A necessary research tool

For those diligent researchers out there, we want to make things a bit easier for you, so here are five essential tools for researchers.

This online research tool is offered for free by Google and is indispensable for any serious researcher. Armed with nothing more than a computer, an internet connection, and a subject for research, Google Scholar will give you a head start on any project. At its core, Google Scholar is an academic search engine. It allows its users to search all manner of academic literature from journals and white papers to scientific articles and patents.

Not only does it search the best-known databases for academic papers, but it also has access to a slew of university repositories. This increases the chance of finding something relevant to your own research. Furthermore, the Google Scholar search facility allows you to set up an alert.

This will notify you should a new article or paper be released in your particular field, or from a particular person or institution. This ensures that your research remains on the cutting edge of your field.

Google Scholar lets you manage your papers, even in multiple libraries. Simply label each piece of research and let Google Scholar do the rest. It automatically displays citation numbers and the version of the paper you are reading.

Even more important, it tells you what other papers have already cited the work in question. This lets you know if you are bringing up a new twist on the subject, or treading an already well-worn path.

Likewise, Google Scholar will also alert you when anybody cites your own paper. Whereas most productivity apps tend to be tailored to the corporate landscape, Trello is right at home in the world of academia.

Running the gamut from content ideas, to research, writing, and publication of papers, every task can be easily moved about the main project screen as needed. If you are a non-native English speaker, then you need a research tool to help you with your written language. If your research involves data analysis, then you need a good statistical research tool for your work. It is also important that you keep tabs on what other people in your research arena are doing, so you need research tools such as Google Scholar and ResearchGate to collaborate with your peers.

You also need a good plagiarism checking software to avoid academic misconduct. Finally, you need a research project management software to stay on top of the deadlines.

In this blog, we review some of the useful tools for research that researchers can use to be more productive. Ref-N-Write is a fantastic research tool for beginner writers and non-native English speakers. This is a Microsoft Word add-in. This tool allows users to import research papers into MS Word.

Then the tool allows you to search the research documents while you are writing your research paper or academic essay. In essence, this tool is similar to Google search engine; the difference is that instead of searching the internet you are searching research papers and academic documents stored on your computer. You can expand the search results and jump to the exact location in the source document in a few clicks.

This research tool is fantastic to lookup for writing ideas from related research papers or documents from your colleagues. You can use this to polish your writing by substituting colloquial terms and informal statements in your text with academically acceptable words and phrases.

One of the most important requirement while writing up your research is the use of appropriate statistical methods and analysis to back up your claims. Whether you are doing quantitative or qualitative research, statistical analysis will be an indispensable part of your workflow. There are plenty of research tools available that allows you to do a wide variety of statistical analyses for your research. However, most of the time, you will find yourself performing basic calculations stuff such as mean, standard deviation, confidence intervals, standard error, etc.

Also, you need to use some form of statistical test to test the significance of the difference between two groups or cohorts and compute the p-value.

Following are the list of free popular statistical research tools available online. These tools will allow you to cut and copy your data directly from your spreadsheet and perform the required statistical analysis. One of the widely used tools for research is Microsoft Excel. MS Excel has plenty of features that will come in handy when you are doing a research project. Excel is a must have research tool if your study involves a lot of quantitative analysis.

You can visualize your data using a wide variety of chart types, for example, bar plot, scatter plot, etc. You can use pivot tables to organize and generate summaries of your data easily.

This add-in comes with a wide variety of statistical analysis tools such as Descriptive statistics, Histogram, F-test, Random number generation, Fourier analysis, etc.

Google Scholar. The Legal Information Institute LII at Cornell Law School provides access to most US laws online for free, making it a good resource when you need to find a statute or regulation, while also providing online access to legal materials like the:. Another free research resource hosted by LII is Wex—a free, community-built legal dictionary and legal encyclopedia created and edited by legal experts.

And, for staying effortlessly well-informed on specific practice areas, Justia will send the latest straight to your inbox with an array of free newsletters ranging from daily summaries of opinions from all federal appellate courts and all 50 state supreme courts to weekly summaries of opinions in certain practice areas. As valuable as legal databases are for your case research, there are also other alternative sources where you can find information and resources to support your legal research.

Below, we offer a few free and cost-effective options for help build your case. Sometimes, the easiest way to get the information you need is to be direct. You can find many case law and court documents online for free.

Legislatures and courts are publishing their own materials, which are sometimes available online as downloadable PDFs—a convenience that until recently has never existed. Also, older legal information may not be available online yet. In this situation, visiting a library may be helpful as you will be able to find archived legal information that is unavailable elsewhere. Also, you may find potential collaborators in your colleagues and the librarians who will be researching there as well.

These collaborators will be a great source for information on what arguments worked in the past, and may help you find local knowledge you might not be able to uncover yourself.

If you are a member of a bar association, you should also make full use of the resources available to you through your member benefits, such as:. One of the best ways to become a more efficient legal researcher is to stay ahead of the game. The best way to do that? Maintain your subject matter competency by keeping up-to-date on the latest developments in your practice area by regularly reading legal journals and legal blogs.

LexBlog—an online network of over 22, legal bloggers—is a hub of the latest commentary on the law. Sorting blogs by channels , LexBlog makes it easy to find and subscribe to legal blogs that focus on your specific area of law.

The direct research benefit of staying in the loop? Want the simplest way to search case law? We published this blog post in August Last updated: August 5, Categorized in: Business. Legal research can be tedious and time-consuming, but it is also often the key to success as a lawyer.