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Methodology

Research Methods | Definitions, Types, Examples

Research methods are specific procedures for collecting and analyzing data. Developing your research methods is an integral part of your research design . When planning your methods, there are two key decisions you will make.

First, decide how you will collect data . Your methods depend on what type of data you need to answer your research question :

Qualitative vs. quantitative : Will your data take the form of words or numbers?
Primary vs. secondary : Will you collect original data yourself, or will you use data that has already been collected by someone else?
Descriptive vs. experimental : Will you take measurements of something as it is, or will you perform an experiment?

Second, decide how you will analyze the data .

For quantitative data, you can use statistical analysis methods to test relationships between variables.
For qualitative data, you can use methods such as thematic analysis to interpret patterns and meanings in the data.

Methods for collecting data, examples of data collection methods, methods for analyzing data, examples of data analysis methods, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research methods.

Data is the information that you collect for the purposes of answering your research question . The type of data you need depends on the aims of your research.

Qualitative vs. quantitative data

Your choice of qualitative or quantitative data collection depends on the type of knowledge you want to develop.

For questions about ideas, experiences and meanings, or to study something that can’t be described numerically, collect qualitative data .

If you want to develop a more mechanistic understanding of a topic, or your research involves hypothesis testing , collect quantitative data .

You can also take a mixed methods approach , where you use both qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Primary vs. secondary research

Primary research is any original data that you collect yourself for the purposes of answering your research question (e.g. through surveys , observations and experiments ). Secondary research is data that has already been collected by other researchers (e.g. in a government census or previous scientific studies).

If you are exploring a novel research question, you’ll probably need to collect primary data . But if you want to synthesize existing knowledge, analyze historical trends, or identify patterns on a large scale, secondary data might be a better choice.

Descriptive vs. experimental data

In descriptive research , you collect data about your study subject without intervening. The validity of your research will depend on your sampling method .

In experimental research , you systematically intervene in a process and measure the outcome. The validity of your research will depend on your experimental design .

To conduct an experiment, you need to be able to vary your independent variable , precisely measure your dependent variable, and control for confounding variables . If it’s practically and ethically possible, this method is the best choice for answering questions about cause and effect.

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Your data analysis methods will depend on the type of data you collect and how you prepare it for analysis.

Data can often be analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. For example, survey responses could be analyzed qualitatively by studying the meanings of responses or quantitatively by studying the frequencies of responses.

Qualitative analysis methods

Qualitative analysis is used to understand words, ideas, and experiences. You can use it to interpret data that was collected:

From open-ended surveys and interviews , literature reviews , case studies , ethnographies , and other sources that use text rather than numbers.
Using non-probability sampling methods .

Qualitative analysis tends to be quite flexible and relies on the researcher’s judgement, so you have to reflect carefully on your choices and assumptions and be careful to avoid research bias .

Quantitative analysis methods

Quantitative analysis uses numbers and statistics to understand frequencies, averages and correlations (in descriptive studies) or cause-and-effect relationships (in experiments).

You can use quantitative analysis to interpret data that was collected either:

During an experiment .
Using probability sampling methods .

Because the data is collected and analyzed in a statistically valid way, the results of quantitative analysis can be easily standardized and shared among researchers.

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If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Chi square test of independence
Statistical power
Descriptive statistics
Degrees of freedom
Pearson correlation
Null hypothesis
Double-blind study
Case-control study
Research ethics
Data collection
Hypothesis testing
Structured interviews

Research bias

Hawthorne effect
Unconscious bias
Recall bias
Halo effect
Self-serving bias
Information bias

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.

In mixed methods research , you use both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods to answer your research question .

A sample is a subset of individuals from a larger population . Sampling means selecting the group that you will actually collect data from in your research. For example, if you are researching the opinions of students in your university, you could survey a sample of 100 students.

In statistics, sampling allows you to test a hypothesis about the characteristics of a population.

The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question .

If you want to measure something or test a hypothesis , use quantitative methods . If you want to explore ideas, thoughts and meanings, use qualitative methods .
If you want to analyze a large amount of readily-available data, use secondary data. If you want data specific to your purposes with control over how it is generated, collect primary data.
If you want to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables , use experimental methods. If you want to understand the characteristics of a research subject, use descriptive methods.

Methodology refers to the overarching strategy and rationale of your research project . It involves studying the methods used in your field and the theories or principles behind them, in order to develop an approach that matches your objectives.

Methods are the specific tools and procedures you use to collect and analyze data (for example, experiments, surveys , and statistical tests ).

In shorter scientific papers, where the aim is to report the findings of a specific study, you might simply describe what you did in a methods section .

In a longer or more complex research project, such as a thesis or dissertation , you will probably include a methodology section , where you explain your approach to answering the research questions and cite relevant sources to support your choice of methods.

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Top 21 must-have digital tools for researchers

Last updated

12 May 2023

Reviewed by

Jean Kaluza

Research drives many decisions across various industries, including:

Uncovering customer motivations and behaviors to design better products

Assessing whether a market exists for your product or service

Running clinical studies to develop a medical breakthrough

Conducting effective and shareable research can be a painstaking process. Manual processes are sluggish and archaic, and they can also be inaccurate. That’s where advanced online tools can help.

The right tools can enable businesses to lean into research for better forecasting, planning, and more reliable decisions.

Why do researchers need research tools?

Research is challenging and time-consuming. Analyzing data, running focus groups , reading research papers , and looking for useful insights take plenty of heavy lifting.

These days, researchers can’t just rely on manual processes. Instead, they’re using advanced tools that:

Speed up the research process

Enable new ways of reaching customers

Improve organization and accuracy

Allow better monitoring throughout the process

Enhance collaboration across key stakeholders

The most important digital tools for researchers

Some tools can help at every stage, making researching simpler and faster.

They ensure accurate and efficient information collection, management, referencing, and analysis.

Some of the most important digital tools for researchers include:

Research management tools

Research management can be a complex and challenging process. Some tools address the various challenges that arise when referencing and managing papers.

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Coined as a personal research assistant, Zotero is a tool that brings efficiency to the research process. Zotero helps researchers collect, organize, annotate, and share research easily.

Zotero integrates with internet browsers, so researchers can easily save an article, publication, or research study on the platform for later.

The tool also has an advanced organizing system to allow users to label, tag, and categorize information for faster insights and a seamless analysis process.

Messy paper stacks––digital or physical––are a thing of the past with Paperpile. This reference management tool integrates with Google Docs, saving users time with citations and paper management.

Referencing, researching, and gaining insights is much cleaner and more productive, as all papers are in the same place. Plus, it’s easier to find a paper when you need it.

Acting as a single source of truth (SSOT), Dovetail houses research from the entire organization in a simple-to-use place. Researchers can use the all-in-one platform to collate and store data from interviews , forms, surveys , focus groups, and more.

Dovetail helps users quickly categorize and analyze data to uncover truly actionable insights . This helps organizations bring customer insights into every decision for better forecasting, planning, and decision-making.

Dovetail integrates with other helpful tools like Slack, Atlassian, Notion, and Zapier for a truly efficient workflow.

Putting together papers and referencing sources can be a huge time consumer. EndNote claims that researchers waste 200,000 hours per year formatting citations.

To address the issue, the tool formats citations automatically––simultaneously creating a bibliography while the user writes.

EndNote is also a cloud-based system that allows remote working, multiple-user interaction and collaboration, and seamless working on different devices.

Information survey tools

Surveys are a common way to gain data from customers. These tools can make the process simpler and more cost-effective.

With ready-made survey templates––to collect NPS data, customer effort scores, five-star surveys, and more––getting going with Delighted is straightforward.

Delighted helps teams collect and analyze survey feedback without needing any technical knowledge. The templates are customizable, so you can align the content with your brand. That way, the survey feels like it’s coming from your company, not a third party.

SurveyMonkey

With millions of customers worldwide, SurveyMonkey is another leader in online surveys. SurveyMonkey offers hundreds of templates that researchers can use to set up and deploy surveys quickly.

Whether your survey is about team performance, hotel feedback, post-event feedback, or an employee exit, SurveyMonkey has a ready-to-use template.

Typeform offers free templates you can quickly embed, which comes with a point of difference: It designs forms and surveys with people in mind, focusing on customer enjoyment.

Typeform employs the ‘one question at a time’ method to keep engagement rates and completions high. It focuses on surveys that feel more like conversations than a list of questions.

Web data analysis tools

Collecting data can take time––especially technical information. Some tools make that process simpler.

For those conducting clinical research, data collection can be incredibly time-consuming. Teamscope provides an online platform to collect and manage data simply and easily.

Researchers and medical professionals often collect clinical data through paper forms or digital means. Those are too easy to lose, tricky to manage, and challenging to collaborate on.

With Teamscope, you can easily collect, store, and electronically analyze data like patient-reported outcomes and surveys.

Heap is a digital insights platform providing context on the entire customer journey . This helps businesses improve customer feedback , conversion rates, and loyalty.

Through Heap, you can seamlessly view and analyze the customer journey across all platforms and touchpoints, whether through the app or website.

Another analytics tool, Smartlook, combines quantitative and qualitative analytics into one platform. This helps organizations understand user behavior and make crucial improvements.

Smartlook is useful for analyzing web pages, purchasing flows, and optimizing conversion rates.

Project management tools

Managing multiple research projects across many teams can be complex and challenging. Project management tools can ease the burden on researchers.

Visual productivity tool Trello helps research teams manage their projects more efficiently. Trello makes product tracking easier with:

A range of workflow options

Unique project board layouts

Advanced descriptions

Integrations

Trello also works as an SSOT to stay on top of projects and collaborate effectively as a team.

To connect research, workflows, and teams, Airtable provides a clean interactive interface.

With Airtable, it’s simple to place research projects in a list view, workstream, or road map to synthesize information and quickly collaborate. The Sync feature makes it easy to link all your research data to one place for faster action.

For product teams, Asana gathers development, copywriting, design, research teams, and product managers in one space.

As a task management platform, Asana offers all the expected features and more, including time-tracking and Jira integration. The platform offers reporting alongside data collection methods, so it’s a favorite for product teams in the tech space.

Grammar checker tools

Grammar tools ensure your research projects are professional and proofed.

No one’s perfect, especially when it comes to spelling, punctuation, and grammar. That’s where Grammarly can help.

Grammarly’s AI-powered platform reviews your content and corrects any mistakes. Through helpful integrations with other platforms––such as Gmail, Google Docs, Twitter, and LinkedIn––it’s simple to spellcheck as you go.

Another helpful grammar tool is Trinka AI. Trinka is specifically for technical and academic styles of writing. It doesn’t just correct mistakes in spelling, punctuation, and grammar; it also offers explanations and additional information when errors show.

Researchers can also use Trinka to enhance their writing and:

Align it with technical and academic styles

Improve areas like syntax and word choice

Discover relevant suggestions based on the content topic

Plagiarism checker tools

Avoiding plagiarism is crucial for the integrity of research. Using checker tools can ensure your work is original.

Plagiarism checker Quetext uses DeepSearch™ technology to quickly sort through online content to search for signs of plagiarism.

With color coding, annotations, and an overall score, it’s easy to identify conflict areas and fix them accordingly.

Duplichecker

Another helpful plagiarism tool is Duplichecker, which scans pieces of content for issues. The service is free for content up to 1000 words, with paid options available after that.

If plagiarism occurs, a percentage identifies how much is duplicate content. However, the interface is relatively basic, offering little additional information.

Journal finder tools

Finding the right journals for your project can be challenging––especially with the plethora of inaccurate or predatory content online. Journal finder tools can solve this issue.

Enago Journal Finder

The Enago Open Access Journal Finder sorts through online journals to verify their legitimacy. Through Engao, you can discover pre-vetted, high-quality journals through a validated journal index.

Enago’s search tool also helps users find relevant journals for their subject matter, speeding up the research process.

JournalFinder

JournalFinder is another journal tool that’s popular with academics and researchers. It makes the process of discovering relevant journals fast by leaning into a machine-learning algorithm.

This is useful for discovering key information and finding the right journals to publish and share your work in.

Social networking for researchers

Collaboration between researchers can improve the accuracy and sharing of information. Promoting research findings can also be essential for public health, safety, and more.

While typical social networks exist, some are specifically designed for academics.

ResearchGate

Networking platform ResearchGate encourages researchers to connect, collaborate, and share within the scientific community. With 20 million researchers on the platform, it's a popular choice.

ResearchGate is founded on an intention to advance research. The platform provides topic pages for easy connection within a field of expertise and access to millions of publications to help users stay up to date.

Academia is another commonly used platform that connects 220 million academics and researchers within their specialties.

The platform aims to accelerate research with discovery tools and grow a researcher’s audience to promote their ideas.

On Academia, users can access 47 million PDFs for free. They cover topics from mechanical engineering to applied economics and child psychology.

Expedited research with the power of tools

For researchers, finding data and information can be time-consuming and complex to manage. That’s where the power of tools comes in.

Manual processes are slow, outdated, and have a larger potential for inaccuracies.

Leaning into tools can help researchers speed up their processes, conduct efficient research, boost their accuracy, and share their work effectively.

With tools available for project and data management, web data collection, and journal finding, researchers have plenty of assistance at their disposal.

When it comes to connecting with customers, advanced tools boost customer connection while continually bringing their needs and wants into products and services.

What are primary research tools?

Primary research is data and information that you collect firsthand through surveys, customer interviews, or focus groups.

Secondary research is data and information from other sources, such as journals, research bodies, or online content.

Primary researcher tools use methods like surveys and customer interviews. You can use these tools to collect, store, or manage information effectively and uncover more accurate insights.

What is the difference between tools and methods in research?

Research methods relate to how researchers gather information and data.

For example, surveys, focus groups, customer interviews, and A/B testing are research methods that gather information.

On the other hand, tools assist areas of research. Researchers may use tools to more efficiently gather data, store data securely, or uncover insights.

Tools can improve research methods, ensuring efficiency and accuracy while reducing complexity.

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Top 16 Digital Tools That Every Researcher Should Know About

Using digital tools for researchers effectively can be the difference between an average and an excellent piece of research. But today, with the long list of research tools available online, it is only natural for busy researchers to be baffled when it comes to making the right choice for specific needs. With considerations of time, cost, effectiveness and quality, there is a lot to check before you make the choice. We don’t want you to spend hours just looking for the best tools for researchers, so we’ve rounded up some of the most effective digital tools for researchers to make your life simpler.

In this comprehensive article, we have compiled a list of 16 useful online tools for researchers at various stages of the research journey. These tools will streamline your research process, help you stay organized, and provide you with easy access to the information you need. From reference management software to digital libraries, these cutting-edge tools cater to the needs of both experienced and novice researchers alike. Whether you’re working on a major research project or just starting out, this blog will help you get ahead of the curve and make your research journey a tad (we aren’t making big promises) bit easier.

Table of Contents

Why are digital tools for researchers important

Before any digital tools for researchers were introduced, academics had to rely on old-school manual methods that were typically time-consuming, labor-intensive, and also limited in scope. For instance, you had to subscribe to journals or physically visit libraries and spend hours searching and sifting through tomes before finding the most relevant information. And once that was done, the process of organizing, storing, and referencing data was another challenge you had to overcome.

In contrast, online tools for researchers offer a wealth of information and resources at your fingertips today. With the option to search and access vast amounts of knowledge with a few clicks, researchers are able to boost their efficiency and effectiveness at work.

And it’s not just limited to online tools for researchers that allow you to easily store, organize, and manage information, there are a number of tools that can help you hone your writing, check for plagiarism, find the right journal, collaborate with other researchers, and share your knowledge, ideas, and resources. The rapid development of digital tools for researchers have revolutionized the way researchers work, making way for faster innovation and more groundbreaking research.

Types of tools for researchers

There are various types of online tools for researchers to choose from. These tools can be classified into various categories such as planning and management of research projects, literature search, data collection and analysis, reference management, editing and paraphrasing, and collaboration and communication. These digital tools for researchers have revolutionized the way academics work, adding to their time, productivity and effectiveness; this in turn makes research more accessible, efficient, and collaborative. Let’s take a look at some top tools for researchers across these key stages in the researcher journey.

Reference Management Tools

Reference management tools are great time saving tools for researchers. Not only do they allow you to create a library of relevant articles, they help you format your references, detect duplicate entries and replace incomplete references, and even share articles with other researchers. Furthermore, they are also extremely useful tools for researchers when it comes to correctly linking sources and citing referenced articles.

Among the top reference management tools for researchers, Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote are the most widely used.

Zotero has quickly become one of the must-have tools for researchers to capture and preserve high-quality publication data from various sources, including journal articles, websites, newspapers, and PDFs. Its integration with popular Word processors such as Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs allows you to efficiently manage citations and bibliographies as you write. The software’s built-in PDF reader enables you to identify and extract cited quotations and comments, which can be directly saved as notes. What sets Zotero apart is its advanced search feature, which enables users to perform complex searches, such as locating articles added in the last month by mentioning a specific keyword and creating auto-updating collections. Zotero can also identify retracted papers and sends out an alert when you attempt to cite a retracted paper.

Zotero follows the freemium model, where one can get 300 MB in the free version with additional storage available for a fee starting at $20/year .

An offering by Elsevier, Mendeley is among the best reference management tools for researchers that combines an intuitive, user-friendly interface with powerful organizational features. With Mendeley, you can store and manage sources, take notes, collaborate with others, and discover new research in your field. Mendeley’s PDF viewer has an excellent, easy-to-use, built-in capability with the option of editing a document simultaneously with other Mendeley users. ‘Mendeley Notebook’, a feature of Mendeley, helps you collate all your highlights and notes from multiple PDFs. ‘Mendeley Cite’, another of its features, is a citation plugin for Microsoft Word that lets you insert references and bibliographies into your document.

Mendeley is a free citation and paper management tool with up to 2 GB of cloud storage. It has a desktop application, mobile app, and Chrome browser extension, making it a top choice among tools for researchers.

Mendeley offers both a free and a premium version, where users get 2 GB in the free version and additional storage space with pricing starting at $55/year .

Endnote is one of the paid reference management tools for researchers. It allows researchers to insert citations into the text, and simultaneously creates a bibliography with its “Cite While You Write” feature in Microsoft Word. Additionally, one can align and format the article as per the target journal requirements using its “Manuscript Matcher” feature. You can also conduct large-scale literature reviews with Endnote’s powerful analysis tools. Endnote is available in the cloud and accessible anywhere, providing researchers with the flexibility to work from any location.

Endnote offers a range of pricing options, starting at $124.95/year . It is one of the must-have tools for researchers keen on saving time and energy!

Top 16 digital tools that every researcher should know about

Academic Writing Tools

If you are not taking advantage of academic writing tools for researchers, well, you’re missing out on a lot. The range of things academic writing tools can do for you is astonishing – language editing, abstract writing, plagiarism checking and so much more! While there are a number of online tools for reseachers that can help improve your academic writing, here are our top choices in this category that you should know about.

iThenticate

iThenticate by Turnitin is an online plagiarism checker designed specifically for researchers and academics to review their manuscripts prior to journal submission and publication. iThenticate is one of the most popular tools for researchers looking to check their writing for originality and ensure they have cited all sources appropriately.

With its advanced plagiarism detection technology, iThenticate compares a submission to an extensive database of web pages and scholarly content before producing a similarity score and report. Researchers can use this report to eliminate any inadvertent instances of plagiarism and other blunders in their research papers.

The price for an iThenticate license starts at $100 for a manuscript and is valid for multiple plagiarism checks for this single document over a year. If you need to check more than one manuscript, you can opt for an annual license at a higher price.

One of the well-known tools for researchers, Scholarcy is an innovative AI engine that helps you analyze different sections of an article, filter out the noise, and deliver a precise structured summary of the research. Scholarcy doesn’t just condense papers into referenced lay summaries, it highlights key claims and statistics mentioned in the research paper that are most useful to your work.

It also extracts all the tables and figures and links to their cited location in the text, saving researchers hours of time searching for the most relevant papers. The smart AI engine is also a great tool for researchers looking to generate lay summaries that can help promote their research to a broader audience

You can use the free Scholarcy browser extension on Chrome or Edge to create summary flashcards online or build your own personal interactive library with a subscription of $7.99 per month.

Scrivener is among the underrated tools for researchers that can help make researchers’ lives simpler if used effectively. It has a user-friendly interface that allows researchers to easily organize their research notes, documents, and outlines. Scrivener gives you three ways to organize your projects: the Binder – which lets you manage folders and text, the Outliner – which helps you outline your research before you write it, and the Corkboard – to help you plan and organize your ongoing tasks.

Scrivener also has a mobile app that syncs with your devices ensuring everything is in one place. This makes it a great option for those who want to walk around and research ideas or take notes on your phone.

Scrivener offers a free trial period, with lifetime licenses available from $63.56 for MacOS and Windows.

Paperpal is as multifaceted as a Swiss Knife and stands tall among online academic writing tools for researchers. With in-depth language and grammar checks, instant and precise academic translations, relevant subject-specific writing recommendations, and critical technical checks, its suite of tools has you covered from the first draft itself. Use the Paperpal for Word plug-in and improve your language as you write in Microsoft Word, including real-time suggestions on vocabulary and phrasing.

Turn to Paperpal for Web to enhance your content with instant checks to ensure error-free language and grammar, clarity, and readability. Choose Paperpal for Manuscript if you have a manuscript ready for submission; its comprehensive language and technical checks ensure your work meets journal guidelines by flagging problem areas that could lead to desk rejection.

The best part about Paperpal, also something that makes it different from other more generic grammar editing tools, is that it is tailored for researchers and academic writing. You can get up to 500 edits for free on Paperpal for Word and Web or enjoy unlimited support at just $99 per year. Paperpal for Manuscript gives you an edited version of your article with suggestions in track changes for just $29.

Project Management Tools

There are several online tools for researchers to manage and organize their work, including keeping track of task completion, setting deadlines, and just having everything in one place. Four tools for researchers that must be there in your productivity kit are Trello, GanttPRO, Evernote, and My Research Projects.

You can use Trello to visually organize your ideas on its boards with the help of interactive cards. These cards can be used in multiple ways – you can create lists, assign tasks, message and tag those you are collaborating with, link files, add due dates–all on the virtual “back” of the card. You can also drag cards between lists, copy cards that you use often (or rather, use the cards as templates), and send cards to other boards. Basically, you can see your entire research process on a single Trello board.

This is a useful tool for researchers involved in large collaborative projects that span the globe. Trello has a free version that offers limited features with pricing models starting at $5 a month.

GanttPRO is another tool for researchers that helps you organize your thoughts better. A Gantt chart timeline on GanttPRO is the best way to visualize tasks, know their start and end dates, and track your progress along the way. The vertical and horizontal axes in a Gantt Chart present a visual summary of how various aspects of your research project are progressing, which allows you to address specific tasks that need extra or immediate attention.

GanttPRO is hosted in the cloud, which makes is easily accessible. It offers users a free trial with the option to choose from plans starting at $7.99 per month.

A productive way to jot down notes and ideas and sort through your research materials, Evernote is one of the most popular online tools for researchers. With Evernote, you can organize your research by a simple notebook structure to keep similar notes together or creating tags and folders for specific purposes.

You can save webpages, articles, or screenshots to your Evernote notebook and use the handy multimedia feature to enhance these by adding new text, images, documents, and even audio messages captured with its inbuilt recorder. Evernote also helps you sync your notes across devices so you can manage your notes across multiple platforms.

The basic version of Evernote lets you create and save notes but has limitations on storage space. You can buy more storage by opting for a paid subscription plan, which is currently available from $5.83 a month at ongoing discounted prices.

My Research Projects

My Research Projects by Researcher.Life is designed for researchers and helps you plan, manage, and communicate your work effectively. It promises end-to-end support in transforming your research into a well-written manuscript with suggestions on suitable journals for your research and guidance on the most relevant literature to cite. You can use the comprehensive submission readiness check to ensure your manuscript meets journal guidelines, with checks for language quality, structural completeness, clarity and consistency, and mandatory declarations. You can also generate detailed article summaries to help you convey your research findings more effectively.

My Research Projects lets you check one manuscript and get a detailed report for free by subscribing to Researcher.Life. You can unlock premium checks for multiple manuscripts by upgrading to the Prime Pack for $99 a year.

Academic Search Engines

As researchers you are expected to keep up with the latest developments in your own and related research fields. Yet, with the exponential growth in research output, this is far from easy. This is what makes academic search engines invaluable to academics searching for relevant scientific information. They use keywords to help researchers find, access and read about the latest most relevant research, including peer-reviewed articles, genuine information, author home pages, and university websites.

Google Scholar, R Discovery, and Scopus are our top tools for researchers in this category.

R Discovery

R Discovery is a strong contender when it comes to the best literature search and reading tools for researchers. An AI-powered app for researchers, R Discovery boasts of an expanding library of research content that includes over 100 million research papers across 9.5 million topics and more than 32,000 journals worldwide. It uses your topics of interest to create a personalized reading feed, with suggestions on top reads, smart summaries, and other features to help you discover the right research in minutes.

This includes open access articles, preprints, and pay-walled content (accessible through institutional credentials) across all major subject areas, including biology, medicine, philosophy, political science, environmental science, social sciences, and psychology. The best part is that this app for researchers continually upgrades its features and eliminated predatory journals to ensure you have access to reliable research that works for you.

R Discovery is one of the many tools for researchers developed by Researcher.Life and is completely free to install and use. It is available on both mobile and web, allowing for streamlined reading on your preferred device.

Google Scholar

If you’re an academic, you probably have used Google Scholar sometime in your research journey. It is one of the most used tools for researchers and acts as an online search engine for academics looking for scholarly literature and relevant sources to cite. It is tailored for academics, which means you can use different keywords to look up various research articles, theses, books, and conference papers to support your research study.

Researchers can also search for authors, journals, and other titles and can even create an account to save their search results. The one drawback here though is that you will need to keep searching until you find related research, and even then you will still need to browse through these individually to find the most relevant content for your research topic.

Another popular academic search tool for researchers is Scopus, an offering by Elsevier that is very similar to Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic. The largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research with over 1.7 billion cited references, Scopus houses content indexed from more than 25,000 active titles and 7,000 publishers, all carefully vetted and selected by an independent review board.

With Scopus, you can look for articles, journals, and any other sources that will help you write better research. You can also refine your literature search by filtering for author name or affiliation among others. Scopus also has analytical tools to help you visualize and compare research data – that is, you can view author, journal, and article impact metrics through the detailed research output and trends reports that Scopus provides.

Scopus works as an API that can be integrated into an institution’s repository or research information management systems. While it is free to use for non-subscribers, there is limited access to content with additional costs to access paywalled articles on this platform.

Journal Selection Tools

Given the enormous number of scholarly journals around and new ones coming up every year, it can be hard to select the best journal for your research paper. Despite its challenges, the process of finding the perfect journal, which is respected, relevant, and reliable, is one of the most critical tasks to get right for researchers. This is why good online journal finders are invaluable tools for researchers.

Elsevier’s Journal Finder tool and the Global Journal Database (GJD) are two pretty effective journal selection tools for researchers.

Journal Finder

The Journal Finder tool by Elsevier, one of the largest publishers of peer-reviewed journals across disciplines, is a great solution for authors looking to shortlist journals for their work. Just use relevant keywords, titles, or your research paper abstract to get a list of recommended Elsevier journals that publish research similar to yours.

Its intelligent machine learning algorithm uses terms specific to the corresponding research field to generate the best matches for your article. You can choose from the top of the list or sort this further using filters based on your preferences. The Journal Finder also lists journals with open-access publishing options and those that cover multidisciplinary research fields.

Elsevier can be used for free to search for journals related to your research.

Global Journal Database

The Global Journal Database, developed by Researcher.Life, comprises of more than 43,000 journals indexed in reputed public directories like Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Scopus, and Web of Science. Researchers can search for relevant journals using the title or ISSN, similar topics, research paper abstracts, and even manuscripts; the advanced AI engine will use this to generate the best journals for you.

Each journal recommendation comes with a detailed journal report that has key information about shortlisted journals, including publisher details, journal metrics, author instructions, the editorial review process, and even a list of the latest articles published. With the Global Journal Database, you can see where your preferred journal is indexed and browse its publishing history to better understand its scope. The broad journal coverage, multiple search modes, and detailed journal reports make this an exceptional tool for researchers, simplifying and speeding up the often-daunting journal selection process.

The Global Journal Database is available free with a Researcher.Life Essentials Pack subscription.

Wrapping Up

Researchers everywhere are on a quest to uncover new insights and come up with ground-breaking research. Choosing the right digital tools for researcher and using these effectively can make your journey from brainstorming to breakthroughs a smoother, easier, and faster one.

If you’re looking for a seamless transition between various tools, choose Researcher.Life, which brings together innovative solutions to accelerate and optimize each stage of your research journey. Turn to Paperpal the next time you’re perplexed by language nuances, swipe through R Discovery’s reading recommendations to keep up with the latest developments, manage your research effectively with My Research Projects, or find the right journal for your paper with the Global Journal Database. Experience Researcher.Life and its many bespoke tools for researchers.

Researcher.Life is a subscription-based platform that unifies the best AI tools and services designed to speed up, simplify, and streamline every step of a researcher’s journey. The Researcher.Life All Access Pack is a one-of-a-kind subscription that unlocks full access to an AI writing assistant, literature recommender, journal finder, scientific illustration tool, and exclusive discounts on professional publication services from Editage.

Based on 21+ years of experience in academia, Researcher.Life All Access empowers researchers to put their best research forward and move closer to success. Explore our top AI Tools pack, AI Tools + Publication Services pack, or Build Your Own Plan. Find everything a researcher needs to succeed, all in one place –  Get All Access now starting at just $17 a month !  

Top 10 High Impact Factor Journals

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Your personal research assistant

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research.

Available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and iOS

Just need to create a quick bibliography? Try ZoteroBib .

Meet Zotero.

Collect with a click..

Zotero automatically senses research as you browse the web. Need an article from JSTOR or a preprint from arXiv.org? A news story from the New York Times or a book from a library? Zotero has you covered, everywhere.

Organize your way.

Zotero helps you organize your research any way you want. You can sort items into collections and tag them with keywords. Or create saved searches that automatically fill with relevant materials as you work.

Cite in style.

Zotero instantly creates references and bibliographies for any text editor, and directly inside Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs. With support for over 10,000 citation styles, you can format your work to match any style guide or publication.

Stay in sync.

Zotero can optionally synchronize your data across devices, keeping your files, notes, and bibliographic records seamlessly up to date. If you decide to sync, you can also always access your research from any web browser.

Collaborate freely.

Zotero lets you co-write a paper with a colleague, distribute course materials to students, or build a collaborative bibliography. You can share a Zotero library with as many people you like, at no cost.

Zotero is open source and developed by an independent, nonprofit organization that has no financial interest in your private information. With Zotero, you always stay in control of your own data.

Still not sure which program to use for your research? See why we think you should choose Zotero .

Ready to try Zotero?

31 Best Online Research Tools

by Joana Regulacion

The internet has changed the face of research: Now, just about anyone can search for and find information on nearly any topic they can think of. But real, studious, academic research has in some ways become more complicated: How do you know what sources to trust? How do you even begin to sift through the mass of information that’s available?

Online Research Tools

Whether you’re looking for primary sources or just need a way to organize your tasks and information, there’s a tool out there for you.

You might also like to learn about how to speed up your typing to help finish your research faster.

Sure, research is an academic pursuit, but it can also be a logistical nightmare. Enter Todoist . This tool allows you to manage all of your tasks and projects from anywhere. Access and accomplish tasks from a desktop computer, laptop, or smartphone. You can even collaborate on projects.

2. EndNote X9

EndNote is designed for collaborative research: You can share, save, tag, and search for sources, organize and create bibliographies, authorize editing permissions for teammates, and track activity in your projects.

Zotero will help you keep track of all your online sources with their handy browser extension, then sort them into categories and automatically create bibliographies. Plus, you can sync your library across devices and share with collaborators and students.

4. RefWorks

RefWorks is a browser-based tool which helps learners find the right research data. It also organizes and stores the data for you so that you can easily share with partners and teammates. RefWorks automatically generates proper citations as well as bibliographies in every style.

5. DataElixir

DataElixir keeps you up-to-date on all of the latest data science news and developments through a weekly newsletter. This curated roundup will tell you everything you need to know about the ever-changing world of data science—essential for any researcher.

6. Paperpile

Similar to Zotero, Paperpile is a reference management software which operates as a browser extension. Use it to find and import data from platforms like Google Scholar, PubMed, or arXiv. Collaborative editing is a breeze with Paperpile since you can easily export all the PDF documents and data to Google Drive.

7. DeepDyve

DeepDyve offers access to millions of scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles in one place. There is a monthly subscription fee, but it’s still less than you would pay to buy individual articles or multiple journal subscriptions. Plus, they allow you to store and save your searches and clicks so you can easily find your previous sources.

8. ContentMine

ContentMine offers open-source code that you can use to mine data from open access academic papers, tables, graphs, and more. The idea is to save researchers time and increase accuracy and understanding.

9. Artcyclopedia

Artcyclopedia is a great resource for information on artists or art movements. The site provides links to museums worldwide so you can see over 8,200 works by all kinds of artists, from painters and sculptors to photographers, decorative artists, and architects.

10. BioMedCentral

BioMedCentral publishes peer-reviewed journals on a variety of topics, all of which are open source and available for free. Their scientific articles are high-quality and available to anyone, and their fast publication process means that you can access the most up-to-date information immediately.

11. Digital History

An archive for sources such as gravestones, historical advertisements, letters, and more, Digital History is a valuable resource for those who seek information on United States history. They offer overviews of many periods of history through a brief “textbook,” as well as essays on film, private life, science and technology, etc. They also have an extensive audio-visual archive.

12. FindArticles

FindArticles allows you to search articles from about 500 print periodicals with coverage back to 1998, and usage is completely free of charge. While some of the more popular magazines aren’t included on FindArticles, the collection is broad enough to be useful for many topics. It’s no substitute for most library article archives; however, it can be a great resource for simple article searching.

13. Internet History Sourcebooks

Internet History Sourcebooks offers an extensive collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts. It provides relevant primary and secondary resources on many historical periods, from ancient to medieval to modern, as well as cultural histories sorted by geography, religion, gender, and more.

14. Library of Congress

You’ve heard of the Library of Congress , but did you know about the volume of online information it offers? Especially for someone interested in American history, the Library of Congress is a worthwhile resource that can equip you with loads of data you can’t find elsewhere. The American Memory Collection contains a wealth of materials on American history including thousands of photos, maps, documents, sheet music, and even online exhibits. In the event that you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can ask a librarian through an online form.

15. Perseus Digital Library

Perseus Digital Library presents searchable historical texts, many of which are in their original language. You can find a wide range of texts, from ancient Greco-Roman to Renaissance and beyond. They also have a collection of images of Greco-Roman art and archaeological artifacts.

16. Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg , aptly named after the inventor of the movable type printer, provides web access to over 59,000 completely free eBooks. The largest collection of free books on the internet, Project Gutenberg’s goal is to digitize every book that is not under copyright. They offer an extensive array of classic books published before 1900.

17. Research Guide for Students

Research Guide for Students offers guides on how to write a variety of research paper elements, from how to write a critique to how to write a chemical formula. It also offers writing tips for students, research paper examples, literature guides, and more.

18. U.S. Government Manual

If you’re looking for information specifically about the U.S. Government and its branches and offices, the U.S. Government Manual is the place to look. It provides extensive data on the agencies of the legislative, judicial, and executive branches. Furthermore, it includes information regarding semi-official agencies, international organizations the United States participates in, and boards, commissions, and committees.

19. Proquest Dissertations and Theses Search

The Proquest Dissertations and Theses Search archive contains 2.3 million dissertations written by graduate students. This is a valuable resource for your own research as well as to ascertain what topics have already been covered by other dissertations, if you are writing one of your own.

20. Google Scholar

Google Scholar returns search results for publications in countless academic journals. If you look at the right-hand side of the search results, Google Scholar will show you if a PDF is available for each article. Google Scholar works just like Google and is arguably the world’s top scholarly search engine.

21. PubMed Central

PubMed Central is by the U.S. National Institute of Health’s National Library of Medicine. It’s free to use and search their database of approximately 4 million academic articles in the medical and biological sciences. PubMed searches return abstracts only, although many full-text articles are available through external links.

22. Web of Science

Web of Science is a publisher-neutral citation index where you can find high-quality, curated journal articles. Their advanced, rigorous search tools allow you to easily discover new information. You have to pay to access it, but if you’re a regular researcher, it could be a worthwhile investment.

23. Google Books

Google Books allows you to search the full text of millions of books, and returns results that are relevant to your research. For books no longer under copyright, you can view the book in its entirety right on the site; others you can buy or find in local libraries.

JSTOR allows you to search a wide variety of academic journals, books, and primary sources. You can search by subject, title, or publisher. Although it is a subscription service, you may be able to get access through your library—or you can search their open-source database.

25. Questia

The Questia digital online library is made to help students, especially those in the social sciences or humanities, do high-quality research and write papers. Questia’s sources selected by librarians, approved by professors, and are peer-reviewed. It includes more than 94,000 academic books and more than 14 million journals, magazine, and newspaper articles.

26. Ingenta Connect

A great resource for published scholarly papers, Ingenta Connect offers academic content from 300 publishers. It provides you access to the largest linking network of its kind online and is also ideal for publishers who are newbies in putting up online content.

27. ScienceDirect

Elsevier, one of the biggest publishers of science content, offers access to their entire archive through ScienceDirect . ScienceDirect is built on a wide range of trusted, high-quality, interdisciplinary research. Its aim is to help you find answers to the most pressing research questions.

28. Project MUSE

Hosted by Johns Hopkins University, Project MUSE mainly focuses on digital articles and book chapters for humanities and social sciences researchers. It was founded as a non-profit collaboration between libraries and publishers.

29. IEEE Xplore

IEEE Xplore is a specialized search tool for highly-cited publications in the fields of electrical engineering, computer science, and electronics. A subscription grants access to scientific and technical content published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and its publishing partners, including journals, conferences, standards, books, and courses.

30. The Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library

The Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library is comprised of all ACM publications, including articles, conference proceedings, magazines, newsletters, and books, as well as a curated collection of full-text sources from other publishers.

arXiv is the largest collection of open-source papers in mathematical fields: physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. It is hosted by Cornell University.

Have you used any of these research tools before? Which one works best for you? Let us know in the comments below.

If you liked reading this, you might also like these other posts:

How to Double or Triple Your Typing Speed
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Joana Regulacion is a proud wife, mother, and furparent. Joana loves writing blog posts because it helps her learn new things. She also conducts lectures for aspiring teachers who are reviewing for the Licensure Examination for Teachers, but enjoys working from home to be closer with her family.

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Research Tools

NIH leads the charge on developing new research tools that have broad applications, pushing the boundaries on multiple research fronts.

Small Molecule Screening

Research-tools--small-molecule-screening.jpg.

Thanks to NIH, publicly funded researchers now have access to resources and tools with the capacity to screen large numbers of small molecules, helping them to more efficiently study genes and discover treatments for human diseases. Researchers used these resources to develop FDA-approved treatments for ulcerative colitis and relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis.

Image credit: National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, NIH

This advancement in small molecule research makes it easier for scientists to use and understand molecular compounds in basic research and drug development.
The NIH Common Fund Molecular Libraries and Imaging Program also launched PubChem, an open chemistry database that contains information on chemical structures, properties, and biological activities of over 100 million compounds, including small molecules.
NIH also developed tools and resources to help scientists conduct preclinical research, with a focus on small molecule screening.

Single Cell Analysis

Research-tools--single-cell-analysis.jpg.

NIH fostered a technological revolution in single cell analysis research, leading to the development of cutting-edge tools, methods, platforms, and cell atlases to identify and characterize features of single cells within a variety of human tissues. These technologies are available to the entire research community to foster additional breakthroughs in research.

Image credit: NIH

The human body contains approximately 37 trillion cells, carefully organized in tissues to carry out the daily processes that keep the body alive and healthy. Analysis of single cells poses many technological challenges.
Between 2012 and 2017, the NIH Common Fund Single Cell Analysis Program found a three-fold increase in the number of single cell analysis projects funded by NIH and an approximate doubling of relevant publications.
Understanding cells at the individual level may lead to new understandings of development, health, aging, and disease.

research-tools--cryo-em.jpg

Illustration of a semi-circular, protein complex colored in yellow with red and blue DNA wrapped around it.

NIH funded the development and dissemination of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), a tool that enables high-resolution images of proteins and other biological structures. Cryo-EM has helped researchers identify potential new therapeutic targets for vaccines and drugs.

Image credit: Huilin Li, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Bruce Stillman, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

An NIH-funded researcher was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work characterizing proteins using cryo-EM.
Since 2018, the NIH-supported National Centers for Cryo-EM enabled researchers to determine the structure of more than 300 proteins, including the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and trained more than 1,000 investigators in this cutting-edge technique.

Cell Culture Technology

Research-tools--cell-culture-technology.jpg.

An NCI Training Fellow conducts research under a fume hood.

NIH scientists created Matrigel, a specialized gel that promotes cell growth on a 3-D surface that mimics the environment within the body. Today, Matrigel is widely used in labs around the world to study cells that were previously impossible to grow and to investigate complex cell activities in a more relevant environment.

Image credit: David Sone

Prior to this invention, scientists grew cells in a flat layer in plastic culture dishes, which was not sufficient to grow specialized cells, like stem cells.
Using Matrigel, researchers discovered new insights into nerve growth, the formation of blood vessels, and stem and cancer cell biology. It is also being used to screen cancer drugs and to support development of artificial tissues that can mimic organ function.
More than 13,000 scientific papers have cited the use of Matrigel in their studies.

Cancer Genome Atlas

Research-tools--cancer-genome-atlas.jpg.

Growing cancer cells (in purple) are surrounded by healthy cells (in pink), illustrating a primary tumor spreading to other parts of the body through the circulatory system.

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) is a landmark NIH cancer genomics program that transformed our understanding of cancer by analyzing tumors from 11,000 patients with 33 different cancer types. Findings from TCGA identified new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancers, such as gliomas and stomach cancer.

Image credit: Darryl Leja, National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH

TCGA showed that different cancers can share molecular traits regardless of the organ or tissue they are found in. This enabled the emergence of precision medicine in oncology—cancer treatment based on molecular traits rather than the tissue in the body where the cancer started.
TCGA generated over 2.5 petabytes (1 petabyte = 500 billion pages of standard printed text!) of data on genes, proteins, and their modifications in cancer by bringing together 20 collaborating institutions across the U.S. and Canada.

Recombinant DNA

Research-tools--recombinant-dna.jpg.

Illustration of the double helical structure of DNA with a yellow phosphate backbone and nucleotides colored in purple, yellow, pink, and orange.

Because of NIH-funded research on recombinant DNA technology, researchers developed techniques that can enable the production of large quantities of important peptides—the building blocks of proteins—which can be used to produce certain medicines.

Image credit: National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH

Scientists use specialized molecules to snip out a specific gene from a long strand of DNA, creating recombinant DNA by inserting it into bacterial or yeast cells. These cells reproduce quickly and, following the gene’s instructions, make large amounts of the desired peptide.
These techniques enabled the production of synthetic insulin to treat diabetes.
Medicines produced using these techniques have been used for more than 30 years.
In 1980, an NIH-funded researcher received a Nobel Prize for research on recombinant DNA.

Imaging Technology

Research-tools--imaging-technology.jpg.

Imaging technologist talks to a patient before a scan in the fully integrated whole-body simultaneous PET/MRI device.

Significant innovation in clinical imaging technology is a result of NIH-funded research. Imaging technologies now have higher resolution and greater sensitivity, with new categories of imaging, like digital 3D reconstructions, now being commonly used.

Image credit: Clinical Center, NIH

A new type of positron emission tomography (PET) that looks for prostate cancer specific proteins has been found to be 27% more accurate than standard methods for detecting prostate cancers.
NIH-supported improvements in PET technologies resulted in a more sensitive technology that can capture scans in under a minute and reduce the dose of dye given to patients.
NIH-funded research led to the development of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, which won a Nobel Prize, and is the same technique used in MRIs in clinical settings.
Molecular Libraries and Imaging: https://commonfund.nih.gov/molecularlibraries/index
Preclinical Research Toolbox: https://ncats.nih.gov/expertise/preclinical
PubChem: https://pubchemdocs.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/statistics
Molecular Libraries and Imaging Program Highlights: https://commonfund.nih.gov/Molecularlibraries/programhighlights
Article: Ozanimod accepted for priority review by FDA for the treatment of ulcerative colitis: https://www.scripps.edu/news-and-events/press-room/2021/20210203-rosen-roberts-ozanimod-fda-ulcerative-colitis.html
Article: U.S. Food and Drug Administration Approves Bristol Myers Squibb’s Zeposia® (ozanimod), an Oral Treatment for Adults with Moderately to Severely Active Ulcerative Colitis: https://news.bms.com/news/corporate-financial/2021/U.S.-Food-and-Drug-Administration-Approves-Bristol-Myers-Squibbs-Zeposia-ozanimod-an-Oral-Treatment-for-Adults-with-Moderately-to-Severely-Active-Ulcerative-Colitis1/default.aspx
NIH Single Cell Analysis Program: https://commonfund.nih.gov/singlecell
Roy AL, et al. Sci Adv . 2018;4(8):eaat8573. PMID: 30083611 .
The Human BioMolecular Atlas Program: https://commonfund.nih.gov/HuBMAP
HuBMAP Data Portal: https://portal.hubmapconsortium.org/
Cellular Senescence Network: https://commonfund.nih.gov/senescence
LungMAP: https://www.lungmap.net/
GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project: https://www.gudmap.org/
Transformative High-Resolution Cryoelectron Microscopy Program: https://commonfund.nih.gov/CryoEM
Cryo-Electron Microscopy Program Centers: https://www.cryoemcenters.org
Zhang K, et al. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2020:2020.08.11.245696. Update in: QRB Discov . 2020;1:e11. PMID: 32817943 .
NIH Nobel Laureates: https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/nih-almanac/nobel-laureates
Cressey D, et al. Nature . 2017;550(7675):167. PMID: 29022937 .
Simian M, et al. J Cell Biol . 2017;216(1):31-40. PMID: 28031422 .
Article: An Interview with Hynda Kleinman: https://irp.nih.gov/catalyst/v21i4/alumni-news
Kleinman HK, et al. Semin Cancer Biol . 2005;15(5):378-86. PMID: 15975825 .
Article: Hair today, gone tomorrow: NIDCR'S Hynda Kleinman takes off for new horizons: https://nihsearch.cit.nih.gov/catalyst/2005/05.11.01/page4.html
The Cancer Genome Atlas Program: https://www.cancer.gov/about-nci/organization/ccg/research/structural-genomics/tcga
NIGMS-Supported Nobelists: https://www.nigms.nih.gov/pages/GMNobelists.aspx
Article: Celebrating the discovery and development of insulin: www.niddk.nih.gov/news/archive/2021/celebrating-discovery-development-insulin
National Institute of General Medical Sciences. The New Genetics . 2010. https://nigms.nih.gov/education/Booklets/the-new-genetics/Documents/Booklet-The-New-Genetics.pdf
Article: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the National Cancer Act (NCA50): Clinical Imaging — Then and Now: https://dctd.cancer.gov/NewsEvents/20210712_NCA50.htm?cid=soc_ig_en_enterprise_nca50
EXPLORER Total Body PET Scanner: https://health.ucdavis.edu/radiology/myexam/PET/Equipment/explorer.html
Badawi RD, et al. J Nucl Med . 2019;60(3):299-303. PMID: 30733314 .
Article: PSMA PET-CT Accurately Detects Prostate Cancer Spread, Trial Shows: https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2020/prostate-cancer-psma-pet-ct-metastasis
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI): https://www.nibib.nih.gov/science-education/science-topics/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri

This page last reviewed on March 1, 2023

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12 Best Tools for Researchers in 2024

Looking for research and survey tools? Here's a list with some features and prices to check for choosing the best tools for researchers.

Every project needs to conduct research. It’s the best way to avoid making expensive mistakes and create a product that the target audience will love. There are many helpful research tools out there that you can use to make your research easier. That is why we have brought you the best tools for researchers to conduct research and surveys. Let’s explore them below.

What is the need for research tools for researchers?

Every researcher focuses on managing multiple tasks, getting good results, and using time well, no matter what research they do. All of these require a well-planned and organized system. To do this, every researcher needs research tools. The best tools for researchers make this job easier.

Market research tools help researchers write their project proposals, reports, academic papers, and articles by helping them avoid language mistakes, cite sources, build networks, and search for journals to publish.

12 Best tools for researchers in research and survey

So, let’s get right into it! We have made a list of the 12 best tools that every researcher should try. We will discuss their most important features and prices so you can compare them and choose what works best for you.

01. QuestionPro InsightHub

QuestionPro InsightHub is one of the best research tools and the most powerful tool for sharing, showcasing, and analyzing your insights data.

It is a built-for-insights platform that helps insights teams organize, be more agile, and conduct market research. InsightsHub is a place to store and search all of your insights data, research methods, and project lifecycles.

It lets you create a project and then links a survey to that project. When the research is done, put the most important findings and nuggets inside each project. It makes them easy to find later and links them to other projects.

Best features:

Strong integrations with your present research ecosystem and technology.
Multilingual support for 50+ languages and double-byte character sets.
Real-time reporting dashboard
Unified platform to organize, explore, research, and discover research data in one repository.
Democratized insights

Premium pricing starts at $99 monthly.

02. QuestionPro Research Suite

QuestionPro Research Suite is a set of research and analysis tools for researching and changing experiences. It is the best set of enterprise-level research tools in the industry that can help you find insights for your brand.

You can solve your research problems with surveys that are easy to make and give you complex, real-time information. So, It can be the perfect research tool for researchers.

Monitor consumer behavior across categories and remain ahead of the curve With Market segmentation.
Allow you to experience the impact of change by A/B testing across questions, segments, and ideas.
It allows you to do academic research, capturing qualitative and quantitative insights.
Analyze your pricing research data to determine market factors, including competition intelligence, purchase behavior, and pricing sensitivity.

QuestionPro premium pricing plan begins at $99 per month.

03. SurveySparrow

The SurveySparrow Survey Tool is an automated survey tool that is easy to use and was made by a group of researchers and app developers. Because it is easy to use, powerful, and flexible, the SurveySparrow survey tool benefits academic users and scientific researchers.

SurveySparrow template library to create polls or an online survey.
Survey customization
Survey data can be exported to Excel, PDF, and JSON.

Premium plans begin at $19 monthly.

04. Qualtrics

Qualtrics is another great survey software option and one of the best tools for researchers. It can handle everything from simple questionnaires to complex research surveys.

Qualtrics is a great choice for survey solutions that are tailored to customers, employees, and brands. Its drag-and-drop survey builder lets you make survey forms that are very flexible and easy to use.

Drag and drop functionality for easy-to-use
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
Real-time dashboard

Premium plans start at $1500 yearly.

Simple text editors from the past need to be better. For our dynamic, interactive, and media-rich research, we need a tool that combines all aspects of modern research under one roof. And this is where Bit.ai comes in.

Bit lets researchers and teams work together, share, track, and manage all their knowledge and research in one place. It is the perfect market research tool for sharing multi-dimensional research with your peers, not just plain, boring text and slides.

Easy-to-use interface
Use the content library to save media files for convenient access.
Organized workspaces

Paid plans start from Pro at $8.00 monthly.

06. Elink.io

Researchers can easily save content from around the web with Elink.io. They can save links to articles, videos, cloud files, social media posts, and much more. If you are looking for the best online tools for researchers, Elink.io is for you.

Researchers can change the title and description to add their own voices or notes. They can even group links together and send them to others as a newsletter or put them on your blog or website.

Chrome extension to save links quickly.
Make and distribute a newsletter within minutes.

Premium plans start at $ 15.00 monthly.

07. GanttPRO

The GanttPRO project and task management tool makes it easy for single researchers and groups of any size to plan their tasks on a visually appealing Gantt chart timeline, track their progress, and meet all their deadlines.

GanttPRO lets researchers add as many tasks, task groups, and subtasks as they want to one timeline.

Several dozen templates.
Easy collaboration with colleagues.

Premium plans start from $4.5.00 per user monthly.

08. Grammarly

Grammarly is one of the best tools for researchers. Fixing grammar, sentence structure, and silly spelling mistakes can take hours. With Grammarly’s brilliant editor, all these mistakes are automatically fixed.

Aside from fixing basic spelling and grammar mistakes, Grammarly has a punctuation checker, a tool to improve your vocabulary and find plagiarism. So, after the entire research process, all of your work can be done under one roof.

Best features:

Accessible via Word, Slack, etc.
Grammarly’s Chrome extension provides real-time grammar checks online.
Allow you to detect document tone and dependability.
Allows custom goals to be set.

Premium plans start from $11.66.00 monthly.

09. Typeset.io

Typeset.io claims to be a more innovative alternative to Word and Latex that all researchers should use. You can start your research with a simple interface or by importing your Word files.

Over 100,000 journal formats
Editing services to improve your publication chances
Built-in collaboration tools allow other researchers to have a platform to work with.

Premium plans start from $8.00 monthly for researchers.

10. Endnote

Endnote can be considered one of the best tools for researchers in their research process. Endnote helps you to do smarter research by making it easier to format bibliographies, find full texts, and find references.

An endnote is a collaborative tool because it lets you share selected groups of references, manage team access, and keep track of activity and changes from a single dashboard.

Variety of templates and plug-ins.
Automatic reference management software

Paid plans start from $249.00

11. Mendeley

Mendeley is software for managing references. Researchers can create references and citations in various journal styles with just a few clicks. Researchers can connect and network with more than 6 million users through its research network.

Annotate and organize documents

Premium plans start from $55.00 yearly.

12. ResearchGate

ResearchGate gives you access to more than 135 million pages of publications. It lets you know what’s going on in your field. Researchers can share their work, work together with other researchers, and find new research papers and bibliographies through a built-in community. It can be one of the best tools for researchers.

Citation tracking
Analytics to see who reads your work
Discover new ideas

It is free to use.

There are a lot of best tools for researchers. If you are a researcher and want the best tools that fit your needs, you should take the time to figure out what features you need.

We hope this post has helped you determine which research tools are best for you. Every survey tool on the list has both common and unique features. In this situation, it’s important to know what your options are and what features and pricing they provide.

QuestionPro InsightHub and QuestionPro Research Suite are the best tools for researchers to do surveys. It lets professors, students, employees, and customers make and take as many surveys as they want for academic or administrative purposes related to the institution.

This tool allows you to build web forms, do offline research projects, collect and evaluate data, and do much more. Try QuestionPro right now!

FREE TRIAL LEARN MORE

Frequently Asking Questions

A good research tool has three main qualities. Validity, dependability, and usability are examples of these. A researcher should examine data collection tools in terms of these criteria while choosing them.

Case studies, checklists, interviews, observations, and surveys or questionnaires are all data collection tools. It is critical to select data-gathering tools since research is conducted in various ways and for various goals.

Many factors can undermine a study’s internal validity, including errors in measurement or participant selection, and researchers should consider and avoid these flaws.

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10 online research tools every online learner should know about.

10 Awesome Online Research Tools

Online learning has opened up the opportunity for many people to educate themselves, learn new skills, and earn college degrees even if they are not able to attend classes in a traditional sense of the word. Some just don’t have the time/money to move or commute to another city, or they work full time and have families, which means eLearning is their only option. As great as online learning is, it has several drawbacks. Obviously, it requires you to be online most of the time, which is fine, if you are doing research, writing, taking online tests, or attending your virtual classes.

But being online also makes you more prone to procrastination and distractions. There is also the issue of keeping all those gigabytes of research data organized and having hardware that’s powerful enough to enable real-time communication. These are just some of the issues eLearners face. Fortunately, there is something you can do to make your eLearning experience a lot more efficient and stimulating, especially the research part. We have prepared a list of 10 online research tools every online learner should master.

Todoist . Research is a time-intensive activity, which means you will need a tool to organize both your professional and personal life. We advise you to give Todoist a shot. Todoist enables you to manage all of your projects and access them from any platform you own, including your desktop computer, laptop, or portable devices. You can share your tasks and collaborate with other people. Another clever feature is “karma” points, which are given to users if they are successful in assigning tasks to projects.
EndNote . EndNote is a multi-functional research tool which helps you search for information in online databases and full texts based on abstracts, as well as manage and auto-complete all of your references. Like Todoist, EndNote also enables you to share your research data with your collaborators. If you prefer to work alone, you can do that too by saving, managing and tagging your research results for better access. Other features include bibliography maker that is capable of creating citations in over 6,000 styles, as well as automatic journal suggestion.
EduGeeksClub . Every once in a while, you are going to come across an insurmountable obstacle while doing your research. Instead of giving up, you can turn to EduGeeksClub for professional research help. Get in touch with professional writers and researchers and learn all the ins and outs of thorough research. Also, you can commission a paper from them which you can then use as a resource for your essay, paper, or dissertation. They also provide editing and proofreading services.
Zotero . Another essential tool all online learners should make use of is Zotero. Zotero integrates itself seamlessly into your browser and uses its clever ability to automatically recognize content for you. After that, all it takes for you to save it to your personal, fully searchable library, which is another feature in Zotero, in a single click. It supports audio and video files, PDF documents, as well as most image formats.
RefWorks . RefWorks is a browser-based tool which has the ability to help learners find the right research data, organize it, store it, and easily share it with their colleagues and collaborators. All of that research information and written work needs to be supported by proper citations, and RefWorks generates those for you automatically, as well as bibliographies in every style. If you are not sure how to make use of its full potential, there are plenty of tutorials on how to do it, right there on the website.
DataElixir . One of the best ways to keep up to date with all the latest news, developments and data in science is to find a website which curates all of those on a weekly basis. We recommend Data Elixir. Whether you’re an eLearner, a scientist, or a researcher, you benefit a lot for its weekly collection of all the best data resources and news, and you don’t even have to put in any effort whatsoever. You just have to subscribe to their free weekly newsletter and that’s it.
Paperpile . Paperfile is a reference management software which, similar to Zotero, works as an extension for Google Chrome browser, making it accessible for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux users. We recommend that you use it to find and import data from platforms like Google Scholar, PubMed, or arXiv. You can easily export all the PDF documents and data to Google Drive, which means you’ll have the opportunity for collaborative editing of your papers. The collaboration doesn’t end there, because you can send data back and forth between Paperpile and Zotero, for example, as well as Mendeley.
DeepDyve . High-quality research papers and scholarly journals can often set you back a pretty penny, so it’s important for you to know exactly what you’re getting for the money you’ve paid. The only trouble is, you are often allowed to look at an abstract for free, and decide if you want to buy the full-text paper, and then realize it’s of no use to you. DeepDyve enables you to access the full-text articles for a limited period of time, enough for you to figure out if the paper is exactly what you are looking for.
ContentMine . ContentMine is an online resource which aims to bring over 100,000,000 scientific facts close to the people, by converting the collective knowledge of the world that is present in scientific literature into content which can be read on your computes. All of its tools, features, and services are free and open access. They often cite Wikipedia and similar open projects as a source of their inspiration.
Plagiarism Checker. In order to rid your work of duplicate content, run it through Plagiarism Checker, which will scan and determine if there is any duplicate content present. If there is, you either need to provide better citations, or rewrite your work so that it’s more unique.

These 10 awesome online research tools will change the way you do research for good, and for the better, and your eLearning process will be made much more streamlined and efficient. In the end, that’s the thing that matters the most.

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Top 13 Tools for Researchers in 2024!

Gone are the days of going to the library, studying numerous books, taking notes on paper, and doing research. Thanks to technology, we no longer have to do this tedious routine to do research. However, research is still a meticulous, painstaking process.

This is why we decided to uncover some of the best software tools for researchers that are going to help you conduct and maintain your research with ease. Read on…

List of Top 13 Best Tools for Researchers for better results:

Research today is dynamic. We often use the internet to browse websites, watch videos, study analytics, and conduct our research by exploring different types of digital content, making technology a major stakeholder in making our research success .

While the internet has made it easy for us to access worldly information with the click of a button (or mouse!), it has created a whole new set of problems.

Sorting through a seemingly infinite number of websites, verifying content, and curating only the best stuff can take a lot of time and effort. This is why we have brought you 13 essential research tools every researcher should use while working on the internet.

1. Bit.ai

Bit.ai: Documentation tool for researchers

Online research means going through numerous websites, articles, blogs, images, videos, infographics, and more to find what you are looking for.

For our dynamic, interactive, and media-rich research, we need a tool that incorporates all facets of modern-day research under one roof. Simple text editors of the past just won’t cut it anymore! This is where Bit comes in.

Bit allows researchers and teams to collaborate, share, track, and manage all knowledge and research in one place.

It’s the perfect research tool to share multi-dimensional research with your peers and not just plain, boring text and slides.

Add articles, PDFs, videos, white papers, ebooks, audio samples- basically anything you can think of – and share it with your peers easily!

Other notable features of Bit include:

An easy-to-use, minimal editor that supports Markdown.
Collaborative, real-time editing, and communication with peers.
Add any type of digital content (images, videos, etc) to your Bit document.
A content library to save all your media files for quick access.
Smart search, allows anyone to search and find any files, images, documents, links, etc quickly.

All-in-all, Bit is a must-have writing tool for researchers and authors!

Key Features of Bit:

Workspaces to store different research content easily
Content library to store media assets
Real-time collaboration with fellow researchers
Free with limited functionality
Paid plans start from Pro ($8/month), Business ($15/month), Enterprise (contact sales)

Read more: How Bit.ai Can Help You Manage Your Academic Research?

2. elink.io

Research often involves going through hundreds of links and articles and compiling them in one safe space for future reference or publishing them for your audience.

This is why many researchers use bookmarking and curation tools like elink to quickly save their links under one roof and share them with their peers.

elink makes it easy for researchers to save content from around the web. They can save article links, videos, cloud files, social media posts, and much more!

Researchers have the option of saving content to their link library or adding them directly to content collections and sharing their research with their peers . To make the bookmarking process a breeze, elink also has a chrome extension .

Simply click on the extension or right-click on any webpage to save the content directly to your elink dashboard.

Researchers can edit the title and description to add their own voices or notes. They can even bundle links together and share their link collection with others as a newsletter or embed the collection on your blog/website!

Key Features of elink:

Save links quickly using the chrome extension
Create and share research links as a newsletter or embed it on your website
Easy user-interface
Paid plans start at Pro Monthly ($15/month), Pro 1 Year ($12/month), and Pro 2 years ($10/month).

3. GanttPRO

No matter what kind of research you do, you need to organize, plan, and stay focused on all of your activities.

Without a robust planning tool, researchers may fall behind the schedule and lose their progress.

GanttPRO project and task management tool makes it easy for single researchers and groups of any size to plan their tasks on a visually appealing Gantt chart timeline, follow their progress, and all the deadlines.

GanttPRO allows researchers to create a limitless number of tasks, groups of tasks, and subtasks on one timeline.

Besides, it’s a perfect planning tool for assigning tasks to your fellow researchers or creating virtual resources, whoever or whatever they may be. The software is a good choice for collaboration, time tracking, as well as sharing and exporting your schedules.

Key Features of GanttPRO:

Dozens of ready-made templates.
Real-time collaboration with fellow researchers.
Elegant user interface with a short learning curve.
Free 14-day trial with all features available.
Paid plans start from Team ($4.5/user/month), Individual ($15/month), Enterprise (contact sales).

4. Grammarly

Research work often involves hours of proofreading and spellchecking to make your research professional .

Grammarly, a writing enhancement tool will save you a ton of time and effort doing this dreaded task! Apart from basic spellchecking and corrections, Grammarly includes a grammar checker, a punctuation checker, a vocabulary enhancer, and even a plagiarism checker tool!

This awesome tool scans your research for more than 250 types of grammar mistakes in six distinct writing genres and leaves you with error-free writing. With thorough explanations for all your errors and weekly progress reports .

Grammarly is a must-have tool for researchers. It’s available as a browser extension, a desktop app, a web-based app, and a Microsoft add-in. Many of the Grammarly alternatives are also available in the market that is equally good.

Key Features of Grammarly:

Works with the majority of online tools like Word, Slack, etc.
Plagiarism checker tool
Tone detector
Paid plans start from: Premium ($11.66/month), Business ($12.50/month)

Read more: 10 Best Writing Apps To Make You A Better Writer!

5. Typeset.io

With over 100,000+ verified journal formats to choose from, Typeform makes the process of research a bit too easy! Quickly copy-paste or upload your paper on Typeset and follow any citation style you need.

Typeset also has a plagiarism and grammar checker built in to ensure your writing is error-free. Once done uploading and citing, click on autoformat to generate your report in seconds.

You can also download your research in PDF , Docx, LaTeX file, or even as a Zip file. With collaboration features built-in, you can invite your fellow researchers to the platform and work together.

Key Features of Typeset:

Over 100,000+ journal formats to choose from
Plagiarism and grammar checker tool
Editing services to improve your publication chances
Paid plans start from: Researcher ($8/month), Team($6/month), Journals / Publishers (contact sales)

6. Scrivener

Scrivener is another great tool for research writing and keeping your notes organized.

Used by researchers, screenwriters, novelists, non-fiction writers, students, journalists, academics, lawyers, translators, and more, Scrivener is a tool made for long writing projects.

On signing up, you are quickly presented with its editor, with a sidebar to keep everything in place. You can also break your content into manageable sections of any size and leave Scrivener to join them together.

For novelists and storytellers, there’s also a corkboard to visualize your storyline and move cards around as you like.

The outliner keeps a synopsis of what you have already written, along with word count data and metadata. Users can arrange their research articles and other files in folders and subfolders.

Key Features of Scrivener:

Desktop and mobile apps
Outline creator
Easy organization
Paid plans start from $40.84/one-time fee

7. ProofHub

You must organize, prepare, and stay focused on all of your efforts, regardless of the type of research you conduct.

Researchers may go behind schedule and lose progress if they don’t have a good task management tool. ProofHub is an all-in-one project and team management application that allows research teams and organizations of any size to efficiently plan their research projects in one spot.

ProofHub allows you to create, assign and track tasks using effective task management features like Kanban boards and table view. Researchers can also get a visual idea of how their project is progressing using robust Gantt charts.

ProofHub also allows you to store and jot down all the data or information collected through your research in Notes. You can even create different notebooks and store your information according to the topic. Not just that, you can even share your research work with your team members.

Teams can also share and store files, documents, and images in ProofHub’s files section. Managers can track their team’s time spent on a specific research task using automatic and manual timers.

Team members can also brainstorm ideas or have real-time discussions in ProofHub’s discussions section and make way for better research work.

Key features of ProofHub:

Ready to use project templates
Task management
Time tracking and project reporting
Team collaboration (chat, notes, and discussions)
File management
Online proofing
14-day free trial with all the features.

8. Google Scholar

Next up is an amazing research tool by Google called Google Scholar. Google Scholar provides a quick way to broadly search for scholarly literature from one location.

Look for articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions, from professional societies, online repositories, universities, academic publishers, and other websites.

Researchers can also explore related works, citations, authors, and publications easily. Create a public author profile and see who’s citing your recent publication. Google Scholar also allows its users to keep up with recent developments in any area of research.

Key Features of Google Scholar:

Create a public author page
Look for information across Google’s database
Easy to use
Free to use

Endnote wants you to research smarter by simplifying the tiresome work of formatting bibliographies, finding full text, and searching for references.

Endnote is collaborative in nature as it allows you to share selected groups of references, manage team access, and track activity and changes from one single dashboard.

With smarter insights, Endnote automatically finds the impact of your references and finds the best-fit journal for your papers.

The platform also enables users to automatically create, format, and update bibliographies. Quickly export your references and full-text PDFs into EndNote and start working instantly.

With a bunch of EndNote templates and plug-ins, researchers can enhance their Endnote experience and get the most out of the platform.

Key Features of Endnote:

Import filters for prior research
Track your teammates’ activity on your shared library
Automatic reference and link updating
Paid plans start from $249

10. Evernote

Evernote is a note-taking app that can be very useful while conducting research . The app helps you store all your personal ideas, to-do listsm4, notes, and research links in one place.

Create separate tags and folders for the different types of information you are saving and keep it all organized.

Evernote auto-syncs across all your devices, including desktop, smartphone, and tablet, so you can switch between devices without losing your data.

Its Chrome browser extension called the Evernote web clipper is a great add-on for saving articles or other content on the internet while doing your research.

Just click the browser extension to save the entire page or highlights to your Evernote notebook along with any notes you have about that page.

Key Features of Evernote:

Keep notes, articles, and other content in one place
Chrome extension for clipping content
Set reminders
Paid plans start from Plus ($34.99 per year or $3.99 per month), Premium ($69.99 per year or $7.99 per month), and Evernote Business (contact sales)

11. Mendeley

Mendeley: Reference management software for researchers

Mendeley is a reference management software that allows researchers to create references, citations, and bibliographies in multiple journal styles with just a few clicks.

Quickly access your library from anywhere – from anywhere. Windows, Mac, Linux, etc and add papers directly from your browser with a few clicks or import any documents from your desktop to your library.

With its research network, researchers connect and network with over 6 million users. Users can create groups to carry out discussions, discover research, and follow curated bibliographies.

There are also over 250,000 + science, technology, and health jobs to advance your career and grant info from over 5000 organizations to fund your next research !

Key Features of Mendeley:

Annotate and organize documents
Find and create groups with fellow researchers
Grant information from over 5000 organizations
Paid plans start from $55/year for 5 GB to $165/year to unlimited storage

12. ContentMine

ContentMine offers a variety of text mining services to help researchers find, download, analyze, and extract knowledge from academic papers.

ContentMine builds its own open-source code to help out researchers find papers and not waste time on the internet doing so. They can also convert academic papers , PDFs to HTML, or to almost any format.

ContentMine can also extract data from tables and graphs, reducing the time taken to conduct a meta-analysis. The platform also offers consultancy as well as training workshops to educate people on the work they do and how.

Key Features of ContentMine:

Extract data from tables and graphs
Quickly mine text from hundreds of papers
Workshops and training
Contact sales

13. ResearchGate

Researchgate tool for research publications

The last tool on our list of awesome tools for researchers is a platform called ResearchGate. ResearchGate gives you access to over 135 million publication pages, allowing you to stay up to date with what’s happening in your field.

With a built-in community, researchers can share their research, collaborate with peers, and discover new papers and bibliographies.

ResearchGate also provides deep analytics on who’s been reading your work and keeps track of your citations. With over 17 million users, ResearchGate is a research community to join!

Key Features of ResearchGate:

Share and find researchers
Analytics to see who’s reading your work
Citation tracking

Before you go!

Our team at bit.ai has created a few awesome templates to make your research process more efficient. Make sure to check them out before you go, y our team might need them!

Case Study Template
Research Paper Template
Competitor Research Template
Brainstorming Template
SWOT Analysis Template
White Paper Template

Final Words

There you have it folks, our list of amazing websites, apps, and software to use while conducting your research. Research is hard work- from finding and managing content to organizing and publishing- research takes a lot of time and effort.

However, with our awesome list of tools, researchers are surely going to get out the most of their time and effort and get work done more efficiently. Did we miss any awesome tool for researchers out there? Let us know by tweeting us at @bit_docs.

Further reads:

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Best Resource Management Tools and Software
How to Write a Research Proposal?

11 Best Link in Bio Tools in 2024!

Writing Vision Statement: Definition, Examples and Best Practices!

Diverse workforce: bringing different perspectives together, team charter: what is it & how to create it, what is content planning: a complete guide (template included), what is agile testing principles, lifecycle & strategies, 13 programming blogs and websites to improve your coding skills, change management plan: what is it and how to create it.

About Bit.ai

Bit.ai is the essential next-gen workplace and document collaboration platform. that helps teams share knowledge by connecting any type of digital content. With this intuitive, cloud-based solution, anyone can work visually and collaborate in real-time while creating internal notes, team projects, knowledge bases, client-facing content, and more.

The smartest online Google Docs and Word alternative, Bit.ai is used in over 100 countries by professionals everywhere, from IT teams creating internal documentation and knowledge bases, to sales and marketing teams sharing client materials and client portals.

👉👉Click Here to Check out Bit.ai.

10 research tools every PhD student needs

A PhD is the penultimate academic degree. With their research that looks into solving critical world issues, PhD graduates help everyone understand the world around them better; hence the important role of research tools that help them achieve this.

A PhD requires candidates to collect and gather data for their dissertation so they can make an informed analysis of whether their hypothesis is supported, as well as deduce future probabilities and trends. This is often a time-consuming process – one has to search from the library and internet for literature, conducting experiments, writing and publishing papers, on top of the tedious task of formatting these sources .

Since a dissertation can be upwards of 60,000 words, how then to efficiently collect and compile everything? Now that the world has become increasingly advanced in terms of technology, it makes sense to know how to use the many available online tools to help with the research process.

The right tools can help save time, effort and energy, helping you produce more accessible and visually presentable as well. You can even enjoy a better work-life balance since these tools will ease the long-drawn research.

These research tools can help free up precious time to concentrate on your PhD dissertation-writing. Source: Marc Wattrelot/AFP

Helena Hartmann – currently obtaining her PhD at the Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Unit in Vienna, Austria – has compiled a useful list of research tools for PhD students. Many have found the list infinitely helpful (“superb,” “made my day”) and that is why these 10 top research tools that every PhD student needs are highlighted here in no particular order.

Research Tool 1: Journal Rater

Have you ever struggled to choose a journal to send your research paper because when you are not sure which journal has good or bad reviews? The Journal Rater by @PhDVoice does that tiring guess-work for you.

This easily accessible database has ratings about the quality of the reviewers, the speed of the peer-review and publishing process and whether you should submit to a particular journal, among others. You can even include your comments and experiences, and choose to be anonymous as well; the best part is you know exactly which journals are great to submit.

Research Tool 2: Connected Papers

When you are doing a literature review and want to find connections between published papers, Connected Papers by @ConnectedPapers can help you do that. By entering a typical paper there, they will show a visual graph of similar papers in your field.

The more you explore, the more likely you can see trends, popular works and dynamics in your field. With more new papers published every day, Connected Papers helps you keep abreast of these important papers; you can also access their Prior Works to search for ancestor works in your field and Derivative Works for literature reviews of your field.

Research Tool 3: Citation Diversity Statement

Citation bias means having a tendency for a research investigation that shows benefit to be quoted more than those neutral or negative ones. Another definition is a scientist tending to cite research articles published in their preferred journals more frequently.

Checking and clearly indicating the proportion of male and female first and last-name authors can be a tiring. Using this citation diversity statement by Zurn et al is a helpful tool to reduce citation bias; you can easily append this simple and effective statement to your paper as well.

Research Tool 4: CRediT

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) aims to recognise individual author contributions while reducing authorship disputes and enhancing collaboration. Through CRediT, authors can accurately show and describe their varied contributions to the published work.

Here’s how it works: the corresponding author should confirm the descriptions are accurate and that all the authors have agreed on this; the various roles are listed according to the categories. The CRediT statement should be given at the time of submission – this will then appear above the acknowledgement section of the published paper.

Research Tool 5: Unpaywall – OpenAccess

Unpaywall is an open database of 30,887,744 free scholarly articles from over 50,000 publishers and repositories. That means you can easily find, track and use this Open Access content; it is completely legal.

Unpaywall uses the DOI function to search for articles published in peer-reviewed journals; in fact Unpaywall has already been integrated into many worldwide library systems, search platforms and other information products. To use Unpaywall, go to any closed access article, click on the green button and you can get an Open Access version.

Research Tool 6: Create your own website

Any academic wanting their research and publications to be easily found should consider making a website. Hartmann found Dan Quintana’s Twitter thread tutorial on making websites easy and invaluable – see Hartmann’s website here.

In one hour, Quintana will show you how to make a website for free. All you need is a @github and @netlify account, and the downloaded @code – and your website with all your research and publications will be up and running in no time.

Research Tool 7: Excel Journal Database

If you want to have an easy compilation of your literature review sources, Stephen McQuilliam ’s Excel Journal Database Webinar can help you in this aspect . In this Youtube video, McQuilliam explains step by step how to build an Excel database to organise your notes and bring them together for your writing.

Research Tool 8: APA Word Template

For researchers, having to format their papers in APA can be an arduous process. Fortunately, Nicolás F. Narvaez Linares’ tip may make many researchers sigh with relief.

In Microsoft Word, just type APA in the New Document Tab, and the APA template automatically pops up. A word of caution: this template uses the 6th edition of the APA so you may have to make some changes since the APA has now released its 7th edition.

Research Tool 9: Notion

If you have many applications and want to keep them all in one place, Hartmann considers Notion as the best one. Basically Notion acts as an all-in-one workspace – you can keep your notes, tasks, wikis and databases there in Notion.

Research Tool 10: Canva

Finally, this design website is excellent if you have to prepare slides and figures for your presentations. The free, professional and nice designs can make your presentations more visually appealing.

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Introduction to implementation research

Introduction.

The audience for this toolkit
Relevance of IR for improved access and delivery of interventions
The purpose of this Toolkit
Research teams
Self-assessment and reflection activities

Understanding implementation research

The need for IR
Outcomes of IR
Characteristics of IR
How IR works
Community engagement in IR
Ethical challenges in IR

Developing an Implementation Research Proposal

The team and the research challenge
Structure of an IR proposal
Components of an IR proposal
Research Design
Project plan
Impact and measuring project results
Supplements
Funding an IR project
Common problems with applications

Research methods and data management

Study design for IR projects
Selecting research methods
Mixed methods

Research tools and techniques

Data collection
Data management
Data analysis

IR-Planning and Conducting IR

Project planning
Project monitoring plan
Developing a logic model
Developing monitoring questions
Data use and reporting
Project execution
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IR-related communications and advocacy

Productive Dialogue
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Research Evidence: Barriers and Facilitators to Uptake
Policy Advocacy and Strategic Communications
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Developing a Communication Strategy
Steps in Developing a Communication Strategy
Communication materials and Platforms

Integrating implementation research into health systems

Start up, mapping and convening
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Ownership, trust, responsibilities and roles
Setting priorities, defining problems and research questions
Capacity strengthening
Uptake of findings
Documentation
Using the WHO Health Systems Framework in IR
Principles of sustainability

Developing implementation research projects with an intersectional gender lens

Integrating an intersectional gender lens in IR
Proposal development with an intersectional gender lens
Execution of an IR project with an intersectional gender lens
Good practices in IR projects with an intersectional gender perspective

Quantitative research tools

Qualitative research techniques and tools.

Qualitative research is generally used to explore values, attitudes, opinions, feelings and behaviours of individuals and understand how these affect the individuals in question. Researchers using qualitative methods are concerned with individuals’ perceptions of specific topics, issues or situations and the meanings they assign to their lives. This kind of research is important for generating theory, developing policy, improving educational practice, justifying change for a particular practice, and illuminating social issues. It may also be used to explain the results of a previous quantitative study or to prepare for the development of a quantitative study.

If your research team decides to use qualitative methods in your study, you will need to describe how qualitative methods will provide the information to help you address your research objectives and research question(s). For example, qualitative research may be appropriate because you intend to explore the values and behaviours of individuals in the study area in relation to a public health intervention, and to understand how these affect the phenomena in question. For example, why do some households have bed nets but do not use them? Or, why do individuals in a study area decline services from a specialized antenatal clinic? Qualitative methods can provide context, a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ needs and participants’ perspectives.

When collecting qualitative data, it is preferable to use more than one data collection method. Obtaining information on the same phenomena in a variety of ways allows the researcher to triangulate the data, adding rigour to the research. By nature, qualitative data collection is emergent and the design is intentionally flexible to enable the researcher investigate themes (findings) in more detail as they emerge.

Unlike quantitative data collection, qualitative data collection can be more flexible allowing the research to incorporate emerging themes in the ongoing data collection. This allows the researcher to test and validate findings as they collect the data. For example, perhaps in one in-depth interview, the researcher learns that people do not attend the lymphatic filariasis mass drug administration because they use traditional medicines and therefore feel that they are already under treatment. The researcher may then add a related question to subsequent in-depth interviews to see how prevalent this phenomenon is in the study population.

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Discover Essential Research Tools for Effective Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) | Boost Your M&E Process with Reliable Data Collection, Analysis, and Reporting Tools | Find the Right Instruments, Software, and Techniques to Enhance Your M&E Methods | Enhance Decision-making and Program Improvement in M&E with Powerful Research Tools.

Table of Contents

What are research tools?x
Research tools in M&E

Essential research tools commonly used across disciplines

How do i choose a research tool, what are methods vs tools in research, future trends and innovations in research tools for m&e, what are research tools.

Research tools refer to a wide range of resources, methods, instruments, software, or techniques that researchers use to collect , analyze , interpret, and communicate data and information during the research process.

These tools are designed to facilitate and enhance various aspects of research, such as data collection , organization, analysis, visualization, collaboration, and documentation. Research tools can be both physical (e.g., laboratory equipment, survey instruments) and digital (e.g., software, online databases).

They are essential for conducting research effectively, efficiently, and rigorously across different disciplines and research domains. Examples of research tools include laboratory equipment, survey questionnaires, statistical software, data visualization tools, literature databases, collaboration platforms, and more.

The choice of research tools depends on the specific research objectives, methods, and requirements of the study.

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Research Tools in M&E

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is a crucial component of research and program evaluation . Here are some essential research tools commonly used in the field of M&E:

Logic Models and Results Frameworks: Logic models or results frameworks are visual tools that help clarify the theory of change and establish the logical connections between project activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts. They provide a framework for designing M&E systems and identifying key indicators.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): KPIs are measurable indicators that track progress and performance toward project or program goals. They help monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of interventions. Examples of KPIs can include the number of beneficiaries reached, percentage of target achieved, or cost per output.
Surveys and Questionnaires: Surveys and questionnaires are useful tools for collecting quantitative data in M&E. They allow you to gather information from a large number of respondents and measure variables and indicators systematically. Online survey tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms can simplify data collection and analysis.
Interviews and Focus Groups: Qualitative data collection methods, such as interviews and focus groups, can provide in-depth insights into participants’ experiences, perceptions, and attitudes. These methods are particularly valuable for understanding the contextual factors and mechanisms underlying program outcomes.
Observations and Field Notes: Direct observations and field notes are often used to collect qualitative data in real-time. They help capture detailed information about program implementation, participant behaviors, and contextual factors that might not be evident through other methods.
Data Analysis Software: Statistical software packages like SPSS, Stata, or R are commonly used for quantitative data analysis in M&E. These tools enable researchers to clean, analyze, and interpret large datasets efficiently. Qualitative data analysis software such as NVivo or Atlas.ti can assist with organizing and analyzing qualitative data.
Data Visualization Tools: Tools like Excel, Tableau, or Power BI allow you to create visual representations of M&E data. Visualizations help communicate complex information and findings in a clear and compelling manner to stakeholders and decision-makers.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS): GIS tools like ArcGIS or QGIS enable researchers to analyze and visualize spatial data. They can help identify geographical patterns, hotspot analysis, and map program impact or reach.
Evaluation Management Systems: Evaluation management systems like DevResults or DHIS2 provide a centralized platform for managing M&E data, including data entry, analysis, reporting, and visualization. These systems streamline data management processes and facilitate collaboration among evaluation team members.
Theory-Based Evaluation Approaches: Theory-based evaluation approaches , such as the Theory of Change or Contribution Analysis, help guide the evaluation process by explicitly linking program activities to intended outcomes and impacts. These approaches provide a framework for designing evaluations and analyzing the causal mechanisms at work.

It’s important to note that the selection of research tools in M&E should align with the specific objectives, scope, and resources of the evaluation. Tailor the choice of tools to the needs of the evaluation design and ensure that they provide reliable and valid data to inform decision-making.

There are numerous research tools available to support various types of research, and the choice of tools depends on the specific field of study and research goals. However, here are some essential research tools commonly used across disciplines:

Library Databases: Online databases such as PubMed (biomedical literature), IEEE Xplore (engineering and computer science), JSTOR (humanities and social sciences), and Scopus (multidisciplinary) provide access to a vast collection of academic journals, articles, conference papers, and other scholarly resources.
Google Scholar : This search engine specifically focuses on scholarly literature. It allows you to find academic papers, theses, books, and conference proceedings. It’s a useful tool for accessing both open access and subscription-based scholarly content.
ResearchGate : ResearchGate is a social networking platform for researchers. It enables collaboration, networking, and access to research publications, preprints, and datasets. Researchers can also ask and answer questions related to their field of expertise.
Reference Management Software: Tools like Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote help researchers organize and manage bibliographic references. They allow you to collect, store, annotate, and cite references, making the citation process more efficient and streamlined.
Data Analysis Tools: Depending on your research field, you may need specific data analysis tools. For statistical analysis, software such as SPSS, R, or Stata is commonly used. For qualitative research, NVivo and Atlas.ti assist with analyzing textual data.
Collaboration and Communication Tools: Tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Workspace facilitate collaboration and communication among research teams. They provide features like file sharing, real-time editing, video conferencing, and project management.
Data Visualization Tools: Tools like Tableau, Plotly, or Excel can help create visual representations of data. These tools make it easier to present and interpret complex data sets, enabling researchers to communicate their findings effectively.
Online Survey Tools: Platforms like SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, or Qualtrics allow researchers to design and distribute online surveys. These tools simplify the data collection process and provide features for analyzing and visualizing survey responses.
Reference Search and Document Delivery: Tools like interlibrary loan systems, WorldCat, or services like Unpaywall can help you access research articles and resources that may not be available in your institution’s library.
Academic Social Networks: Platforms like Academia.edu or LinkedIn can help researchers showcase their work, connect with peers, and discover potential collaborators or mentors.

Remember that the choice of research tools may vary depending on your specific research field and requirements. It’s essential to explore and evaluate the available options to find the tools that best align with your research goals and needs.

Choosing the right research tool in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) requires careful consideration of various factors.

Here’s a step-by-step process to help you choose a research tool for your M&E study:

Define Your Research Objectives: Clearly articulate the purpose and goals of your M&E study. Determine what specific information you need to collect, analyze, and communicate through the evaluation process.
Identify Data Needs: Identify the types of data you will be working with (quantitative, qualitative, spatial) and the specific indicators or variables you need to measure. Consider the level of detail, precision, and reliability required for your data.
Assess Available Resources: Evaluate the resources available to you, including budget, time constraints, technical expertise, and access to technology or specialized equipment. Consider the level of support you may need in terms of training, technical assistance, or collaboration.
Research Tool Options: Conduct research to explore the range of research tools available in M&E. Consult academic literature, practitioner resources, online forums, and professional networks to identify commonly used tools in your specific field or context.
Evaluate Tool Suitability: Evaluate each research tool option against your specific needs and constraints. Consider factors such as ease of use, data quality, scalability, compatibility with existing systems, and cost-effectiveness. Assess whether the tool aligns with the type of data you are working with and the analysis and reporting requirements of your M&E study.
Seek Recommendations and Feedback: Consult with experts, colleagues, or M&E professionals who have experience with the tools you are considering. Seek recommendations and feedback on their effectiveness, limitations, and user-friendliness. Their insights can provide valuable perspectives in selecting the most appropriate tool.
Trial and Testing: If feasible, conduct small-scale trials or pilot tests with a subset of your data or research participants. This allows you to assess the usability and functionality of the tool, identify any potential issues, and gain practical experience in its implementation.
Consider Integration and Compatibility: Consider the compatibility of the research tool with other tools or systems you may be using in your M&E process. Evaluate how well the tool integrates with existing data management, analysis, or reporting systems to ensure smooth workflows and data interoperability.
Training and Support: Assess the availability of training resources, user guides, tutorials, and technical support for the research tool. Consider the level of training required for you and your team to effectively utilize the tool and ensure proper implementation.
Make an Informed Decision: Based on the evaluation and assessment of the above factors, make an informed decision on the research tool that best meets your M&E objectives, data requirements, available resources, and user needs.

Remember, the choice of a research tool should be driven by the specific context, research objectives, and resources available to you. It’s important to consider trade-offs and select a tool that maximizes the quality and efficiency of your M&E study.

In the context of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), methods and tools have similar meanings as in general research, but they are applied specifically to the M&E process :

M&E Methods: M&E methods refer to the systematic approaches and frameworks used to assess, measure, and evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, and impact of programs, projects, or interventions. These methods provide a structured and rigorous approach to collecting and analyzing data to inform decision-making. M&E methods may include baseline studies, surveys, interviews, focus groups, case studies, statistical analysis, impact evaluation designs, and more. They guide the overall evaluation design and determine the data collection and analysis techniques used in M&E.
M&E Tools: M&E tools are the specific resources, instruments, software, or techniques used within the M&E methods to support the data collection, management, analysis, visualization, and reporting processes. These tools provide practical means to implement M&E methods effectively. Examples of M&E tools include data collection templates, survey questionnaires, data analysis software (e.g., SPSS, Stata, R), visualization tools (e.g., Excel, Tableau), logic models, results frameworks, evaluation management systems (e.g., DevResults, DHIS2), and more. M&E tools assist in streamlining and enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of the M&E process.

In M&E, methods establish the overall approach to evaluating and assessing programs or interventions, while tools are the specific resources or techniques used within those methods to facilitate data collection, analysis, and reporting. M&E methods guide the evaluation design and data analysis, while M&E tools provide the means to execute those methods effectively. Both methods and tools are crucial in conducting rigorous and effective M&E, ensuring that data is collected, analyzed, and interpreted in a systematic and reliable manner to inform decision-making and program improvement.

As the field of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) continues to evolve, researchers and practitioners are exploring new trends and innovations in research tools to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of evaluations. Here are some emerging trends and future directions in research tools for M&E:

Integrated Data Platforms: With the increasing volume and complexity of data generated in M&E, there is a growing need for integrated data platforms that streamline data collection, management, analysis, and reporting processes. These platforms bring together various tools and functionalities into a unified system, allowing for seamless data flow and collaboration among stakeholders.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning: AI and machine learning technologies hold great potential for automating data analysis, identifying patterns and trends, and generating insights from large datasets in M&E. By leveraging AI algorithms, researchers can gain deeper insights into program performance, identify predictive indicators, and make data-driven decisions more efficiently.
Mobile Data Collection Tools: Mobile data collection tools are becoming increasingly popular for conducting surveys, collecting field data, and monitoring program activities in real-time. These tools enable researchers to capture data using smartphones or tablets, allowing for faster data collection, improved data quality, and enhanced accessibility in remote or resource-constrained settings.
Blockchain Technology: Blockchain technology offers opportunities for enhancing the transparency, security, and integrity of M&E data. By leveraging blockchain-based platforms, researchers can ensure the immutability and traceability of data, reduce the risk of data manipulation or fraud, and enhance trust and accountability in the evaluation process.
Open Data and Data Sharing Platforms: There is a growing movement towards open data and data sharing in M&E, driven by the desire for transparency, collaboration, and knowledge exchange. Open data platforms facilitate the sharing of evaluation data, findings, and resources among stakeholders, enabling greater reproducibility, accountability, and innovation in the field.
Citizen Science and Participatory Approaches: Citizen science and participatory approaches involve engaging community members and stakeholders in the research process, from data collection to interpretation and decision-making. By involving local communities in M&E efforts, researchers can gather diverse perspectives, foster ownership, and ensure the relevance and sustainability of evaluation initiatives.
Ethical Considerations and Data Privacy: With the increasing use of digital technologies and data-driven approaches in M&E, there is a growing awareness of the need to address ethical considerations and data privacy concerns. Researchers must prioritize ethical principles such as informed consent, data confidentiality, and protection of vulnerable populations to ensure responsible and ethical conduct of evaluations.

By embracing these emerging trends and innovations in research tools, M&E practitioners can enhance the quality, rigor, and impact of evaluations, ultimately contributing to more effective and evidence-based decision-making in development and humanitarian efforts.

Research tools play a crucial role in the field of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) by supporting data collection, analysis, visualization, and reporting processes . The choice of research tools should be guided by the specific objectives, context, and data requirements of the evaluation.

Essential research tools in M&E include data collection instruments (surveys, interviews, observation checklists), data analysis software (SPSS, Stata, R), data visualization tools (Excel, Tableau), logic models, KPI frameworks, GIS software, evaluation management systems, and collaboration platforms.

By selecting and utilizing appropriate research tools, M&E practitioners can enhance the efficiency , accuracy, and effectiveness of their evaluations, leading to evidence-based decision-making and program improvement.

It is important to evaluate and choose tools that align with the evaluation design, data type, available resources, and technical expertise to ensure rigorous and meaningful evaluation outcomes in M&E.

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National archives catalog.

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7 Data Collection Methods & Tools For Research

Data Collection

The underlying need for Data collection is to capture quality evidence that seeks to answer all the questions that have been posed. Through data collection businesses or management can deduce quality information that is a prerequisite for making informed decisions.

To improve the quality of information, it is expedient that data is collected so that you can draw inferences and make informed decisions on what is considered factual.

At the end of this article, you would understand why picking the best data collection method is necessary for achieving your set objective.

Sign up on Formplus Builder to create your preferred online surveys or questionnaire for data collection. You don’t need to be tech-savvy! Start creating quality questionnaires with Formplus.

What is Data Collection?

Data collection is a methodical process of gathering and analyzing specific information to proffer solutions to relevant questions and evaluate the results. It focuses on finding out all there is to a particular subject matter. Data is collected to be further subjected to hypothesis testing which seeks to explain a phenomenon.

Hypothesis testing eliminates assumptions while making a proposition from the basis of reason.

For collectors of data, there is a range of outcomes for which the data is collected. But the key purpose for which data is collected is to put a researcher in a vantage position to make predictions about future probabilities and trends.

The core forms in which data can be collected are primary and secondary data. While the former is collected by a researcher through first-hand sources, the latter is collected by an individual other than the user.

Types of Data Collection

Before broaching the subject of the various types of data collection. It is pertinent to note that data collection in itself falls under two broad categories; Primary data collection and secondary data collection.

Primary Data Collection

Primary data collection by definition is the gathering of raw data collected at the source. It is a process of collecting the original data collected by a researcher for a specific research purpose. It could be further analyzed into two segments; qualitative research and quantitative data collection methods.

Qualitative Research Method

The qualitative research methods of data collection do not involve the collection of data that involves numbers or a need to be deduced through a mathematical calculation, rather it is based on the non-quantifiable elements like the feeling or emotion of the researcher. An example of such a method is an open-ended questionnaire.

Quantitative Method

Quantitative methods are presented in numbers and require a mathematical calculation to deduce. An example would be the use of a questionnaire with close-ended questions to arrive at figures to be calculated Mathematically. Also, methods of correlation and regression, mean, mode and median.

Read Also: 15 Reasons to Choose Quantitative over Qualitative Research

Secondary Data Collection

Secondary data collection, on the other hand, is referred to as the gathering of second-hand data collected by an individual who is not the original user. It is the process of collecting data that is already existing, be it already published books, journals, and/or online portals. In terms of ease, it is much less expensive and easier to collect.

Your choice between Primary data collection and secondary data collection depends on the nature, scope, and area of your research as well as its aims and objectives.

Importance of Data Collection

There are a bunch of underlying reasons for collecting data, especially for a researcher. Walking you through them, here are a few reasons;

Integrity of the Research

A key reason for collecting data, be it through quantitative or qualitative methods is to ensure that the integrity of the research question is indeed maintained.

Reduce the likelihood of errors

The correct use of appropriate data collection of methods reduces the likelihood of errors consistent with the results.

Decision Making

To minimize the risk of errors in decision-making, it is important that accurate data is collected so that the researcher doesn’t make uninformed decisions.

Save Cost and Time

Data collection saves the researcher time and funds that would otherwise be misspent without a deeper understanding of the topic or subject matter.

To support a need for a new idea, change, and/or innovation

To prove the need for a change in the norm or the introduction of new information that will be widely accepted, it is important to collect data as evidence to support these claims.

What is a Data Collection Tool?

Data collection tools refer to the devices/instruments used to collect data, such as a paper questionnaire or computer-assisted interviewing system. Case Studies, Checklists, Interviews, Observation sometimes, and Surveys or Questionnaires are all tools used to collect data.

It is important to decide on the tools for data collection because research is carried out in different ways and for different purposes. The objective behind data collection is to capture quality evidence that allows analysis to lead to the formulation of convincing and credible answers to the posed questions.

The objective behind data collection is to capture quality evidence that allows analysis to lead to the formulation of convincing and credible answers to the questions that have been posed – Click to Tweet

The Formplus online data collection tool is perfect for gathering primary data, i.e. raw data collected from the source. You can easily get data with at least three data collection methods with our online and offline data-gathering tool. I.e Online Questionnaires , Focus Groups, and Reporting.

In our previous articles, we’ve explained why quantitative research methods are more effective than qualitative methods . However, with the Formplus data collection tool, you can gather all types of primary data for academic, opinion or product research.

Top Data Collection Methods and Tools for Academic, Opinion, or Product Research

The following are the top 7 data collection methods for Academic, Opinion-based, or product research. Also discussed in detail are the nature, pros, and cons of each one. At the end of this segment, you will be best informed about which method best suits your research.

An interview is a face-to-face conversation between two individuals with the sole purpose of collecting relevant information to satisfy a research purpose. Interviews are of different types namely; Structured, Semi-structured , and unstructured with each having a slight variation from the other.

Use this interview consent form template to let an interviewee give you consent to use data gotten from your interviews for investigative research purposes.

Structured Interviews – Simply put, it is a verbally administered questionnaire. In terms of depth, it is surface level and is usually completed within a short period. For speed and efficiency, it is highly recommendable, but it lacks depth.
Semi-structured Interviews – In this method, there subsist several key questions which cover the scope of the areas to be explored. It allows a little more leeway for the researcher to explore the subject matter.
Unstructured Interviews – It is an in-depth interview that allows the researcher to collect a wide range of information with a purpose. An advantage of this method is the freedom it gives a researcher to combine structure with flexibility even though it is more time-consuming.
In-depth information
Freedom of flexibility
Accurate data.
Time-consuming
Expensive to collect.

What are The Best Data Collection Tools for Interviews?

For collecting data through interviews, here are a few tools you can use to easily collect data.

Audio Recorder

An audio recorder is used for recording sound on disc, tape, or film. Audio information can meet the needs of a wide range of people, as well as provide alternatives to print data collection tools.

Digital Camera

An advantage of a digital camera is that it can be used for transmitting those images to a monitor screen when the need arises.

A camcorder is used for collecting data through interviews. It provides a combination of both an audio recorder and a video camera. The data provided is qualitative in nature and allows the respondents to answer questions asked exhaustively. If you need to collect sensitive information during an interview, a camcorder might not work for you as you would need to maintain your subject’s privacy.

Want to conduct an interview for qualitative data research or a special report? Use this online interview consent form template to allow the interviewee to give their consent before you use the interview data for research or report. With premium features like e-signature, upload fields, form security, etc., Formplus Builder is the perfect tool to create your preferred online consent forms without coding experience.

QUESTIONNAIRES

This is the process of collecting data through an instrument consisting of a series of questions and prompts to receive a response from the individuals it is administered to. Questionnaires are designed to collect data from a group.

For clarity, it is important to note that a questionnaire isn’t a survey, rather it forms a part of it. A survey is a process of data gathering involving a variety of data collection methods, including a questionnaire.

On a questionnaire, there are three kinds of questions used. They are; fixed-alternative, scale, and open-ended. With each of the questions tailored to the nature and scope of the research.

Can be administered in large numbers and is cost-effective.
It can be used to compare and contrast previous research to measure change.
Easy to visualize and analyze.
Questionnaires offer actionable data.
Respondent identity is protected.
Questionnaires can cover all areas of a topic.
Relatively inexpensive.
Answers may be dishonest or the respondents lose interest midway.
Questionnaires can’t produce qualitative data.
Questions might be left unanswered.
Respondents may have a hidden agenda.
Not all questions can be analyzed easily.

What are the Best Data Collection Tools for Questionnaires?

Formplus Online Questionnaire

Formplus lets you create powerful forms to help you collect the information you need. Formplus helps you create the online forms that you like. The Formplus online questionnaire form template to get actionable trends and measurable responses. Conduct research, optimize knowledge of your brand or just get to know an audience with this form template. The form template is fast, free and fully customizable.

Paper Questionnaire

A paper questionnaire is a data collection tool consisting of a series of questions and/or prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Mostly designed for statistical analysis of the responses, they can also be used as a form of data collection.

By definition, data reporting is the process of gathering and submitting data to be further subjected to analysis. The key aspect of data reporting is reporting accurate data because inaccurate data reporting leads to uninformed decision-making.

Informed decision-making.
Easily accessible.
Self-reported answers may be exaggerated.
The results may be affected by bias.
Respondents may be too shy to give out all the details.
Inaccurate reports will lead to uninformed decisions.

What are the Best Data Collection Tools for Reporting?

Reporting tools enable you to extract and present data in charts, tables, and other visualizations so users can find useful information. You could source data for reporting from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) reports, newspapers, website articles, and hospital records.

NGO Reports

Contained in NGO report is an in-depth and comprehensive report on the activities carried out by the NGO, covering areas such as business and human rights. The information contained in these reports is research-specific and forms an acceptable academic base for collecting data. NGOs often focus on development projects which are organized to promote particular causes.

Newspaper data are relatively easy to collect and are sometimes the only continuously available source of event data. Even though there is a problem of bias in newspaper data, it is still a valid tool in collecting data for Reporting.

Website Articles

Gathering and using data contained in website articles is also another tool for data collection. Collecting data from web articles is a quicker and less expensive data collection Two major disadvantages of using this data reporting method are biases inherent in the data collection process and possible security/confidentiality concerns.

Hospital Care records

Health care involves a diverse set of public and private data collection systems, including health surveys, administrative enrollment and billing records, and medical records, used by various entities, including hospitals, CHCs, physicians, and health plans. The data provided is clear, unbiased and accurate, but must be obtained under legal means as medical data is kept with the strictest regulations.

EXISTING DATA

This is the introduction of new investigative questions in addition to/other than the ones originally used when the data was initially gathered. It involves adding measurement to a study or research. An example would be sourcing data from an archive.

Accuracy is very high.
Easily accessible information.
Problems with evaluation.
Difficulty in understanding.

What are the Best Data Collection Tools for Existing Data?

The concept of Existing data means that data is collected from existing sources to investigate research questions other than those for which the data were originally gathered. Tools to collect existing data include:

Research Journals – Unlike newspapers and magazines, research journals are intended for an academic or technical audience, not general readers. A journal is a scholarly publication containing articles written by researchers, professors, and other experts.
Surveys – A survey is a data collection tool for gathering information from a sample population, with the intention of generalizing the results to a larger population. Surveys have a variety of purposes and can be carried out in many ways depending on the objectives to be achieved.
OBSERVATION

This is a data collection method by which information on a phenomenon is gathered through observation. The nature of the observation could be accomplished either as a complete observer, an observer as a participant, a participant as an observer, or as a complete participant. This method is a key base for formulating a hypothesis.

Easy to administer.
There subsists a greater accuracy with results.
It is a universally accepted practice.
It diffuses the situation of the unwillingness of respondents to administer a report.
It is appropriate for certain situations.
Some phenomena aren’t open to observation.
It cannot be relied upon.
Bias may arise.
It is expensive to administer.
Its validity cannot be predicted accurately.

What are the Best Data Collection Tools for Observation?

Observation involves the active acquisition of information from a primary source. Observation can also involve the perception and recording of data via the use of scientific instruments. The best tools for Observation are:

Checklists – state-specific criteria, that allow users to gather information and make judgments about what they should know in relation to the outcomes. They offer systematic ways of collecting data about specific behaviors, knowledge, and skills.
Direct observation – This is an observational study method of collecting evaluative information. The evaluator watches the subject in his or her usual environment without altering that environment.

FOCUS GROUPS

The opposite of quantitative research which involves numerical-based data, this data collection method focuses more on qualitative research. It falls under the primary category of data based on the feelings and opinions of the respondents. This research involves asking open-ended questions to a group of individuals usually ranging from 6-10 people, to provide feedback.

Information obtained is usually very detailed.
Cost-effective when compared to one-on-one interviews.
It reflects speed and efficiency in the supply of results.
Lacking depth in covering the nitty-gritty of a subject matter.
Bias might still be evident.
Requires interviewer training
The researcher has very little control over the outcome.
A few vocal voices can drown out the rest.
Difficulty in assembling an all-inclusive group.

What are the Best Data Collection Tools for Focus Groups?

A focus group is a data collection method that is tightly facilitated and structured around a set of questions. The purpose of the meeting is to extract from the participants’ detailed responses to these questions. The best tools for tackling Focus groups are:

Two-Way – One group watches another group answer the questions posed by the moderator. After listening to what the other group has to offer, the group that listens is able to facilitate more discussion and could potentially draw different conclusions .
Dueling-Moderator – There are two moderators who play the devil’s advocate. The main positive of the dueling-moderator focus group is to facilitate new ideas by introducing new ways of thinking and varying viewpoints.
COMBINATION RESEARCH

This method of data collection encompasses the use of innovative methods to enhance participation in both individuals and groups. Also under the primary category, it is a combination of Interviews and Focus Groups while collecting qualitative data . This method is key when addressing sensitive subjects.

Encourage participants to give responses.
It stimulates a deeper connection between participants.
The relative anonymity of respondents increases participation.
It improves the richness of the data collected.
It costs the most out of all the top 7.
It’s the most time-consuming.

What are the Best Data Collection Tools for Combination Research?

The Combination Research method involves two or more data collection methods, for instance, interviews as well as questionnaires or a combination of semi-structured telephone interviews and focus groups. The best tools for combination research are:

Online Survey – The two tools combined here are online interviews and the use of questionnaires. This is a questionnaire that the target audience can complete over the Internet. It is timely, effective, and efficient. Especially since the data to be collected is quantitative in nature.
Dual-Moderator – The two tools combined here are focus groups and structured questionnaires. The structured questionnaires give a direction as to where the research is headed while two moderators take charge of the proceedings. Whilst one ensures the focus group session progresses smoothly, the other makes sure that the topics in question are all covered. Dual-moderator focus groups typically result in a more productive session and essentially lead to an optimum collection of data.

Why Formplus is the Best Data Collection Tool

Vast Options for Form Customization

With Formplus, you can create your unique survey form. With options to change themes, font color, font, font type, layout, width, and more, you can create an attractive survey form. The builder also gives you as many features as possible to choose from and you do not need to be a graphic designer to create a form.

Extensive Analytics

Form Analytics, a feature in formplus helps you view the number of respondents, unique visits, total visits, abandonment rate, and average time spent before submission. This tool eliminates the need for a manual calculation of the received data and/or responses as well as the conversion rate for your poll.

Embed Survey Form on Your Website

Copy the link to your form and embed it as an iframe which will automatically load as your website loads, or as a popup that opens once the respondent clicks on the link. Embed the link on your Twitter page to give instant access to your followers.

Geolocation Support

The geolocation feature on Formplus lets you ascertain where individual responses are coming. It utilises Google Maps to pinpoint the longitude and latitude of the respondent, to the nearest accuracy, along with the responses.

Multi-Select feature

This feature helps to conserve horizontal space as it allows you to put multiple options in one field. This translates to including more information on the survey form.

Read Also: 10 Reasons to Use Formplus for Online Data Collection

How to Use Formplus to collect online data in 7 simple steps.

Register or sign up on Formplus builder : Start creating your preferred questionnaire or survey by signing up with either your Google, Facebook, or Email account.

Formplus gives you a free plan with basic features you can use to collect online data. Pricing plans with vast features starts at $20 monthly, with reasonable discounts for Education and Non-Profit Organizations.

2. Input your survey title and use the form builder choice options to start creating your surveys.

Use the choice option fields like single select, multiple select, checkbox, radio, and image choices to create your preferred multi-choice surveys online.

3. Do you want customers to rate any of your products or services delivery?

Use the rating to allow survey respondents rate your products or services. This is an ideal quantitative research method of collecting data.

4. Beautify your online questionnaire with Formplus Customisation features.

Change the theme color
Add your brand’s logo and image to the forms
Change the form width and layout
Edit the submission button if you want
Change text font color and sizes
Do you have already made custom CSS to beautify your questionnaire? If yes, just copy and paste it to the CSS option.

5. Edit your survey questionnaire settings for your specific needs

Choose where you choose to store your files and responses. Select a submission deadline, choose a timezone, limit respondents’ responses, enable Captcha to prevent spam, and collect location data of customers.

Set an introductory message to respondents before they begin the survey, toggle the “start button” post final submission message or redirect respondents to another page when they submit their questionnaires.

Change the Email Notifications inventory and initiate an autoresponder message to all your survey questionnaire respondents. You can also transfer your forms to other users who can become form administrators.

6. Share links to your survey questionnaire page with customers.

There’s an option to copy and share the link as “Popup” or “Embed code” The data collection tool automatically creates a QR Code for Survey Questionnaire which you can download and share as appropriate.

Congratulations if you’ve made it to this stage. You can start sharing the link to your survey questionnaire with your customers.

7. View your Responses to the Survey Questionnaire

Toggle with the presentation of your summary from the options. Whether as a single, table or cards.

8. Allow Formplus Analytics to interpret your Survey Questionnaire Data

With online form builder analytics, a business can determine;

The number of times the survey questionnaire was filled
The number of customers reached
Abandonment Rate: The rate at which customers exit the form without submitting it.
Conversion Rate: The percentage of customers who completed the online form
Average time spent per visit
Location of customers/respondents.
The type of device used by the customer to complete the survey questionnaire.

7 Tips to Create The Best Surveys For Data Collections

Define the goal of your survey – Once the goal of your survey is outlined, it will aid in deciding which questions are the top priority. A clear attainable goal would, for example, mirror a clear reason as to why something is happening. e.g. “The goal of this survey is to understand why Employees are leaving an establishment.”
Use close-ended clearly defined questions – Avoid open-ended questions and ensure you’re not suggesting your preferred answer to the respondent. If possible offer a range of answers with choice options and ratings.
Survey outlook should be attractive and Inviting – An attractive-looking survey encourages a higher number of recipients to respond to the survey. Check out Formplus Builder for colorful options to integrate into your survey design. You could use images and videos to keep participants glued to their screens.
Assure Respondents about the safety of their data – You want your respondents to be assured whilst disclosing details of their personal information to you. It’s your duty to inform the respondents that the data they provide is confidential and only collected for the purpose of research.
Ensure your survey can be completed in record time – Ideally, in a typical survey, users should be able to respond in 100 seconds. It is pertinent to note that they, the respondents, are doing you a favor. Don’t stress them. Be brief and get straight to the point.
Do a trial survey – Preview your survey before sending out your surveys to the intended respondents. Make a trial version which you’ll send to a few individuals. Based on their responses, you can draw inferences and decide whether or not your survey is ready for the big time.
Attach a reward upon completion for users – Give your respondents something to look forward to at the end of the survey. Think of it as a penny for their troubles. It could well be the encouragement they need to not abandon the survey midway.

Try out Formplus today . You can start making your own surveys with the Formplus online survey builder. By applying these tips, you will definitely get the most out of your online surveys.

Top Survey Templates For Data Collection

Customer Satisfaction Survey Template

On the template, you can collect data to measure customer satisfaction over key areas like the commodity purchase and the level of service they received. It also gives insight as to which products the customer enjoyed, how often they buy such a product, and whether or not the customer is likely to recommend the product to a friend or acquaintance.

Demographic Survey Template

With this template, you would be able to measure, with accuracy, the ratio of male to female, age range, and the number of unemployed persons in a particular country as well as obtain their personal details such as names and addresses.

Respondents are also able to state their religious and political views about the country under review.

Feedback Form Template

Contained in the template for the online feedback form is the details of a product and/or service used. Identifying this product or service and documenting how long the customer has used them.

The overall satisfaction is measured as well as the delivery of the services. The likelihood that the customer also recommends said product is also measured.

Online Questionnaire Template

The online questionnaire template houses the respondent’s data as well as educational qualifications to collect information to be used for academic research.

Respondents can also provide their gender, race, and field of study as well as present living conditions as prerequisite data for the research study.

Student Data Sheet Form Template

The template is a data sheet containing all the relevant information of a student. The student’s name, home address, guardian’s name, record of attendance as well as performance in school is well represented on this template. This is a perfect data collection method to deploy for a school or an education organization.

Also included is a record for interaction with others as well as a space for a short comment on the overall performance and attitude of the student.

Interview Consent Form Template

This online interview consent form template allows the interviewee to sign off their consent to use the interview data for research or report to journalists. With premium features like short text fields, upload, e-signature, etc., Formplus Builder is the perfect tool to create your preferred online consent forms without coding experience.

What is the Best Data Collection Method for Qualitative Data?

Answer: Combination Research

The best data collection method for a researcher for gathering qualitative data which generally is data relying on the feelings, opinions, and beliefs of the respondents would be Combination Research.

The reason why combination research is the best fit is that it encompasses the attributes of Interviews and Focus Groups. It is also useful when gathering data that is sensitive in nature. It can be described as an all-purpose quantitative data collection method.

Above all, combination research improves the richness of data collected when compared with other data collection methods for qualitative data.

What is the Best Data Collection Method for Quantitative Research Data?

Ans: Questionnaire

The best data collection method a researcher can employ in gathering quantitative data which takes into consideration data that can be represented in numbers and figures that can be deduced mathematically is the Questionnaire.

These can be administered to a large number of respondents while saving costs. For quantitative data that may be bulky or voluminous in nature, the use of a Questionnaire makes such data easy to visualize and analyze.

Another key advantage of the Questionnaire is that it can be used to compare and contrast previous research work done to measure changes.

Technology-Enabled Data Collection Methods

There are so many diverse methods available now in the world because technology has revolutionized the way data is being collected. It has provided efficient and innovative methods that anyone, especially researchers and organizations. Below are some technology-enabled data collection methods:

Online Surveys: Online surveys have gained popularity due to their ease of use and wide reach. You can distribute them through email, social media, or embed them on websites. Online surveys allow you to quickly complete data collection, automated data capture, and real-time analysis. Online surveys also offer features like skip logic, validation checks, and multimedia integration.
Mobile Surveys: With the widespread use of smartphones, mobile surveys’ popularity is also on the rise. Mobile surveys leverage the capabilities of mobile devices, and this allows respondents to participate at their convenience. This includes multimedia elements, location-based information, and real-time feedback. Mobile surveys are the best for capturing in-the-moment experiences or opinions.
Social Media Listening: Social media platforms are a good source of unstructured data that you can analyze to gain insights into customer sentiment and trends. Social media listening involves monitoring and analyzing social media conversations, mentions, and hashtags to understand public opinion, identify emerging topics, and assess brand reputation.
Wearable Devices and Sensors: You can embed wearable devices, such as fitness trackers or smartwatches, and sensors in everyday objects to capture continuous data on various physiological and environmental variables. This data can provide you with insights into health behaviors, activity patterns, sleep quality, and environmental conditions, among others.
Big Data Analytics: Big data analytics leverages large volumes of structured and unstructured data from various sources, such as transaction records, social media, and internet browsing. Advanced analytics techniques, like machine learning and natural language processing, can extract meaningful insights and patterns from this data, enabling organizations to make data-driven decisions.

Read Also: How Technology is Revolutionizing Data Collection

Faulty Data Collection Practices – Common Mistakes & Sources of Error

While technology-enabled data collection methods offer numerous advantages, there are some pitfalls and sources of error that you should be aware of. Here are some common mistakes and sources of error in data collection:

Population Specification Error: Population specification error occurs when the target population is not clearly defined or misidentified. This error leads to a mismatch between the research objectives and the actual population being studied, resulting in biased or inaccurate findings.
Sample Frame Error: Sample frame error occurs when the sampling frame, the list or source from which the sample is drawn, does not adequately represent the target population. This error can introduce selection bias and affect the generalizability of the findings.
Selection Error: Selection error occurs when the process of selecting participants or units for the study introduces bias. It can happen due to nonrandom sampling methods, inadequate sampling techniques, or self-selection bias. Selection error compromises the representativeness of the sample and affects the validity of the results.
Nonresponse Error: Nonresponse error occurs when selected participants choose not to participate or fail to respond to the data collection effort. Nonresponse bias can result in an unrepresentative sample if those who choose not to respond differ systematically from those who do respond. Efforts should be made to mitigate nonresponse and encourage participation to minimize this error.
Measurement Error: Measurement error arises from inaccuracies or inconsistencies in the measurement process. It can happen due to poorly designed survey instruments, ambiguous questions, respondent bias, or errors in data entry or coding. Measurement errors can lead to distorted or unreliable data, affecting the validity and reliability of the findings.

In order to mitigate these errors and ensure high-quality data collection, you should carefully plan your data collection procedures, and validate measurement tools. You should also use appropriate sampling techniques, employ randomization where possible, and minimize nonresponse through effective communication and incentives. Ensure you conduct regular checks and implement validation processes, and data cleaning procedures to identify and rectify errors during data analysis.

Best Practices for Data Collection

Clearly Define Objectives: Clearly define the research objectives and questions to guide the data collection process. This helps ensure that the collected data aligns with the research goals and provides relevant insights.
Plan Ahead: Develop a detailed data collection plan that includes the timeline, resources needed, and specific procedures to follow. This helps maintain consistency and efficiency throughout the data collection process.
Choose the Right Method: Select data collection methods that are appropriate for the research objectives and target population. Consider factors such as feasibility, cost-effectiveness, and the ability to capture the required data accurately.
Pilot Test : Before full-scale data collection, conduct a pilot test to identify any issues with the data collection instruments or procedures. This allows for refinement and improvement before data collection with the actual sample.
Train Data Collectors: If data collection involves human interaction, ensure that data collectors are properly trained on the data collection protocols, instruments, and ethical considerations. Consistent training helps minimize errors and maintain data quality.
Maintain Consistency: Follow standardized procedures throughout the data collection process to ensure consistency across data collectors and time. This includes using consistent measurement scales, instructions, and data recording methods.
Minimize Bias: Be aware of potential sources of bias in data collection and take steps to minimize their impact. Use randomization techniques, employ diverse data collectors, and implement strategies to mitigate response biases.
Ensure Data Quality: Implement quality control measures to ensure the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of the collected data. Conduct regular checks for data entry errors, inconsistencies, and missing values.
Maintain Data Confidentiality: Protect the privacy and confidentiality of participants’ data by implementing appropriate security measures. Ensure compliance with data protection regulations and obtain informed consent from participants.
Document the Process: Keep detailed documentation of the data collection process, including any deviations from the original plan, challenges encountered, and decisions made. This documentation facilitates transparency, replicability, and future analysis.

FAQs about Data Collection

What are secondary sources of data collection? Secondary sources of data collection are defined as the data that has been previously gathered and is available for your use as a researcher. These sources can include published research papers, government reports, statistical databases, and other existing datasets.
What are the primary sources of data collection? Primary sources of data collection involve collecting data directly from the original source also known as the firsthand sources. You can do this through surveys, interviews, observations, experiments, or other direct interactions with individuals or subjects of study.
How many types of data are there? There are two main types of data: qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative data is non-numeric and it includes information in the form of words, images, or descriptions. Quantitative data, on the other hand, is numeric and you can measure and analyze it statistically.

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AI-Based Research Tools

Your librarian.

Introduction: Conducting AI Powered Research

AI tools for research can help you to discover new sources for your research assignment or literature review! These tools will synthesize information from large databases of scholarly output with the aim of finding the most relevant articles, thereby saving researchers' time. As with our research databases or any other search tool, however, it's important to:

1) always evaluate results/output;

2) not rely on any one tool for all of your research,

as you will risk missing important information on your topic of interest.

As always, if you have questions about using these tools for your research, please contact your friendly Rider librarian!

Disclaimer: Rider University Libraries do not have subscription access to the AI-powered tools listed below. The guide serves solely as an informational resource. It is recommended that you assess these tools and their usage methodologies independently.

ELICIT IS AN "AI-POWERED RESEARCH ASSISTANT" - useful for finding papers, filtering study types, automating research flow, brainstorming, summarizing and more.
Elicit is a research assistant using language models like GPT-3 to automate parts of researchers' workflows.
Currently, the main workflow in Elicit is Literature Review--if you ask a question, Elicit will show relevant papers and summaries of key information about those papers in an easy-to-use table.
Access the Elicit FAQ here.

Research Rabbit

RESEARCH RABBIT IS A CITATION-BASED MAPPING TOOL that focuses on the relationships between research works.
Bills itself as the "Spotify for Papers" !
It uses visualizations to help researchers find similar papers and locate other researchers in their field.
Research Rabbit uses multiple databases, but does not name them (more information can be found on the FAQ page).
Keep up with the latest research related to your collections using the "Personalized Digests" feature.

PERPLEXITY IS A SEARCH ENGINE THAT SEARCHES Large Language Models (LLMs) to provide AI-generated answers (much like ChatGPT)
Billed as "an alternative to traditional search engines, where you can directly pose your questions and receive concise, accurate answers backed up by a curated set of sources."
It has a conversational interface, "contextual awareness" and "personalization" to learn your interests and preferences over time.
Using an "advanced search engine, it processes your questions and tasks it then uses predictive text capabilities to generate useful responses, choosing the best one from multiple sources, and summarizes the results in a concise way."
Access the Perplexity FAQ here.

CONSENSUS USES LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS (like Elicit) to help researchers find and synthesize answers to research questions, focusing on scholarly authors' findings and claims in each paper.
Bills itself as the "ChatGPT of research!"--simply type in your research questions and off you go!
Consensus provides helpful guidance on question prompts for different question types.
Example topics are provided in browseable format
Access the Consensus FAQ here.

Semantic Scholar

SEMANTIC SCHOLAR PROVIDES BRIEF SUMMARIES of the main objectives and results of papers. (It supplies underlying data for several of the other tools above).
"We index over 200 million academic papers from publisher partnerships, data providers, and web crawls."
"Accelerating Scientific Breakthroughs Using AI"
Developed by the Allen Institute for AI
Access Semantic Scholar's FAQ here.

More AI Research Tools!

To learn about additional AI research tools, check out these research guides!

AI Research Tools (Rutgers University Library)
AI Research Tools (Georgetown University Library)
Selected AI Based Literature Review Tools (Texas A&M University)
Last Updated: Apr 9, 2024 8:34 PM
URL: https://guides.rider.edu/aitools

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Planning research with generative ai.

April 5, 2024 2024-04-05

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AI chatbots (like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot) can support UX researchers of all experience levels in planning their research.

The research goals or questions that the research is hoping to achieve or answer
The method to be used and a description of how it will be carried out
The tasks or questions that will be given to study participants
The profile of the target participants
The screener questionnaire used to recruit participants

Creating a research plan can be time-consuming. Even with a good template, a researcher must generate research questions, select the appropriate method(s), decide how to run sessions, and often create study collateral (like screeners and tasks) from scratch. The good news is that AI can help with many, if not all, of these tasks!

It can be tempting to just ask an AI tool to give you a research plan for a project. Don’t do that.

❌ Bad Prompt : Generate a research plan for a usability test of a food-delivery app.

This kind of request results in a generic, template-like response, partly because AI lacks the context to propose a complete research plan and partly because of how the model has been trained.

To construct a useful research plan, deconstruct the plan into parts and have the AI chatbot tackle each part individually. You can assemble responses in a final research plan.

Don’t expect the AI to ask you the right questions in order to get a comprehensive outcome. View the AI tool as a UX assistant , not as a UX mentor. You need to feed into the AI all the steps and details you want it to consider.

Follow the steps below for the best results.

Step 1: Provide Context

Imagine asking an experienced colleague for recommendations on what research study to run without giving them any context on what project you’re working on and what you’re trying to achieve. They would probably say, "It depends on what you’re trying to learn.” Conversing with AI presents no exception.

Start your conversation with enough context , especially if the AI tool does not already have this information stored about you or your current project. ( ChatGPT 4 allows users to store context for each new conversation.)

The contextual information you share should include who you work for, the scope of your project, and what you’re looking to achieve. Remember that some AI tools may use your conversations to train their models, so share only information you would be comfortable with being in the open domain.

Prompt Template: I work for [type or organization] . My company provides [what kind of product, service, or experience] . I need to run a user-research study to learn [something about users or a problem] .

Step 2: Generate Research Questions

After providing the AI tool with context, ask it to suggest specific research questions for the study. Here’s an example from a recent study on research repositories that I conducted for NN/g.

Prompt Example: I will run a research study and report on how UX practitioners across different organizations set up and use research repositories. Please generate 10 research questions that would be suitable for this sort of study.

It’s a good idea to ask generative AI tools for more options or ideas than you think you’ll need, because some will not be a good fit.

Microsoft Copilot responded to the prompt above with the 10 research questions below.

10 Research questions generated by Microsoft Copilot

Who are the primary users of the research repository within different organizations? What motivates users to engage with the research repository? How do different teams (design, product, sales, marketing) access and benefit from the research repository? What challenges do practitioners face when contributing to or retrieving information from the repository? What types of research artifacts (reports, raw data, templates) are most commonly stored in the repository? How do organizations structure their research repositories? What tools and templates are commonly used to facilitate research repository management? How do practitioners ensure the quality and accuracy of information in the repository? What impact does the research repository have on decision-making and project outcomes? What strategies can organizations implement to encourage widespread adoption and active participation in the research repository?

To broaden your pool of research questions, ask for further research questions or provide the same prompt in a new session. Repeat this process as many times as you need to generate a list that feels exhaustive of what you’d like to learn.

Some of the research questions Copilot generated for me were appropriate, and others were not. As a result, I had AI generate more research questions to choose from.

Unfortunately, most AI chatbots don’t offer an easy way to dismiss suggestions or combine specific responses and work from only these (a behavior called apple-picking ).

Pulling in generated research questions into an offline document (like a FigJam or Google Doc) allows you to easily group items, remove duplicates, or reword suggested research questions.

Begin a new chat session with your selected and refined set of research questions, so that the unwanted research questions are removed from the chat history.

Step 3: Request Methods

After sharing the context and your chosen research questions, ask the AI tool to identify suitable research methods.

Example Prompt : What study would you suggest to answer these research questions? Please be specific; cite which research questions would be answered by which research method if you suggest multiple methods.

Generative-AI advice is not always good advice. Often, these tools will suggest various methods and suggest you triangulate data from multiple sources. This approach is not always needed. Also, not all methods will be practical or the best fit for your study. Additionally, AI may suggest interviews and focus groups even for research questions better suited to a behavioral research method .

Ask AI chatbots to tell you which research methods would be suited to which research question and why. We also recommend doing some further reading on your own about any methods that are unfamiliar to you.

In response to the prompt above (and given my chosen research questions), ChatGPT recommended a survey, interviews with select UX practitioners, and case studies. These were all my chosen methods, so AI had done well here!

Step 4: Request Inclusion Criteria

AI can create inclusion criteria — a necessary component of your research plan. Do this step only after generating research questions and methods since these will inform who should participate in the research study.

Inclusion criteria (or recruitment criteria) are specific characteristics of the target population that need to be represented in your sample.

Start with inclusion criteria before asking the AI to help you write a screening questionnaire ; AI can only craft an appropriate screener after it “knows” who you’re looking to recruit.

Example Prompt: So that I recruit the right people for my interviews, help me create some inclusion criteria. What characteristics or behaviors should I recruit for?

Step 5: Request Help with Screeners, Interview Questions, and Tasks

Finally, ask the AI to put together:

Interview questions or an interview guide (if conducting interviews)
Tasks for a usability test
Diary-study prompts (if relevant)
Recruitment confirmation emails or other communication messages.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad examples of the above on the web. Conversational AI has been trained on all this data. Therefore, don’t be surprised if it produces poor study collateral on its first attempt! This is a major risk area for new researchers.

One way to mitigate this danger is to give the AI tool advice when crafting any of these outputs . Think of AI as a new research assistant who can learn extremely quickly.

Common mistakes that AI tools make include:

Using words that appear in the interface in task instructions (priming)
Creating task instructions that ask users to imagine they are someone that they are not
Not including a goal or a call to action in the task instruction
Not including distractor options in screening questionnaires
Using overenthusiastic marketing language in recruitment materials

It’s not surprising that AI makes these mistakes since UX practitioners also make them!

To improve outputs, feed the AI essential tips, such as:

When crafting tasks: Do not use the name of words or link labels in the task instruction. Find a natural-language equivalent to explain what the participant should do . (You can ask AI to “read” a website or an image.)
When crafting recruitment materials: Use neutral and concise language in the recruitment email. Avoid using overly enthusiastic marketing language.
When crafting a screener: Include multiple-choice questions and answer options that might disguise what the study is about and who I am looking to recruit.

Additionally, when possible, feed the AI with good examples of screener questionnaires, tasks, or interview questions, so it can follow their format or style.

Even with this advice, AI can still make mistakes. If you’re doubting its answers, check primary sources or speak with an experienced researcher for old-fashioned human guidance.

If you have ChatGPT’s Plus Plan, you can use our GPT for planning your research.

With the proper context, examples, and advice, AI tools, like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot, can craft helpful research questions, tasks, interview questions, and other study collateral far more quickly than you could if you started from scratch.

Research leads and ResearchOps personnel can support junior researchers and PWDRs (People Who Do Research) by providing examples and advice that can be fed to AI agents. Experienced researchers can benefit from using AI to speed up their research-planning process and obtain further inspiration.

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10 Great AI Tools for Researchers

By Med Kharbach, PhD | Last Update: April 8, 2024

Today, I want to talk about some really cool AI tools that are changing the way we do research. This is just a small preview of what I’m putting together in an eBook full of AI tools for researchers like us. If you don’t want to miss out on the full thing, be sure to sign up for our email updates.

There’s a lot of talk about AI in universities, and not everyone agrees about using it. But, like it or not, AI is becoming a big part of research, and it’s here to stay. I believe we should use AI the right way. It’s not about just copying and pasting stuff; that’s not real research. You still have to do the hard work of reading and writing yourself. But, AI can be a huge help, kind of like having an extra assistant who’s always there when you need it. I’m all for using AI to make our research better, as long as we keep doing the important parts ourselves.

AI Tools for Researchers

Here are are some good AI Tools I recommend for student researchers and academics:

Litmaps is a tool for research students that makes finding papers and authors on a topic easy and quick. Instead of spending lots of time reading through hundreds of papers, you can use Litmaps to find the important ones in seconds. It helps you find papers you might miss otherwise and keeps you updated on new research without getting overwhelmed. You can see which papers are connected and important for your work through visual maps, making it simple to keep track of your literature review.

Jenni is an AI-powered writing tool that helps you write, edit, and reference your work easily. It’s like having a helpful friend who’s always there to get you past writer’s block, suggest ways to say things differently, and make sure your citations are in order. More specifically, Jenni can:

Suggest words and sentences as you write to help you keep going.
Help you cite sources correctly in styles like APA, MLA, and others, using your own PDFs or research.
Let you change the wording of any text to match the tone you need.
Turn your research papers into written content by analyzing and summarizing them.
Chat with your PDFs to quickly understand and summarize them.
Import a bunch of sources at once if you have them saved.
Export your work to LaTeX, Word, or HTML without messing up your formatting.
Create an outline for your paper just from a prompt you provide.
Work in multiple languages, including English (US and British), Spanish, German, French, and Chinese.
Keep all your research organized in one place for easy citing in any document.
Offer suggestions and help expand notes into full paragraphs, so you’re never stuck staring at a blank page.

3. Paperpa l

Paperpal is a handy tool for anyone who writes academic texts like essays, theses, dissertations, or research papers. It checks your writing for grammar mistakes and makes sure you’re using the right language for academic work. With the help of generative AI, Paperpal can also create outlines, abstracts, and titles for your papers. This tool makes it easy to paraphrase your work for clarity .You can also check your work for plagiarism with detailed reports, get help generating various parts of your academic text, and even translate text from over 25 languages to English.

Related: 6 Best Text to Video AI Tools

4. Unriddle

Unriddle is a cool tool that changes how students and researchers work with documents. It gives you an AI helper for any document you’re looking at, making it super quick to find info, sum up tricky topics, and take notes easily. Unriddle is all about making your research easier and faster, so you don’t have to read every single word to find what you need.

Unriddle also helps you write and reference sources the right way. It can point out the most important sources when you highlight text, so your references are spot-on. It works in over 90 languages and has some cool extra features like a Chrome extension to summarize online articles, settings you can change to fit your needs, and the ability to work with many documents at once.

5. Connected Papers

Connected Papers helps you discover recent important works without needing to maintain extensive lists. It is a visual tool for research students and academics who are diving into a new field or ensuring their research is comprehensive. It starts with a paper you’re interested in and creates a graph showing similar papers in that field. This visual approach helps you understand the trends and main contributors quickly. It’s especially useful in fast-moving fields where new studies are constantly published.

With Connected Papers, you can also build a bibliography for your thesis more efficiently. By starting with a few key references, it finds additional relevant papers, helping you to fill in the gaps. It offers views for finding significant prior works or the latest reviews and state-of-the-art papers following your chosen study.

6. Scite Assistant

Scite Assistant is like a research companion powered by large language models (LLMs), designed to make your research process smoother and more insightful. You can ask scite Assistant any research-related question and you will get insights and explanations for its responses, helping you understand the reasoning behind its conclusions.

scite Assistant offers customizable settings to tailor the tool to your specific research needs. You can control whether you want references included, filter your searches by year, topics, or journals, and even specify the sources the Assistant should use, like your own dashboard collection or preferred journals. This level of customization ensures that the responses and sources are relevant to your specific research questions and preferences, making it an invaluable tool for academics and researchers seeking detailed and reliable information.

7. DocAnalyzer

DocAnalyzer.ai makes talking to your documents easy and smart. You can upload one or many documents and start chatting right away, getting answers to your questions in real time. This tool is great because it understands the context of your documents, making it super helpful for finding exactly what you need without any confusion. What makes docAnalyzer.ai special is how simple and smart it is to use. You can ask your PDFs questions and get back clear, detailed answers quickly. You can even share your document chats with others, making teamwork easier.

8. SciSummary

SciSummary is all about making it easier to get the gist of scientific articles fast. You can email or upload a document, and in minutes, you’ll get a summary sent right back to you. This is perfect for scientists, students, and anyone who’s busy but needs to stay on top of the latest research without reading long articles.

SciSummary uses advanced AI, like a super smart robot that can summarize any scientific article. The AI gets better over time, learning from summaries that experts check. This means you can quickly understand new discoveries and research without spending hours reading. SciSummary offers a free option for summarizing articles, and if you need more, there are affordable plans with more features.

9. Explainpaper

Explainpaper is like having a smart friend that helps you understand research papers quickly. You just upload a paper, highlight the parts you find confusing, and get an explanation. This tool is perfect for diving into complex topics and for speeding up your review process. With Explainpaper, you’re not alone when facing intimidating jargon or complex concepts.

10. SciSpace

SciSpace aims to make finding and understanding research papers a breeze. It’s an all-in-one platform where you can read papers, get straightforward explanations from AI, and explore related research. SciSpace is designed to cut down on the time researchers spend looking for information and dealing with the hassle of formatting papers. With access to metadata for over 200 million papers and more than 50 million full-text PDFs, SciSpace provides tools like a citation generator, AI detector, and paraphraser to make your research process smoother and more productive. It’s a dedicated workspace for researchers, publishers, and institutions to collaborate and discover information effortlessly.

Final thoughts

As I mentioned, these tools are just a part of the bigger picture I’m assembling in the upcoming eBook. The AI tools we explored today are stepping stones towards a more efficient, insightful, and innovative research process. But remember, they’re tools to aid us, not to replace the foundational skills of rigorous research. Embracing AI in our work, when used ethically and wisely, opens up new horizons for discovery and understanding. Stay tuned for the full eBook release, and let’s navigate this promising future of research together.

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Meet Med Kharbach, PhD

Dr. Med Kharbach is an influential voice in the global educational technology landscape, with an extensive background in educational studies and a decade-long experience as a K-12 teacher. Holding a Ph.D. from Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, Canada, he brings a unique perspective to the educational world by integrating his profound academic knowledge with his hands-on teaching experience. Dr. Kharbach's academic pursuits encompass curriculum studies, discourse analysis, language learning/teaching, language and identity, emerging literacies, educational technology, and research methodologies. His work has been presented at numerous national and international conferences and published in various esteemed academic journals.

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Researchers explore power of AI to craft novel solutions

By Janette Neuwahl Tannen [email protected] 04-10-2024

Concrete that would absorb carbon dioxide from the environment. A new technology to help quicken the pace of drug discovery, or to diagnose illnesses.

Ten faculty teams studying a range of ways to harness artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to improve our world will receive funding to start projects like these and many others this summer through the University of Miami’s Laboratory for Integrative Knowledge , or U-LINK.

Funded by the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Scholarship, the U-LINK program offers interdisciplinary faculty teams up to $100,000 to spend a year working on a project that ideally will be shared through research journals and eventually benefit the general public.

Founded in 2018, the U-LINK program aims to foster collaboration and innovation between faculty members across the University’s three campuses by tackling real-world problems. This year’s funding theme centers on artificial intelligence and its applications to construction and health care innovation, among other areas. Past years have offered grants focused on climate change and social equity, to name just a few themes.

“The teams awarded provide potential solutions to challenges through creative interdisciplinary collaborations and approaches, including strategic engagement of academic, community, and external partnerships,” said Dr. Maria Alcaide, vice provost of research and scholarship. “These teams will advance our knowledge through the development of tools, methods, and strategic partnerships to further advance research with the use of AI as we continue to evolve as a leading innovative institution.”

Improving concrete’s durability and sustainability

Concrete. It is the most prevalent man-made material in the world, yet creating it causes 8 percent of the world’s carbon emissions today. It also cracks quite a bit, as a result of water or movement.

“Discovery of Catalysts to Accelerate Carbon Capture in Concrete”

While making concrete typically leads to carbon dioxide emissions, concrete also naturally absorbs some of this carbon dioxide in a process known as carbonation. The process is so slow that its benefits do not offset the carbon emissions it produces. This team is using artificial intelligence, combined with experiments and modeling, to speed up the process of carbonation and lower concrete carbon emissions. The researchers hope to transform concrete into an element that pulls harmful carbon dioxide from the atmosphere more efficiently, and to “transform our nation’s infrastructure from silent contributors to climate change into active and vast carbon sinks.”

Principal investigator: Rajeev Prabhakar , professor of chemistry. He is joined by Luis Pestana, assistant professor of civil and architectural engineering, and Prannoy Suraneni, assistant professor of civil and architectural engineering.

“AI agent to engineer virus-based self-healing concrete”

By harnessing the power of advanced generative AI, this team hopes to marry their knowledge from the study of biology—specifically viral capsids, or the protective shells of viruses—with concrete science to develop a revolutionary type of self-repairing concrete. This concrete would contain healing agents, which could be released when the concrete cracks. A new AI tool called CUNAO will play a pivotal role in helping the researchers blend these two sciences into a biologically inspired solution to extend the lifespan of buildings and infrastructure with minimal maintenance.

Principal investigators: Pestana, along with Antoni Luque Santolaria, associate professor of biology.

Health Care Innovations

“Deep Learning for Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias”

With millions of baby boomers in their golden years, and many more to come, the health care industry is bracing for an influx of neurodegenerative diseases. To illustrate this, an estimated 40 million people across the world have Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, with this number expected to triple by 2050. This team's goal is to develop a series of biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, along with Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetic neuropathy, and optic neuropathy. This first phase will be focused on the development of AI methods for early detection of Alzheimer’s and related dementias using high-tech medical images.

Principal investigator: Xiaodong Cai , professor of electrical and computer engineering. He is joined by Dr. Jianhua Wang, professor of ophthalmology at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute and co-director of its Experimental Imaging Laboratory; Liang Liang, assistant professor of computer science; and Dr. Hong Jiang, associate professor of ophthalmology and neurology at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

“Artificial Intelligence for Covert Volitional Eye-Response Test”

Up to 40 percent of patients in a coma with acute brain injuries have eye tracking in response to visual stimuli, indicating higher levels of consciousness. However, this tracking is often not detected by medical professionals at a bedside assessment. Many times, this leads family members to decide that their loved one should no longer be on life-sustaining therapies after a discussion with medical professionals. University researchers believe there is a better way to discern brain activity—through eye movement. This team will explore using computer scanning to more accurately identify eye tracking, indicating higher levels of consciousness and to better assess a patient’s prognosis of recovery after acute brain injury.

Principal investigator: Dr. Ayham Alkhachroum , assistant professor of neurology, physician in the division of neurocritical care at the Miller School of Medicine, and principal investigator of the Hacking Consciousness lab. He is joined by Mohamed Abdel-Mottaleb, professor and chair of electrical and computer engineering; Tulay Koru-Sengal, professor of biostatistics in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the Miller School; Brian Manolovitz, a doctoral student in computer science; Mostafa Abdel-Mottaleb, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering; Gabriela Aklepi, a student at the Miller School; and Pablo de la Fuente, a graduate student in economics and computer science.

“Stable Biopharmaceutical Formulation Design”

This team will use machine learning techniques to create predictive models for protein-based monoclonal antibody treatments, which are growing in popularity to treat patients with cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, autoimmune diseases, asthma, and other conditions. This could help dramatically speed up the formulation and drug development process in the biopharmaceutical industry.

Principal investigator: Samiul Amin, professor of practice in the chemical, environmental and materials engineering. He is joined by Yelena Yesha, professor of computer science and Knight Foundation Endowed chair of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.

“Artificial Intelligence for the Diagnosis and Evaluation of Skin Cancer”

At a time when dermatologists are struggling to meet patients’ demand for their expertise, this team will evaluate artificial intelligence tools for the identification and classification of skin cancer. The models created in this effort can be applied to the diagnosis of other dermatologic diseases, such as hair and nail disorders, guided by the availability of large-scale datasets. They may also create scalable improvements that would be applicable throughout dermatology, and more broadly, to health care in general.

Principal investigator: Dr. Keyvan Nouri, professor of dermatology, ophthalmology, otolaryngology, and surgery at the Miller School of Medicine. He is joined by Yesha; Dr. John Tsatalis, resident at the Miller School in dermatology and cutaneous surgery; Abdel-Mottaleb; and Dr. Scott Elman, assistant professor of clinical dermatology and cutaneous surgery at the Miller School.

“Advancing Histopathological Diagnostics”

This team hopes to address a pivotal challenge in medical imaging: the need for high-quality, diverse datasets to accurately interpret and diagnose diseases. Traditional methods of creating computer models based on existing data are limited, which in turn, restricts the potential for models to transfer this information to real-world applications.

Principal investigator: Himanshu Arora, research associate professor of urology. Working with him is Cheng-Bang Chen, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering.

“Using AI to predict real-time speech and disability in the diverse inclusive preschool classroom”

Affecting up to 8 percent of preschoolers, early language delays can have major long-term consequences on a child’s development and academic achievement. As a result, this team aims to pinpoint behaviors that could shed light on whether young children may have a language delay or developmental disabilities, such as autism spectrum disorder, in order to make sure these children receive critical interventions to support their development in school. To do this, they will use existing information about preschoolers’ behaviors collected in three preschools across Miami-Dade County and use AI to analyze classroom behaviors such as movement and vocalizations to predict language delays and disability status. This will help to identify children who may need added support to help them thrive in the future.

Principal investigators: Vanessa Aguiar-Pulido, assistant professor of computer science, and Lynn Perry, associate professor of psychology. They are working with Daniel Messinger, professor of psychology, and Chaoming Song, associate professor of physics.

Earth Sciences

“Improving coral larval recruitment using engineering, biophysics, and generative AI”

Artificial coral reefs built from man-made materials are becoming a popular way to restore reefs damaged by climate change, pollution, and ocean acidification. The long-term success of artificial reefs depends on their ability to recruit coral larvae, and to provide the best conditions for coral larvae to settle on and grow. This team will explore, using AI and experiments, how coral larvae interact with their local physical environment on artificial cementitious substrates in the lab. They will also investigate how this interaction determines the settlement preference and location of baby corals.

Principal investigator: Suraneni. He is collaborating with Vivek Prakash, assistant professor of physics; Erotokritos Skordilis, lecturer of business technology; and Jenna Efrein, senior lecturer of glass art.

“Humans and AI in concert (HAIC): Musicians' perceptions of acceptability and self-efficacy when cocreating with artificial intelligence”

Over the last five years, AI tools for music making have exploded. This team will explore how putting AI tools in the hands of music creators effect the participants and empower them to help shape the narrative of how AI can and will be used in the music industry.

Principal investigator: Tom Collins, associate professor of music engineering technology. He is working with Raina Murnak, assistant professor of modern artist development and entrepreneurship, and Christopher Bennett, associate professor of music engineering.

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Research in Action 2024: skills, tools, and current debates

Previously titled 'Research Integrity Week', the event is now in its fourth consecutive year, building upon its increasing success and popularity. Renamed ‘Research in Action 2024: Skills, Tools, and Current Debates’, the new title reflects the value and activities spanning all research career stages.

The planning of the event has brought together expertise and knowledge from across the university, organised by the University of Nottingham Research Integrity and Research Ethics Committee, with support from Research and Innovation and the Researcher Academy.

This year’s program delves into crucial topics shaping the research landscape, including the ethical dimensions of social media, fake participants in research, exploring research involving BAME and indigenous communities, and navigating the complexities of Human Tissue in research.

The sessions include insights into teams and resources from across the university that support researchers, covering areas such as Research Contracts, Post Award management, Research Information Systems, Trusted Research, and NHS ethics.

Renowned organisations such as the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) and The UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) will share their expertise, guiding participants on fostering a healthy research culture and collectively working towards improving research quality and integrity.

Researchers stand to gain valuable insights, making Research in Action Week an invaluable opportunity.

Book now for the sessions outlined below

Monday 17 June 2024

11am - 12.30pm - Introduction to the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN)
2pm - 3.30pm - Introduction to Research Contracts - Tips and Advice

Tuesday 18 June 2024

10.30am - 12pm - Social Media and Research Ethics
1pm - 2.30pm - Research Information Systems (RIS) at UoN

Wednesday 19 June 2024

10am - 11.30am - Good Research Practice and a Healthy Research Culture (UKRIO)
12pm - 1.30pm - Trusted Research and Export Controls
2pm - 3.30pm - Research Post Award - Financial Management and Compliance

Thursday 20 June 2024

10.30am - 12pm - Fake Participants in Online Research
1pm - 2.30pm - Human Tissue at UoN

Friday 21 June 2024

10.30am - 12pm - What does it mean to be ethically and socially-just in 'decolonial' times?
1pm - 2.30pm - NHS Research at UoN

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Weekly Research Update: Thursday, April 11, 2024

Discover USC 2024 is a week from tomorrow!

Get ready with us as we prepare for an incredible day of research scholarship on Friday, April 19!

Plan your day at Discover USC 2024
Download the Guidebook app to prepare for and navigate your Discover USC experience with ease

The 2024-2025 Propel program is now accepting applications

The Office of the Vice President for Research will begin accepting 2024-2025 Propel applications on Tuesday, April 9. Complete application packages are due by Monday, July 1, 2024. The Propel Research Mentorship Program is designed to support faculty members who are new to the federal grants application process or have had success in securing relatively small grant awards, and are ready to apply for an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or a relatively large grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Program activities for the 2024-2025 Propel class will run from August 23, 2024 through May 2, 2025, and participants will submit their proposals no later than June 2025.

Click here to read more and apply for Propel .

New open access agreement lets USC Columbia authors publish in Springer Nature journals at no cost

An agreement between the Carolina Consortium and Springer Nature gives USC Columbia corresponding authors the opportunity to publish articles in eligible Springer Nature journals free of charge. It’s one of a growing number of open access agreements made available by University Libraries. Open access publication is not only more affordable, it also allows scholars to make their work more discoverable and accessible to the global community. With more than 3,000 journals across a wide range of disciplines, Springer Nature is a leading publisher of academic research. Read more about this resource here .

Need help with your data?

The University Libraries’ Research Data Analysis and Statistics Support Service is free and here to help you with: exploratory data analysis, statistical tests, SAS, SPSS, and NVivo. In-person and virtual appointments are available. Walk-ins are also welcome, although an appointment guarantees someone will be available to help you. To learn more and schedule an appointment, visit our service webpage .

Research trainings

The Office of the Vice President for Research is excited to offer a growing slate of training for USC faculty, staff and students, focusing on topics related to research and research administration. Each week, we will share our current offerings here, and provide complete information through our website . Please sign up at least 24 hours in advance of the session to ensure a spot.

Current Offerings (April 2024):

Federal Portal Series: NSF Research.gov Training Session

April 16, 2024, 2:00-3:30 p.m. via Microsoft Teams (Online)
Register here

Federal Portal Series: NIH ASSIST Training Session

April 18, 2024, 2:00-3:30 p.m. via Microsoft Teams (Online)

11 April 2024

Challenge the conventional. Create the exceptional. No Limits.

The HSB Atrium filled with people during the CAHS Scholarly Showcase

CAHS Scholarly Showcase promotes interprofessional research, scholarship

Event information.

Date: April 17, 2024 11:30 AM - 4:30 PM Location: Health Sciences Building - 3225 Eden Ave Cincinnati, OH 45267

View the 2024 CAHS Scholarly Showcase Digital Program

The University of Cincinnati College of Allied Health Sciences CAHS Scholarly Showcase will take place on April 17 from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. A total of 64 posters will be presented during the showcase and the day will include a variety of allied health undergraduate and graduate researchers from the College of Allied Health Sciences.

In addition to research poster presentations, the CAHS Scholarly Showcase will include a Distinguished Lectureship presentation entitled "UC, Cincinnati Children’s and Kroger for the SuperWIN: a collaboration leading to healthier lives" featuring Sarah Couch, PhD, professor in UC's nutrition sciences program and Suzanne Summer, PhD, RD, a research associate in the Schubert Research Clinic at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

For the first time, the showcase will add exhibitions aimed at inspiring participants to explore knowledge beyond the confines of the classroom.

"With all these activities, this event will foster interprofessional education and interdisciplinary research collaborations," says 2024 CAHS Scholarly Showcase chair Fawen Zhang, PhD.

Research is a crucial and cumulating experience for many UC College of Allied Health Sciences students.

Engaging in research during college cultivates critical thinking, collaboration and problem-solving skills while deepening understanding in a chosen field. It also offers opportunities to contribute to knowledge advancement and opens doors to graduate studies and career opportunities.

Student Olivia Sawchak poses in front of her research poster entitled "The Role of Imaging in Breast Cancer" during the 2023 CAHS Scholarly Showcase.

Melinda Butsch Kovacic, MPH, PhD, CAHS' associate dean of research, is looking forward to this year's showcase.

"The CAHS Scholarly Showcase has long been a great way for students to share their research both with students from their own programs as well as from other disciplines," Butsch Kovacic said. "It's an opportunity for faculty to affirm the students as well as for the students to receive constructive feedback. Importantly, the event emphasizes the value of interdisciplinary allied health research in addition to fostering students' professional growth"

The showcase is open to the public. Approximate start times for each session are listed in the digital program.

For questions about the event, email CAHS Scholarly Showcase Chair Fawen Zhang .

Featured photo at top of 2023 CAHS Scholarly Showcase.

Office of Research
College of Allied Health Sciences

The making of a successful Faculty & Staff Campaign

May 25, 2021

More than one-third of UC’s nearly 7,000 faculty and staff have already contributed to the 2020-21 Faculty & Staff Campaign, putting the goal of 45% within reach.

New facial covering requirement and vaccine incentives for UC community

August 3, 2021

UC President Neville G. Pinto announced that facial covering requirements will begin at UC Aug. 5, and vaccine incentives will begin for faculty, staff and students later this month.

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research assistant. Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research. Download. Available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and iOS. Just need to create a quick bibliography? Try ZoteroBib.
31 Best Online Research Tools
27. ScienceDirect. Elsevier, one of the biggest publishers of science content, offers access to their entire archive through ScienceDirect. ScienceDirect is built on a wide range of trusted, high-quality, interdisciplinary research. Its aim is to help you find answers to the most pressing research questions. 28.
Research Tools
NIH supports the development and dissemination of new research tools that advance basic and translational science. Learn how NIH-funded tools have enabled breakthroughs in small molecule screening, single cell analysis, cryo-EM, and cell culture technology.
Resources
Open source. A toolkit of activities, frameworks, and guidance for transparency in research dataset documentation. Customizable, participatory methods to create Data Cards templates. Our open-source machine learning platform for everyone. Google believes that open source is good for everyone. Explore all the open source releases from Google ...
12 Best Tools for Researchers in 2024
04. Qualtrics. Qualtrics is another great survey software option and one of the best tools for researchers. It can handle everything from simple questionnaires to complex research surveys. Qualtrics is a great choice for survey solutions that are tailored to customers, employees, and brands.
Mendeley
Mendeley brings your research to life, so you can make an impact on tomorrow . Search over 100 million cross-publisher articles and counting. Search. Popular searches: COVID-19 Bioenergy Obesity . Create a free account . Access your library, everywhere.
ResearchGate
Access 160+ million publications and connect with 25+ million researchers. Join for free and gain visibility by uploading your research.
10 Online Research Tools Every Online Learner Should Know About
We have prepared a list of 10 online research tools every online learner should master. Todoist. Research is a time-intensive activity, which means you will need a tool to organize both your professional and personal life. We advise you to give Todoist a shot. Todoist enables you to manage all of your projects and access them from any platform ...
Top 13 Tools for Researchers in 2024!
Learn about the best software tools for researchers to conduct and manage their research online. From Bit.ai to Typeset.io, discover features, pricing, and benefits of each tool.
10 research tools every PhD student needs
Research Tool 2: Connected Papers. When you are doing a literature review and want to find connections between published papers, Connected Papers by @ConnectedPapers can help you do that. By entering a typical paper there, they will show a visual graph of similar papers in your field. The more you explore, the more likely you can see trends ...
Research tools and techniques
Learn about the tools and techniques used in quantitative and qualitative methods for health research, such as data collection strategies, data analysis methods and data management. Find out how to choose the most appropriate tools and techniques for your research objectives and questions, and how to pre-test them before data collection.
Research Tools
Research tools refer to a wide range of resources, methods, instruments, software, or techniques that researchers use to collect, analyze, interpret, and communicate data and information during the research process. These tools are designed to facilitate and enhance various aspects of research, such as data collection, organization, analysis ...
PDF Research Methodology: Tools and Techniques
(v) Research demands accurate observation and description. (vi) Research involves gathering new data from primary or first-hand sources or using existing data for a new purpose. (vii) Research is characterized by carefully designed procedures that apply rigorous analysis. (viii) Research involves the quest for answers to un-solved problems.
Library Research Tools
Services. Library Reference Services . Manage Citations and Bibliographies . Manage Research Data. Researcher Profiles. Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs) (DOIs, ARKs, etc.) . Additional Services for SI Staff on PRISM (SI staff)
Online Research Tools and Aids
Online Research Tools and Aids Find Records and Information about Records. Our website contains answers to many of the preliminary research-related questions you might have. To find copies of Federal records on our website and/or information about the records and their historical context, you will have to look in several places. ...
7 Data Collection Methods & Tools For Research
Learn the types, importance, and tools of data collection for different research purposes. Find out the advantages and disadvantages of primary and secondary data collection methods, such as interviews, case studies, surveys, and focus groups. Use Formplus Builder to create online questionnaires and questionnaires for data collection.
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AI tools for research can help you to discover new sources for your research assignment or literature review! These tools will synthesize information from large databases of scholarly output with the aim of finding the most relevant articles, thereby saving researchers' time. As with our research databases or any other search tool, however, it ...
Introduction to the "Research Tools" for Research Methodology course
Abstract. Abstract: "Research Tools" can be defined as vehicles that broadly facilitate research and. related activities. "Research Tools" enable researchers to collect, organize, analyze ...
Planning Research with Generative AI
Planning Research with Generative AI. Maria Rosala. April 5, 2024. Summary: With the proper context, prompts, and scrutiny, AI chatbots can be used to create a successful user-research plan. AI chatbots (like ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot) can support UX researchers of all experience levels in planning their research.
10 Great AI Tools for Researchers
Here are are some good AI Tools I recommend for student researchers and academics: 1. Litmaps. Litmaps is a tool for research students that makes finding papers and authors on a topic easy and quick. Instead of spending lots of time reading through hundreds of papers, you can use Litmaps to find the important ones in seconds.
Researchers explore power of AI to craft novel solutions
The latest round of U-LINK team research funding focuses on utilizing artificial intelligence tools to improve our world. By Janette Neuwahl Tannen [email protected] 04-10-2024. Concrete that would absorb carbon dioxide from the environment. A new technology to help quicken the pace of drug discovery, or to diagnose illnesses.
Research in Action 2024: skills, tools, and current debates
Renamed 'Research in Action 2024: Skills, Tools, and Current Debates', the new title reflects the value and activities spanning all research career stages. The planning of the event has brought together expertise and knowledge from across the university, organised by the University of Nottingham Research Integrity and Research Ethics ...
Office of the Vice President for Research
Weekly Research Update: Thursday, April 11, 2024 Posted on: April 9, 2024; Updated on: April 9, 2024 By Eden Prime, [email protected]
CAHS Scholarly Showcase promotes interprofessional research
Location: Health Sciences Building - 3225 Eden Ave Cincinnati, OH 45267. View the 2024 CAHS Scholarly Showcase Digital Program. The University of Cincinnati College of Allied Health Sciences CAHS Scholarly Showcase will take place on April 17 from 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. A total of 64 posters will be presented during the showcase and the day ...