By: Lael Wentland
Lael is a 4th year PhD student in Bioengineering. She is the WE Local Programming Liaison (LPL) for FY21.
Lael is a 4th year PhD student in Bioengineering. She is the WE Local Programming Liaison (LPL) for FY21.
Last year Dr. Katy Huff gave a virtual talk on working effectively from home and provided examples of software that can help streamline your work. Since then, I have been hyper aware of software that I use and have sought out new software to make my grad school life easier.
As graduate students we sift through large quantities of information. It can be overwhelming to organize the information in a quickly accessible format. I wanted to share the software tools that I depend on to make my research/writing flow more smoothly.
I was not given any support from the software companies mentioned and the opinions expressed are my own, not from SWE.
Finding journal articles: With thousands of new articles being published on different journals, finding relevant journal articles is difficult (that all articles are not free/accessible is another issue). I use two sites to guide my literature search: ConnectedPapers (free) and Web of Science (need a subscription through your school). Both are great places to find recent works that have cited a past paper.
These sites can be used at the beginning of your literature search when you have a paper but need to find more recent work in that field. I love ConnectedPapers since it produces a graph of the relationship between the papers (see below!), plus I think the interface is easier to navigate. I still use Web of Science since it is faster to generate cited reference lists.
Keeping track of what you read: A citation management system organizes the papers you read in one place. There are free options such as Mendeley or Zotero and those that are fee-based like EndNote which most schools have a license you can use. I like using free software so I will still be able to access the articles after I graduate. If your research group uses a specific manager, using the same one can be useful for sharing articles between people. Otherwise, you can do a little research on which manager will be compatible with your operating system.
A necessary feature is word-processing integration. The citation manager will generate a bibliography and manage your citation numbers/style in your word processor. Since you can choose from multiple citation styles, you no longer have to spend time editing your bibliography!
Staying on top of the literature: This is always a daunting task and often gets pushed to “do later” - why not automate it? Some people follow alerts from specific journals but I find that researchers in my field publish in quite a variety of journals. Instead, I have google scholar and ResearchGate email alerts set up for specific people I follow. Both are great accounts to keep up to date on publishing in your field. Plus these sites can let you know when someone has cited your work, which always gives me a moment of joy!
Saving your work to the cloud: All graduate students should have access and be actively using cloud services (Box, GoogleDrive, DropBox, etc.). This enables having copies of your data in multiple places - don't lose that precious data!
Having your research methods saved in the cloud via an electronic journal can also be helpful. I don’t want to take my physical lab notebook out of lab and I’m often asked questions in Zoom meetings at home where I need to reference my notebook. I use OneNote but there are more official options if your whole lab will be switching to electronic notebooks.
I write out my experimental methods in OneNote and print a copy to place in my physical notebook. During experiments I write notes/observations/deviations of the procedure in the physical journal - you can place a picture of this in your electronic notebook or copy the notes directly into the electronic notebook. After the data has been processed, I place a copy of the data and discussion in OneNote on the same page as my experimental methods. Electronic notebooks can be a tricky subject but, my opinion is that they are a great supplement to your physical notebook.
Do you have any software that you use which makes your life easier? What about software that keeps you on track or keeps track of your calendar? Drop a comment below to share with your fellow SWE members!
A necessary feature is word-processing integration. The citation manager will generate a bibliography and manage your citation numbers/style in your word processor. Since you can choose from multiple citation styles, you no longer have to spend time editing your bibliography!
Staying on top of the literature: This is always a daunting task and often gets pushed to “do later” - why not automate it? Some people follow alerts from specific journals but I find that researchers in my field publish in quite a variety of journals. Instead, I have google scholar and ResearchGate email alerts set up for specific people I follow. Both are great accounts to keep up to date on publishing in your field. Plus these sites can let you know when someone has cited your work, which always gives me a moment of joy!
Saving your work to the cloud: All graduate students should have access and be actively using cloud services (Box, GoogleDrive, DropBox, etc.). This enables having copies of your data in multiple places - don't lose that precious data!
Having your research methods saved in the cloud via an electronic journal can also be helpful. I don’t want to take my physical lab notebook out of lab and I’m often asked questions in Zoom meetings at home where I need to reference my notebook. I use OneNote but there are more official options if your whole lab will be switching to electronic notebooks.
I write out my experimental methods in OneNote and print a copy to place in my physical notebook. During experiments I write notes/observations/deviations of the procedure in the physical journal - you can place a picture of this in your electronic notebook or copy the notes directly into the electronic notebook. After the data has been processed, I place a copy of the data and discussion in OneNote on the same page as my experimental methods. Electronic notebooks can be a tricky subject but, my opinion is that they are a great supplement to your physical notebook.
Do you have any software that you use which makes your life easier? What about software that keeps you on track or keeps track of your calendar? Drop a comment below to share with your fellow SWE members!
