors. 2,000-word sample edit is available on request. 100% happiness guarantee. Industry-specific editors experienced in proofreading dissertations.
Essential Software and Academic Tools for a successful PhD
2. Ulysses. Ulysses (Source: https://ulysses.app) If you like Markdown writing method, you will love Ulysses. It might seem like a simple writing app for your Mac or iPad, but this one packs a ...
Academic Writing Tools and Research Software
4. Grammar Checkers and Sentence Correction Tools. 1. Writing Tools and Software. Whether you are writing an article, research paper, essay, blog, and dissertation or PhD thesis, it is important to choose an appropriate writing software tool for your work. The choice of writing software comes down to your personal taste.
Top 11 Software Tools for Thesis Writing: Boost Your Research
This post elaborates on several tools commonly utilized for academic thesis writing. 1. Citavi. Citavi is a comprehensive reference management and knowledge organization tool. It allows you to manage references, create citations, and organize your research materials. Citavi is commonly used by students and researchers. 2.
Scribbr
Help you achieve your academic goals. Whether we're proofreading and editing, checking for plagiarism or AI content, generating citations, or writing useful Knowledge Base articles, our aim is to support students on their journey to become better academic writers. We believe that every student should have the right tools for academic success.
Top 7 Free Online Tools for PhD Thesis Writing
5. Text Readability Calculator Tool. This free online tool can easily assess your text's comprehensibility and readability, which are the most important factors to consider while writing any type of content. 6. Plagiarism Checker free online Tool for PhD Thesis.
22 Thesis-Writing Apps & Software for Graduate Students
1. 📑 Word Processors and Note-Taking Apps. This should be a no-brainer, but writing is one of the essential parts of creating a thesis. So it's evident that you need to have the best thesis apps to deal with this task effectively. Here are some apps that you might want to check out. Google docs.
10 Best Apps for PhD Students
10 Best iOS Apps for PhD Graduate Students. Here are 10 iOS apps that can be incredibly helpful for graduate students: Notability : An excellent note-taking app that allows you to write, draw, and annotate PDFs. Zotero : A reference management tool that helps you organize and cite your research materials. Grammarly :
5 best free productivity apps for PhD students
5) Keep on top of your tasks with Trello. As a researcher, there's a good chance you're keeping lots of balls in the air. To keep track of all your jobs (both-PhD related or otherwise) it's a good idea to find a task management app that works for you. There are many free apps out there, but Trello is perhaps one of the most visual and ...
Scrivener
Scrivener is the go-to app for writers of all kinds, used every day by best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more. Scrivener won't tell you how to write—it simply provides everything you need to start writing and keep writing. Available for.
12 PhD tools to supercharge your literature review
Now, to reduce the burden associated with searching for the literature and organising your references, there are several tools that will improve your productivity when writing a literature review for your project. Below I present the tools that I currently use (or used to use) when writing a literature review. I hope you will find it useful.
PhD Proofreading and Editing Services
PhD Editing Services. As part of our service, your specialist PhD editor can help you: Perfect your punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Maintain an academic tone and vocabulary in your writing. Check that documents are clear and well structured. Make sure your referencing is correct. Improve your writing style via helpful feedback.
The Thesis Whisperer
Designed by a PhD student, this software is purpose built for the busy writer. Unlike MS Word, or other conventional word processing software, Scrivener treats your writing as a series of 'chunks' which can be moved around at will. Scrivener gave me a writing speed boost that made me at least four times faster. You can read my glowing ...

7 Must-Have Thesis Writing Tools in 2021

Features of Mendeley:

Features of Hemingway Editor:

BibMe:

Thesaurus:

Disserationauthors:

Grammarly:

How to use Grammarly?

Hemingway Editor

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About The Author

Dr Tushar Chauhan

Grammarly: Your PhD writing assistant

How to Avoid Plagiarism in Your PhD Thesis?

11 Best Academic Writing Tools For Researchers

I. Best Writing Software for Researchers

#2. ProWritingAid – Your paper enhancer before submission

#3. Trinka – Designed for Academic and Technical writing

#4. Hemingway Editor – free and powerful

II. Best Re-Writing Software

#2. WordTune – The most convenient option

#3. Spinbot – Best free option for starters

III. 3 Best Writing Organization Tools

#2. Authorea – Best for Alternative Publication and Exposure

#3. Reedsy – Best for Aspiring Best-Selling Authors

#4. LaTeX – Great tool but difficult for non-coder

#5. DraftIn – Minimalistic and free for laser-focus writing

Final Thoughts

Why should I use LaTeX?

What are the best tips for academic writing?

What are the tools for effective writing?

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7 Essential Dissertation Writing Apps & Tools

Overview: Essential Thesis Writing App s

#1: Grammarly Premium

#2: Evernote & Penultimate

Need a helping hand?

6: Mendeley

7: Freemind

8: Udemy & Coursera

Recap: Dissertation Apps

Psst… there’s more (for free)

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Software, Tools, and Apps that PhDs Must Have

Note Taking

Word Processing

Grammar Checking, editing, and Proofreading

Statistical Analysis

EBook Converter/PDF Converter

Project Management/Task Management

Survey Research/ Experience Management

Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis

Reference/Citation Managers

Illustration/Graphics

Meeting Software

Programming

Self Care/ Mindfulness

White Noise Generator

Data Transparency

Gaining access to software and tools for free

Recent Posts

Thesis and Dissertation: Getting Started

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

Five Essential Writing Apps & Software for Graduate Students

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Best Academic Writing Software: 21 Top Options (2024)

1. Grammarly

FAQs About The Best Academic Writing Software

AI for thesis writing — Unveiling 7 best AI tools

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Top 7 AI Tools for Thesis Writing

Isaac Editor

Is it ethical to use AI for thesis writing?

Wrapping Up

Frequently Asked Questions