Research Tools & Apps
This page includes a list of helpful research tools and resources.
Plugins, Apps, Search Tools & Citation Tools
Unpaywall – Padlock icon in your browser includes a direct link to the full-text article if a free version is available.
Google Scholar – Add the Google Scholar Button to your browser, select the title of an article on a webpage, and click the Scholar button to find it.
Open Access Button – Use this plugin to get free, legal access to research articles.
Kopernio/EndNote Click – Browser plugin to download free, full-text PDFs when available.
CoCites – Want to know who else published on a topic? This plugin adds the CoCites logo for each scientific article in PubMed.
Google Scholar Citation Tracker – Track citations to your articles appearing in Google Scholar.
Web of Science My Research Assistant – Brings WoS to your mobile phone.
Please remember when sharing materials that papers and research may be subject to copyright. For more about copyright, click here. For more about ethical concerns surrounding ResearchGate and Academia.edu, click here.
Publons – Track publications, citation metrics, peer review and journal editing work
ORCID – ORCID (Open Researcher and Contribution ID) aims to solve the name ambiguity problem in scholarly communications by creating a registry of persistent unique identifiers for individual researchers and an open and transparent linking mechanism between ORCID, other ID schemes, and research objects such as publications, grants, and patents. See also ORCID Author Identifiers: A Primer for Librarians. Medical Reference Services Quarterly (2016).
Google Scholar – Create a public profile of your work, track citations, and use citation metrics.
PIVOT – Pivot answers the growing demands on research developers to quickly discover the right funding opportunities and effectively collaborate with their colleagues.
NIH RePORTER Matchmaker – Search abstracts or scientific text and Matchmaker will return similar projects from RePORTER.
ResearchGate – Share your research and collaborate with your peers.
Academia.edu – Share papers with millions of people around the world.
For definitions of various scholarly metrics terms, see this helpful guide from Johns Hopkins.
Journal Citation Reports (Web of Science) – Aggregates the meaningful connections of citations created by the research community through the delivery of a rich array of publisher-independent data, metrics and analysis of the world’s most impactful journals included in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), part of the Web of Science Core Collection.
Inspec Analytics – Explore the interconnected data within Inspec to uncover patterns and trends in engineering, computing & physics research to understand your place in a global landscape. With these precision research analytics, you can set the direction for your research outputs and monitor their impact.
Google Scholar Metrics – Uses the h-index to rank journals based on Google Scholar citations.
EigenFactor.org – Sponsored by the West Lab at the Information School and the Bergstrom Lab in the Department of Biology at U of Washington.
Scimago Journal & Country Rank – Publicly available portal developed from information contained in Scopus.
Microsoft Academic – Provides an h-index for an author.
Altmetric Bookmarklet – This “bookmarklet” for Chrome, Firefox and Safari will allow you to see the online shares and mentions of your article with a click.
ImpactStory – Track discussion of your articles on Twitter, blogs, news outlets and other non-traditional sources.
PlumX – Helps measure awareness and interest in your research.
Annotation, Commenting & Note-Taking Tools
PubPeer – Tool for commenting on journal articles.
Hypothes.is – Collaborative annotation on the web.
MarginNote – Book annotation, mind mapping, flash cards etc.
ReadCube – Collect and curate reseqarch material. Annotate, share and cite.
OneNote – Microsoft OneNote is an app that is designed for research, note-taking, and information storage.
Evernote – Get organized in notebooks you can divide into sections and pages. With easy navigation and search, you’ll always find your notes right where you left them.
Penultimate – Digital handwriting app for iPad that combines the natural experience of pen and paper with power of Evernote’s sync and search features.
Grammarly – Scans your text for common grammatical mistakes (like misused commas) and complex ones (like misplaced modifiers).
Outliner – Android app. Organize shopping lists, tasks, todo-lists, ideas and all kinds of memos. Or use Outliner as a project management tool.
Please remember when posting any scholarly materials online to make sure you are complying with copyright laws. See our copyright guide here.
FigShare – Host data & other supplemental material related to your online work. Get a DOI for published data. Supports many file types, up to 5 TB.
arXiv – Repository of pre-prints approved for publication after moderation.
Zotero – Zotero is a free tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. It also helps you format your citations and bibliography. You can sync your account across multiple devices, and create citation groups for group projects.
Mendeley – Add papers directly from your browser with a few clicks or import any documents from your desktop. Access your library from anywhere. Windows, Mac, Linux and all browsers. Generate references, citations and bibliographies in a whole range of journal styles with just a few clicks.
Web of Science – Set up citation alerts with Web of Science.
Google – Create a Google Alert for your name or research study
Altmetric Bookmarklet – This “bookmarklet” for Chrome, Firefox and Safari will allow you to see the online shares and mentions of your article with a click.
AdBlock Plus – Hide all ads or allow “Acceptable Ads” to support websites
LastPass – Password saving app, free for 1 user and up to 20 accounts.
Dashlane – Password saving app, free for 50 passwords on one device.
Microsoft To Do – Microsoft To Do is a cloud-based task management application. It allows users to manage their tasks from a smartphone, tablet and computer.
How Open is it? – A guide for evaluating the openness of journals, created by SPARC.
TOP Factor Rubric – Created by the Center for Open Science to evaluate journals against the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) guidelines.