The Most Useful PhD Apps / Software That You Haven't Heard Of | Essential PhD Student Tools

This video offers a comprehensive guide for PhD and master's students, highlighting essential apps and tools to enhance academic research and writing. The host introduces platforms like Mendeley for referencing, Notion for organization, Scholar C for summarizing papers, and Connected Papers for visualizing academic fields. Other tools include Paper Digest for quick summaries, Rightful and Paper Pal for writing assistance, BioRender for creating scientific images, and the Academic Phrase Bank for refining academic writing. Canva is also recommended for designing presentations and posters, making this list a valuable resource for streamlining the research process.

Takeaways

• 📚 Mendely is a favorite referencing tool that integrates well with thesis and dissertation writing, allowing for easy citation management.
• 📝 Notion is a versatile platform for organizing all aspects of research and academic work, from meetings to data management, and it's customizable to individual needs.
• 🔍 Scholar C is a useful tool for summarizing and retaining information from research papers, offering a streamlined approach to literature review.
• 📈 Connected Papers provides a visual graph of related academic papers, helping researchers to identify and explore trends and connections within their field.
• 📑 Paper Digest offers quick summaries of research papers, condensing them into three-minute reads to efficiently grasp core ideas and decide if further reading is needed.
• ✍️ Rightful is an AI-based writing assistant that helps improve academic writing by suggesting better word choices, editing, and spotting mistakes.
• 🖋️ Paper Pal is similar to Rightful, offering real-time language suggestions and corrections in Word documents to enhance writing speed and clarity.
• 🎨 BioRender is a platform for creating professional scientific images and diagrams, useful for presentations, posters, and explaining complex concepts.
• 📘 The Academic Phrasebank by Manchester University is a comprehensive resource for academic writing, providing phrases and structures to improve coherence and clarity.
• 🎨 Canva is a multifunctional design tool that can be used for creating academic posters, presentations, and other visual materials beyond PowerPoint's limitations.

Q & A

What is the main purpose of the video?

The main purpose of the video is to summarize the top apps, websites, and resources that researchers, students, PhD students, and master's students can use to assist them in their academic journey.

Why is Mendeley recommended as a referencing tool in the video?

Mendeley is recommended because it allows integration into everyday academic tasks such as thesis, dissertation, and essay writing. It enables users to save references and citations and easily insert them into their writing as they write.

What is Notion and how can it help PhD students?

Notion is a tool that allows users to keep track of all their activities, meetings, schedules, lab records, presentations, and data. It can be personalized and modified to suit individual needs, making it an excellent platform for organizing and managing a PhD student's work.

How does Scholar C assist in summarizing research papers?

Scholar C provides a summarization tool that helps users easily absorb and retain course readings. It uses summary cards to appraise articles and chapters, offering highlights, tables for data, and key statements from papers, making it easier to understand and reference research.

What is the function of Connected Papers and how can it benefit researchers?

Connected Papers is a website that allows users to get a general overview of an academic field by entering a paper of interest. It builds a graph of similar papers, helping users visually understand trends, find papers they might have missed, and identify derivative works.

What does Paper Digest offer to help with the reading of research papers?

Paper Digest offers a service that summarizes research papers in just a few minutes, allowing users to quickly grasp the core ideas of a paper, including the abstract, introduction, objectives, results, discussion, and conclusions.

How does Rightful assist with academic writing?

Rightful is an AI-based website that helps with writing by replacing words for better clarity, editing writing carefully, and spotting mistakes. It is particularly useful for thesis and dissertation writing, providing instant corrections before a full in-depth proofread.

What is Paper Pal and how does it help improve writing?

Paper Pal is a website that provides specific language suggestions to help users write better and faster. It helps rephrase confusing sentences, checks for structural or technical consistencies, and detects grammar issues. It also offers a plug-in for Word documents to suggest corrections on the fly.

What is the purpose of BioRender and how can it be used by scientists?

BioRender is a website that allows users to generate academic and scientific images, such as pathways and innovations. It is useful for presentations, posters, or explaining complex scientific concepts, as it provides pre-made icons and templates from various life science fields.

What is the Academic Phrase Bank and how does it help with academic writing?

The Academic Phrase Bank by Manchester University is a resource that provides a large collection of academic phrases, terminology, sentence starters, and sentence enders. It helps users write in a more cohesive, clear, and academically viable way, covering various sections such as referring to sources, describing methods, results, findings, and conclusions.

How does Canva support academic and research-related design needs?

Canva is a versatile design tool that can be used for creating posters, presentations, and other visual materials for academic and research purposes. It offers a wide range of icons, images, and templates that can enhance the design process beyond the limitations of PowerPoint.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Top Research Tools for Students and Researchers

The speaker introduces a series of tools and resources beneficial for researchers, students, PhD, and master's students. They mention that while there are many free tools available online for referencing, summarizing papers, and more, they've curated a list that is more specialized and AI-based. The list is distinct from one they shared a few years ago and is aimed at enhancing academic productivity.

05:00

🔍 Scholarly Reference Management and Organization Tools

The video script discusses several tools starting with reference management software like Mendeley, which integrates with writing platforms to simplify the citation process. The speaker also highlights Notion as a versatile tool for organizing meetings, schedules, lab records, and presentations. Scholar C is introduced as a tool for summarizing research papers, while Connected Papers is a website for visualizing academic fields and identifying relevant literature. Paper Digest offers quick summaries of research papers to help grasp core ideas efficiently.

10:02

📝 Academic Writing and Proofreading AI Tools

The speaker recommends Rightful and Paper Pal as AI-powered writing assistants that help with writing, paraphrasing, copy-editing, and grammar checks. These tools are particularly useful for academic writing, providing instant corrections and suggestions to improve clarity and coherence. The benefits of using such tools for thesis and dissertation writing are emphasized, as they can significantly enhance the writing process.

🎨 Visualization and Design Tools for Academics

The script introduces BioRender as a tool for generating professional scientific images, which is useful for presentations, posters, and explaining complex pathways. Canva is also highlighted for its versatility in designing posters, presentations, and other visual content, offering a wide range of templates and tools that surpass the capabilities of PowerPoint.

📘 Academic Phrase Bank and Writing Assistance

The Academic Phrase Bank by Manchester University is praised as an invaluable resource for academic writing. It provides a comprehensive collection of phrases, terminology, and sentence starters that help academics write more cohesively and clearly. The tool is recommended for all students and researchers to refine their writing skills.

🌟 Comprehensive Tool Recommendations for Academic Success

The speaker concludes by emphasizing the importance of the tools mentioned and suggests that they can significantly aid in academic endeavors. They express a desire to create a part two of the video to cover more tools and invite viewers to share additional recommendations in the comments. The list provided is a curated selection of the best tools discovered over the past few years, aimed at enhancing research and academic productivity.

Keywords

💡PhD Apps

PhD Apps refers to software applications designed to assist PhD students in their academic pursuits. These apps can range from reference managers to note-taking tools. In the context of the video, the presenter introduces various apps that can streamline the research and writing process for PhD students, making their academic journey more efficient.

💡Mendeley

Mendeley is a reference management software that allows users to organize their research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research. It is highlighted in the video as a personal favorite for integrating into everyday academic tasks such as thesis and dissertation writing, due to its ability to save references and citations and insert them into documents as one writes.

💡Notion

Notion is an all-in-one workspace that combines note-taking, databases, and project management. It is mentioned in the script as a tool for keeping track of meetings, schedules, lab records, and presentations. The presenter praises Notion for its customizable interface, allowing PhD students to have a comprehensive workspace that can be accessed across devices and shared with collaborators.

💡Scholar C

Scholar C is a tool introduced in the video that helps users summarize and absorb research papers efficiently. It uses summary cards to appraise articles and chapters, providing key highlights and tables for data. This tool is particularly useful for students who need to process large volumes of literature as part of their research.

💡Connected Papers

Connected Papers is a website that provides a visual representation of academic fields by creating graphs of similar papers. By entering a key paper, users can explore trends and discover new or missed publications related to their research topic. This tool helps in identifying and visualizing the connections between different pieces of research.

💡Paper Digest

Paper Digest is a service that offers summaries of research papers, allowing users to grasp the core ideas in just a few minutes. It is presented in the video as a valuable resource for quickly understanding the abstract, introduction, results, and discussion of a paper without having to read the entire document, which is beneficial for initial literature reviews.

💡Rightful

Rightful is an AI-based writing tool designed to assist with academic writing by providing suggestions for better word choices, paraphrasing, and copy editing. It is highlighted as a helpful resource for instant corrections during the initial writing phase of a thesis or dissertation, ensuring clarity and coherence in academic writing.

💡Paper Pal

Paper Pal is another AI-powered tool similar to Rightful, offering language suggestions to improve writing speed and quality. It checks for structural and technical inconsistencies, detects grammar issues, and provides real-time suggestions as users write. The script mentions that Paper Pal can be integrated as a plugin into word processing documents.

💡BioRender

BioRender is a platform for creating scientific illustrations, such as diagrams of biological pathways and processes. It is praised in the video for its user-friendly interface and the ability to generate professional-looking images for presentations, posters, or to explain complex scientific concepts. It offers pre-made icons and templates, making it an alternative to PowerPoint for creating academic visuals.

💡Academic Phrasebank

The Academic Phrasebank by Manchester University is a resource that provides a collection of academic phrases, terminology, and sentence starters for writing in a clear, cohesive, and academically viable manner. It is recommended in the video as an invaluable tool for refining academic writing, with sections covering various aspects of academic writing, such as referring to sources, describing methods, and writing about the past.

💡Canva

Canva is a graphic design platform used for creating a wide range of visual content, from social media graphics to presentations. In the context of the video, Canva is recommended for designing posters, presentations, and other visual materials for academic purposes. It is praised for its user-friendly templates, icons, and images that enhance the design process beyond the capabilities of traditional tools like PowerPoint.

Highlights

Mendeley is a referencing tool that integrates into thesis, dissertation, essay, and literature review writing, allowing for easy reference management.

Notion is a versatile platform for organizing meetings, schedules, lab records, presentations, and data, with customizable interfaces.

Scholar C is a tool for summarizing reading and research papers, providing summary cards and key highlights for easy absorption and retention.

Connected Papers offers a visual graph of similar papers in a field, helping to identify and explore trends and recently published works.

Paper Digest summarizes research papers in minutes, offering a quick way to grasp core ideas and decide whether to delve deeper.

Rightful is an AI-based writing aid that helps with paraphrasing, copy editing, and improving clarity in academic writing.

Paper Pal provides specific language suggestions for writing better and faster, checking for structural and technical consistency, and grammar.

BioRender is a platform for generating academic and scientific images, ideal for presentations, posters, and explaining complex pathways.

The Academic Phrasebank by Manchester University is a comprehensive resource for academic writing, offering phrases and structures for various sections.

Canva is a design tool recommended for creating posters, presentations, and other visual materials beyond the limitations of PowerPoint.

Grammarly-like tools such as Rightful and Paper Pal are essential for instant corrections and proofreading in academic writing.

The video introduces a list of specialized, AI-based tools for researchers and students to enhance their academic work.

The presenter shares their personal favorites and experiences with each tool, emphasizing their utility in a PhD student's workflow.

Scholar C and Connected Papers are highlighted for their ability to streamline the process of summarizing and visualizing academic literature.

Paper Digest and Canva are praised for their efficiency in summarizing papers and creating professional designs, respectively.

The Academic Phrasebank is described as an invaluable, free resource that feels 'illegal' in its utility for academic writing.

The video promises a part two, indicating the vast array of tools available to researchers and students beyond the ones covered.