A key skill for any researcher is staying organized. Keeping track of sources, notes, and ideas can quickly become a headache if you don’t stay on top of it. Fortunately there are many apps available for iOS, Android, and Windows devices that can assist researchers with keeping organized and allow them to be more efficient with their time. We’ve scoured the internet for recommendations and collated the results into the following categories:
Reading Apps
Flipboard (https://about.flipboard.com/):
A news aggregating app that allows you to view articles that pertain to pre-selected topics.
Google currents (http://www.google.com/producer/currents):
Add content from leading publications, blogs, and other sources that meet your interests.
Instapaper (https://www.instapaper.com/):
Allows you to save articles and videos for reading later, even if you don’t have an internet connection.
General note taking
Notability (http://www.gingerlabs.com/, $2.99):
Create, share, and manage your notes. It combines handwriting, typing, audio recordings, and photos so you can create notes that fit your needs.
Evernote (https://evernote.com/):
Write notes of all types, from short lists to lengthy research, and access them on any device. Collects articles, handwritten notes, and photos.
PDF related
Scanner Pro (https://readdle.com/products/scannerpro5, $6.99):
Turns your iPhone or iPad into a portable scanner.
GoodReader (http://www.goodiware.com/, $4.99):
Handles huge PDF and TXT files, manuals, large books, magazines, and renderings of 100 mb and more with great speed. Mark-up PDFs using typewriter text boxes, sticky notes, lines, arrows, and freehand drawings on top of a PDF file.
Papers (http://www.papersapp.com/, $14.99):
Papers helps you collect and curate the research material that you’re passionate about. From citations to search, Papers will improve the way you find, organize, read, cite and share.
Camscanner (https://www.camscanner.com/, $varies): With CamScanner, any documents you see in real world can be digitized and saved right away with your mobile phone. Just take a photo, and CamScanner take care of the rest.
Mind Maps
MindNode (http://mindnode.com/, $9.99):
Mind maps are a visual representation of your ideas, starting with a central thought and growing from there. This allows you to brainstorm & organize your thoughts in an intuitive way, so you can focus on the idea behind it.
General Productivity
LogMeIn (https://secure.logmein.com/):
Enjoy the freedom to work from anywhere by accessing desktop and laptop computers.
ToDo (http://www.appigo.com/todo-task-and-to-do-list.html, $4.99):
A robust and effective to-do list and task manager for iOS.
Wunderlist (https://www.wunderlist.com/):
A robust and effective to-do list and task manager.
Storage
Google Drive (https://www.google.com/drive/):
Drive starts you with 15 GB of free Google storage, so you can keep pictures, stories, designs, drawings, recordings, videos – anything.
Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/):
Put your stuff in Dropbox and get to it from your computers, phones, or tablets. Edit docs, automatically add photos, and show off videos from anywhere.
Citations
EasyBib (http://www.easybib.com/):
Create accurate MLA, APA, and Chicago style citations in seconds by scanning a book bar code or by typing the name of a book. Build and manage your works cited. Once done, email your citations and then export your citations to EasyBib.com’s popular bibliography management service.
Library Research
Wolfram|Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com/)
Wolfram|Alpha introduces a fundamentally new way to get knowledge and answers—
not by searching the web, but by doing dynamic computations based on a vast collection of built-in data, algorithms, and methods. Across thousands of domains–with more continually added–Wolfram|Alpha uses its vast collection of algorithms and data to compute answers and generate reports for you.
Pubget (http://pubget.com/):
Pubget is the comprehensive source for science PDFs, including everything you’d find in Medline.
instaGrok (http://www.instagrok.com/):
instaGrok is an innovative educational search engine that combines sophisticated semantic technology with an interactive user interface to make learning more engaging, personalized and fun for everyone.