Topic: Best apps for academic research
Hi all, just finished setting up a new install and after tweaking things just right, I thought I'd share my setup with everyone in case anyone else does academic research. Also feel free to add your own tips to this thread, or start another one for a different topic.
Reference manager:
Zotero - great free plugin for firefox, works like endnote but much better. with ff4/iceweasel4, it is super fast too. They also offer a sync service that comes with some storage free, and you can either buy more or sync with your own webdav. it's even got some cool options for visualizing your reference section as a timeline. It also lets you share subfolders with other researchers, so you can work collaboratively on a reference section.
Zotfile - a plugin for zotero, lets you quickly add pdfs that you've saved to the appropriate reference. It also renames the pdfs for you so that they are easy to share (by author, year, title, etc.)
Zotero scholar citation - haven't figured out how to work this yet, but it supposedly lists the number of times a work has been cited.
Zotero-open office.org integration 3.5 - the most important part. It also works with libre office. It puts a few buttons into libre/openoffice (also works on windows with word and mac with neooffice / word)
PDF editor - after collecting pdfs in my reference section, I read / edit them.
Okular - this is a kde prog. (but runs cross-platform) and comes with loads of dependancies, but it runs fast and lets you edit pdfs in ways that are very useful for notetaking. It also saves the pdfs as you edit. So I can find the pdf in my zotero reference list, double click it to open it in Okular, annotate it and close it and it'll be there edited the same way when I come back.
Xournal - also lets you edit pdfs, less cumbersome than okular, but not as good for notetaking IMO. It is better for annotating things that you're going to print or send to someone who doesn't have Okular.
word Processor -
Libre office writer - there's really no competition for me, considering how well it works with zotero and also works reasonably well for collaboration. I do make a few changes to toolbars so that the track changes functions are easy to use from the gui. and I set it to save things to .doc by default for easier collaboration.
Tomboy notes - good to have all around, very handy and they save notes on the fly.
Zotero notes - also kind of cool because they get catalogued for search through zotero, with all my other options for notetaking, I usually avoid these though-to avoid confusion.
Presentations -
Libre office impress - this is a great program but it still leaves something to be desired in terms of working with powerpoint files. This is an issue for collaboration, which forces me to use:
Microsoft Powerpoint 2007 - I hate doing it, but I own it, and it makes it possible for me to collaborate with my colleagues, who are using it. Office 2007 works fairly well in wine, and can be installed easily with PlayOnLinux (in repos), and a CD.
Statistics - I'm still struggling here. I know how to use SPSS, but I haven't been able to get spss 17 running well in wine. I'm thinking of learning r at some point, but haven't gotten around to it yet. PSPP looks promising, but it is very limited at this point, so I wouldn't recommend it, unless you only need to do t-tests or something. It does read SPSS data files, so if you need to convert them, PSPP might be a good way to go.
Calc - good for simple spreadhseets and graphs...not exactly what I need for the other stuff.
Search resources -
I almost always use google scholar these days. It is far superior to the databases you get from school libraries. I used to use both, but eventually just started using scholar exclusively. There's a few cool tricks:
in preferences - you can add your school library, this will allow you to download files that are available through your school library directly from google scholar.
in preferences - you can also change export options, which will make a link appear under each entry allowing you to download the reference (e.g., for endnote)
with zotero - in the search bar, you can click on the little folder icon, which will bring up a list of references. You check the ones you want and it'll download them all to your zotero library (along with pdfs-sometimes).
with iceweasel/firefox. make sure that you have google search installed, either by getting a plugin, or using the "add to search bar" plugin to make one. Then you can set a keyword (under manage search engines). The keyword makes it so that when typing it in the superbar, it'll use scholar. So mine is 's', if I type 's autism' in the superbar, it'll do a google scholar search for autism.
Anyway that's all I got, anyone else want to share little research workflow tips?
