rhedreen

(Updated 2019-06-27; updated 2023-01-16 to note Microsoft Academic's demise; also to note that I am no longer using Kopernio, which is now part of Clarivate's Endnote. I need to make a new list!)

A list of online tools, services, and software I'm finding useful.

• Kopernio (Chrome, Firefox) https://kopernio.com/ Now owned by Clarivate Analytics (owners of Web of Science and Journal Citation Reports), Kopernio is a browser plugin (Firefox & Chrome) that can find PDFs of articles via both open access sources and library subscriptions. Also has online storage “locker” for PDFs. Obviously, some data harvesting is going on, but it really simplifies finding full text articles. The Google Scholar plugin (from GS) has similar functions (data to Google, obviously) and Lazy Scholar is an independent plugin that also allows you to access your library's subscriptions. Unpaywall and the Open Access Button are other plugins that only find open access sources. All good, but right now I'm trading data (with a reasonable data privacy policy) for convenience with Kopernio.
• Zotero (Mac, Windows, Linux) https://zotero.org/ My preferred citation manager, and the only major one currently NOT owned by a big publisher. (Elsevier owns Mendeley, Clarivate owns Endnote, and Proquest owns Refworks.) But besides that, I prefer it for the ease of import and export. Generally, I find the import options work better and it exports in more formats (RIS, bibtex, csv, etc.) than other software. It comes with over 9000 citation styles, and reads the open source format CSL so you can modify or create any style you need if those 9000 aren't doing it for you. If you just need a quick formatted citation, try their online service, ZoteroBib, https://zbib.org/
• Anystyle.io (online) https://anystyle.io/ Convert text formatted citations (APA, MLA, etc.) into bibtex or other machine readable citation formats. It's essentially a proof of concept, machine learning GitHub project, but I was able to take around 100 references from a dissertation and get a file to import into Zotero in about half an hour. Not bad for something “intended for non-commercial, limited use.” Certainly a LOT faster than if I'd been typing (or copying/pasting) them in, or even doing a search-and-import. It's not instantaneous, but you have a lot of control over the process, so you can fix errors before importing.
• Texts (Academic Markdown Editor) (Mac, Windows) http://www.texts.io/ I'm trialing this markdown editor right now, and I am liking it. A minimalist writing tool, it uses markdown language (think HTML for more general text) to structure documents (and structure leads to formatting.) You can do all the major document structures: lists, numbered lists, headings, footnotes, quotations, and – unusually for these markdown editors – citations. (Citations are a little tricky, but once you've got the system down, it's not too hard.) Once I have my basic text, I can export in a number of formats, including PDF, RTF, Word, HTML, ePub, LaTex, and a very nice minimalist HTML presentation style that I would be very happy to present with at a professional conference. What's really neat is that the SAME FILE can be exported in multiple formats, so a properly structured text document can automatically make a presentation, etc. Those are the benefits of markdown; Texts just makes it all really easy. The only drawback I've seen so far is an inability to resize images. I think it's a 30 day trial, and I've seen a price of $19 in reviews (though I'm not seeing a cost on the website right now.)
• Microsoft Academic Search (now defunct, 2022) Microsoft's answer to Google Scholar, with extras. Besides the general indexing, Microsoft has added a semantic analysis component, so that things like institution are parsed out of articles and become searchable. Each document entry includes the usual citation, abstract, and sources (OA direct downloads), but also how the document fits into the citation network (references and citing articles) and all the parsed topic, institution, journal, date, and author data. Plus, a “related” search that uses a semantic analysis to find similar documents. My librarian's heart is cheered by the fact that it also lists my research guides as scholarly documents (even if it did take a bit of work to “claim” all of them when I set up my profile.) Two drawbacks: 1) apparently you can't use your institutional Microsoft account (Office 365, etc.) to login – at least it's never accepted mine; and 2) there is no ability to link to an institution subscription login. (However, see Kopernio, above.) It's currently a smaller database than Google Scholar, but it's growing, and it has some very nice features of great use to researchers and students.
• JSTOR's Text Analyzer (online) https://www.jstor.org/analyze Speaking of semantic search, JSTOR's Text Analyzer (beta) does that, too, and shows you what it's doing. You don't need a JSTOR subscription to use it, just go to the page and upload another article or paste in some text and see what comes up. Then you can play around with the search features to refine the search. (If you don't have an institutional subscription, btw, JSTOR has a number of options for independent scholars that are very affordable.) JSTOR has a nice write up on teaching with it, too, at https://daily.jstor.org/how-to-teach-with-jstor-text-analyzer/. Other suggestions I've run across include having students use the subject terms to help interpret and summarize an article. (JSTOR's own video implies that you can use it for that “I wrote the paper, now I need sources” style of academic writing. Librarians would prefer to discourage that, however.)
• Publish or Perish (Mac, Windows, Linux) https://harzing.com/resources/publish-or-perish Anna-Wil Harzing wrote the Publish or Perish software to help academics document and discuss the impact of their research. You can get a citation report from all the major citation sources (some you need subscriptions for). She's got extensive documentations, including print books

Good post with more tools: https://medium.com/@aarontay/top-new-tools-for-researchers-worth-looking-at-9d7d494761b0