Useful Software for Academic Writing


Research Software


Right below you may find a standard article summary. For interesting and useful (in my opinion) bullet points look below the summary.

In the article "How to Write a Thesis and Which Software Tools to Use" by Joeran Bell a tutorial on the use of software in writing an academic paper is presented. The article is divided into three sections according to the process of writing a thesis: reviewing literature, writing a draft and, finally, writing the thesis.
In the first section Joeran offers solutions to the problem of information storing and classification. It is very hard to remember every interesting detail and its reference from every paper you read, He proposes to use mind mapping software. He offers a number of programmes with an emphasis on Docear [which I find rather hideous and outdated, though may be useful nonetheless. Still, XMind seems like it received more updates than Docear]. He presents examples and step-by-step tutorial on how you can organize your data, The other problem is maintaining the references. It can also be solved through software. The author suggests JabRef [which has been being updated up to the present point, as far as I have checked].
In the second section Joeran Bell proposes to write the draft directly in the mind map created in Docear. He argues that it is rather convenient to organise and export into word processing software after you are done.
And finally, in the last section Joeran Bell does not really discover America, stating that the final step of writing a clean version of your paper is most convenient to do in word processing programmes. Such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.

  • Mind mapping looks cool. I feel like this is a very good way to neatly structure your resources and never forget anything. Check out XMind, it is rather stylish.
  • JabRef - a very useful programme for creating and storing all the references, Though I am not quite sure it confines to Russian standards, it is worth checking out.
  • Surprisingly, the article is rather relevant. It was published in 2013 and most software is still running
  • The more interesting part for me was the first one, the last two being rather obvious for experienced users. If you want to read the article - focus on the first part.

Comments

  1. Natalia Eydelman22 November 2018 at 00:54

    Andrey,

    thanks for such an imformative and useful review of the reserach softwar that is mentioned in the resource you got acquainted with. I liked that you checked the reviewed software and were able to make your own judgement about it.

    I am curious whether you have used any mindmapping software and if yes, which you have found more useful.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unknown22 November 2018 at 01:00

      I actually have not used mind mapping technique at all, and have not considered it before. But now, having read about it, I find it intriguing and I am certainly going to try to use it.

      Delete
    2. Natalia Eydelman28 November 2018 at 01:30

      I see. It'd be great if you tried to use it and shared your impressions about it with your peers and me.

      Here is a blogpost with the information about a number of free mindmapping tools:

      https://www.lifehack.org/articles/featured/11-free-mind-mapping-applications-web-services.html

      So, could you let us know if you used one of them and whether you found it helpful?

      Thanks

      Delete
  2. Natalia Eydelman28 November 2018 at 01:25

    Sorry, did not notice a spelling mistake in my post above: research software (missed the letter "e")

    ReplyDelete

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