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Project Management resource for PhD students and supervisors

2018 Nov 27 | Resource , Soft Skills | 0

This article is not only a blog post but also a resource linking to other good blog posts and to free downloadable templates of project management tools for PhD students and supervisors .

To create this resource I asked around me and on Twitter if people had good references. I got a few nice ones, but actually I got many suggestions about self-organization and time management. It then appears to me that we tend to mix up what project management is versus time management, and even for me today it’s still not 100% clear.

In this research and student-supervisor relationship context, I would like to suggest the following:

• time management is a personal skills : you manage your own time, you decide what to do Tuesday at 10 AM, maybe you agree to meet with someone at this time, but ultimately you’re the one who decides when for example you want to have lunch or coffee (at least I hope you can). This also means that, to some extent, it doesn’t matter if your time management style does not align perfectly with your colleagues. Again, I wrote to some extent .
• on the other hand, for project management and in this context, there are at least two persons involved: the student and the supervisor. In my views, project management is as much about planning and conducting a project as about finding a compatible way for two persons to work together . Project management is a team skill.

Therefore, what I’ve been looking for are references to help both PhD students and supervisors to first understand what the underlying principles of project management are, and secondly to get an overview of different tools available to help them work together.

Below you will find interesting blog posts, whenever possible I selected those giving concrete advice on how to implement project management in research, and I also looked for free ready-to-use templates .

Click on each drop-down item below to see the content.

1. Understand the underlying principles of project management for researchers

Project management for scientists - blog post.

by Stanley E. Portny and Jim Austin in 2002 on the Sciencemag website

meant toward supervisors

This article tries to define what project management is, argues that it can be applied to research and introduce the principles for how to do so:

“Projects can be large or small, planned and tracked formally or informally, and defined by a legal contract or an informal agreement.”

“Project management allows–indeed, insists–that the components of a project be constantly revised as new information arises.”

How Project Management Techniques Can Improve Research - blog post

by Donna Kridelbaugh in 2017 on the website labmanager.com

“research project management as a subdiscipline that can provide the tools and resources for researchers to better organize projects, but with flexibility in the planning process to evolve with the project as needed”

“Creating a road map to guide successful project implementation create a culture of shared ownership toward research goals and open communication throughout the project life cycle.”

A PhD as a project - blog posts

from Fiona Saunders on her website and on the Thesis Whisperer website in 2013

meant toward PhD students

Introduction from the Thesis Whisperer : “Fiona Saunders is a Senior Lecturer in the Management of Engineering Projects at The University of Manchester and a part-time PhD student. Her research interests are in the management of projects in safety-critical industries. Prior to academia, Fiona enjoyed a successful 15 year industry career in project management.”

In the article first part :

“It strikes me that, at least in the early days, most PhDs are akin to “Lost in the Fog” projects .”

She recommends to “Have a plan – even it only stretches out over the next six months and changes frequently”

In the second part:

“Having a documented PhD scope can help guard against a loss of focus, or drift in what the aims and objectives of the PhD are.”

“The third and final lesson from project management that is highly relevant to a PhD is the importance of communication .”

“One of the hardest lessons for new PhD students to learn is that the PhD is your project as such you are the project manager and you must take responsibility for managing the various communication channels on the project.”

The Smart Way to Manage a Large Research Project - blog post

by Eva Lantsoght in 2013 on the nextscientist website

Tips on project management and also to manage data and files. Plus the article acts as a resource with an extensive list of tools to help you get organized.

“Planning consists of the following subtasks:

• Identifying the tasks that need to be carried out.
• Splitting the main tasks into their respective subtasks.
• Considering how much time each task takes.
• Determining which tasks run simultaneously.
• Assess the consequences if a task takes more time.
• Allow some air to breathe

Making the Right Moves - book - PDF

the book subtitle is: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty

meant toward postdocs and new faculty as the subtitle says

“Based on workshops co-sponsored by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and HHMI, this book is a collection of practical advice and experiences from seasoned biomedical investigators and includes chapters on laboratory leadership, getting funded, project management, and teaching and course design.”

2. Get to know different project management techniques and tools

• Gantt chart

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Kanban board.

Each tool has its pros and cons. Therefore, one could combine them on different levels. For example, to visualize a complete PhD timeline I would recommend Gantt charts . To make this timeline, using WBS and SMART goals will help break down the project into smaller achievable tasks . Then to implement work and to track the progress throughout the project, one could use the Agile principles and use a shared Kanban board .

I don’t pretend that this resource is complete, there is surely much more which I don’t know about. Nevertheless, this was done to the best of my knowledge and it includes the project management tools which I’ve seen the most often in academia.

Gantt charts:

Academiac - blog posts and template.

With my complete unbiased objectivity, I think that my 2 articles about Gantt charts with a free downloadable template are the best ones to explain how to use these charts for a PhD project =)

In the first article,  Are Gantt charts useful for PhD students? , I introduce what Gantt charts are and what are the drawbacks to keep in mind (i.e. lack of flexibility).

Templates by the I think well coaching team

on the website ithinkwell.com.au by Maria Gardiner and Hugh Kearns

Different templates and ready-to-use tools both for PhD students and for supervisors . For PhD students they have thesis planners and forms for different time scales, from a 3-year PhD to 6 months to a week to a one day plan .

I highly recommend supervisors and students to look at other materials which are available on their website like:

• YourSupervisoryPracticeSelfAssessment.pdf
• CareerPlanningDiscussion.pdf
• ExpectationsOfResearchSupervision.pdf

Online planner to create a PhD road map

By Jeanine de Bruin and Brigitte Hertz

This is a tool where you can drag and drop pictograms onto a 4-year calendar to create a road map for your PhD. They have signs for things like writing, conferences, meeting, holidays, risk analysis, etc.

Templates for different PhD length by the University of Adelaide

This university seems to require doctoral students to draw a thesis road map as a Gantt chart. Nicely they provide templates for different PhD length, from 3-year up to 6-year-long program :

PERT charts

It happens that I don’t know much about PERT charts but I’ve seen it mentioned in many references (often together with Gantt charts) so I thought it would be good to put it here.

PERT charts - articles and templates

PERT means Program Evaluation Review Technique.

Like a Gantt chart there is the idea to draw a diagram for a project but instead of horizontal bars here it uses boxes and arrows. Again each technique has its pros and cons, have a look at these two articles to try to understand the differences between Gantt charts and PERT charts:

• difference-gantt-chart-pert-chart
• advantages-of-pert-charts-vs-gantt-charts

Here a template to see how to use PERT charts for a PhD thesis .

In this extensive article , they suggest a formula to calculate an estimate of how long a task might take:

• “For each task, give three time estimates in days: the most optimistic completion time (O), the normal/most likely time (M), and the pessimistic time (P).
• Calculate expected time (TE) using the formula (O + 4*M + P) ÷ 6 = TE.”

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) - articles and templates

It is often recommended to first break a PhD project into small tasks and make a Work Breakdown Structure before making a Gantt chart or PERT chart.

An introduction and templates for WBS from the University of Washington

“The Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) organizes and defines the scope of the project, breaking it into manageable tasks.”

Definition, templates and examples on the website workbreakdownstructure.com .

SMART goals

Smart goals - blog posts.

A 1 page document subtitled For use with the Doctoral Student Yearly Reviews from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute:

“SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bounded objectives.”

It provides a quick introduction and some examples.

An article entitled ‘Understanding SMART Objectives’ – for Your Project Proposals

“SMART objectives are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-related.”

Briefly the Agile method is to define a concrete goal (like SMART goals) to reach in a short period (typically <1 month), to work hard and focus toward this goal (as a sprint), then to analyze results and define a new goal for the next short period. In particular, it promotes communication and forces to regularly get feedback from stakeholders.

Be an Agile Academic - blog post

by coach Katy Peplin on her website katypeplin.com in 2017

An introduction to Agile and how she implemented the methodology in her PhD studies.

“I’ve isolated a few key concepts that really challenged how I thought about my work and helped me build systems to move quickly and efficiently through the dissertation process .”

“In Agile systems, being adaptive is a core value that underpins so many of the actual day to day practices.”

A drawback of Agile

One potential drawback is that it doesn’t force people to look at longer time goals and that consequently one might lose sense of the bigger picture . From a video by Fiona Saunders

In my PhD studies, setting up short time goals like performing experiments x, y and z for the coming month was not the difficult part. What I missed was a sense of longer time goals and the big picture. This is why for me using Gantt charts to create a PhD timeline and promote communication between students and supervisors seems like the most important project management tool to implement.

However, we do need to consider the two scales: the project long-term goals/big picture, and the short-term goals which make the project move forward step by step. Therefore, using Agile and SMART goals in combination with a PhD Gantt chart does sound like a great way to grasp hold on both scale .

The Agile Approach with Doctoral Dissertation Supervision - Publication & model

Tengberg L.G.W., 2015

I haven’t read it whole but this paper seems interesting . In figure 1, the author suggests a model for the doctoral dissertation:

In a Kanban board one creates different columns where tasks are placed depending on their status. The simplest way is with 3 columns To Do , Doing , Done but, of course, you can adapt this to your needs and I will even recommend having columns like Waiting For , or Someday/Maybe Ideas .

When you search for tips on how to create Kanban boards, it’s likely that you’ll be suggested the online tool Trello. I also use Trello a lot and love it, but there are other software available, also paper and pen is always a good way to start!

Live a PhD life less disorganised with Trello - blog post

by a PhD student in 2015

“I’m an academic always looking for ways to manage my work and writing more effectively. I’m also in the thick of my PhD . For both of these I can recommend a very intuitive (and free!) web-based project management tool called Trello.”

“I then invited my supervisors (one of whom insists she is a technophobe) to access the Trello board, and waited to see what would happen next.

Using Trello in academia - blog post

by Christian Bettstetter in 2016

“I lead a team of 10–15 scientists and a nonprofit company. Over the past 15 years, I used various methods and tools to manage projects, keep track of the scientific work of doctoral students and postdocs, recruit dozens of people, and organize my own tasks in research, teaching, and administration.”

“I use group boards for all research projects and for some other processes with at least two persons involved, such as managing job applications.”

Progress tracking tool for managing PhD students - StackExchange

In 2016 a supervisor asked on StackExchange for “ Progress tracking tool for managing PhD students ”

“I am looking for good options for tools to manage my PhD students, in terms of seeing that they are on track in working out their PhD theses (…) So some basic features would be:

• Collaborative software (preference of hosted on a server)
• Task lists with deadlines
• Timeline progression”

More ideas on StackExchange

More ideas of software and project management tools for researchers on StackExchange discussions:

• What are some of the task planning tools people use in academia
• What are some good project management tools for academics
• Project management techniques applied to research
• Project management and research

Take-home message:

There is not 1 and unique way to manage a project, everyone finds its own way, adapts it to the persons involved in the project and even makes its practice evolve with time. So the take-home message would be like Katy Peplin wrote in her article about Agile : “Google a lot of things and borrow what works for you!”.

I hope you find in this resource a list of relevant materials for you to figure out your own project management way :) I also highly recommend you to attend a project management or leadership workshop. If you’re in Switzerland 🇨🇭, make sure to check out the CUSO transversal program with whom I first learned about project management .

And if you’re looking for more solutions to help you communicate with your student or with your supervisor, have a look at my checklist to clarify students and supervisors long term expectations .

Do you like resources? I do! Have a look at the Resource menu up the page, I have been writing about social media for PhD students, YouTube , Instagram and Twitter , and also some specific resources for Switzerland ! From my experience, social media is one of the best ways to learn about subjects like project management and time management in academia!

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• CAREER COLUMN
• 04 January 2019

Six project-management tips for your PhD

• Angel Santiago-Lopez 0

Angel Santiago-Lopez is a PhD candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

In my experience, a PhD project sometimes feels like it demands more time than is possible — especially if you were hoping to maintain a healthy work–life balance. In my view, every graduate-school curriculum should carry a course on project management.

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Nature 573 , 153 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07860-6

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What are some good project-management tools for academics?

My advisers are starting to use Basecamp for my project, and I like most of it so far. I am wondering, though, about the arguments for and against Basecamp.

• productivity

• Microsoft Onenote , Outlook Calendar and Microsoft Skydrive . –  Jase Commented Dec 14, 2012 at 13:07
• 3 @Jase and this is how you kill Linux users in your team ;) –  user203 Commented Dec 7, 2017 at 1:58

7 Answers 7

I have been using a mode for Emacs called Org-mode to track my research and do project planning. See my answer to this question for some of the other capabilities of Org-mode for research.

Org-mode has a number of features that are useful for project planning. You can set headings as multi-state TODO lists and set scheduled start times or deadlines. You can also set effort estimates for tasks and generate text based reports via tables or the agenda view, all while inside Org-mode. The Org-mode manual covers the customizations to these areas and there are a number of tutorials discussing the customization of Org-mode for a variety of tasks.

To generate graphical reports, Org-mode has an export feature for TaskJuggler . TaskJuggler takes text-based inputs and generates a number of different reports including Gantt charts and resource allocations. If you do not wish to use Org-mode as the source of your planning, TaskJuggler has its own native format for the text files, highlighted in the manual .

All the tools listed are open source and are actively being developed/maintained.

A potential downside to these tools is that they are primarily text-based. If you are a visual person who wants a GUI approach to planning/reporting, these tools are probably not suited for you. Additionally, Emacs has a fairly steep learning curve, so if you are not already using it and do not have the time to become familiar with it, other tools will probably be better suited for you.

• Just curious - have you ever come across a VIM version of this mode/plugin? I'm a VIM person, and would be greatly interested in a similar extension... –  TCSGrad Commented Apr 20, 2012 at 17:53
• 2 @shan23: For Org-mode there is VimOrganizer , but it has been awhile since I have looked at VIM. There also appears to be another effort called vim-orgmode but I have zero experience with it. I actually use EVIL , (Extensible VI Layer) in Emacs because I prefer the VIM navigation, but Org-mode and AUCTeX have been too good for me to stop using Emacs. If it's just TaskJuggler you want, you should be able to use the native format, just edit with VIM. –  Brian Maicke Commented Apr 20, 2012 at 18:08

I'm finding it a little difficult to write my thesis while simultaneously working at an internet company, so I started using the Kanban technique. Lean/Kanban is a technique from industrial production management that was adapted and is becoming quite popular in the software development world. I use the Trello website to track kanban.

Kanban is very intuitive - it's just a board with many columns (for example: (work to do) - (work in progress) - (work complete), you can increase the granularity as much as you want). Each task is a card that moves around on the columns.

The purpose of the board is giving you visualization on how much work you have to do. If you worked in a car factory and you realized that cars where stacking on a queue because one of the welding machine is broken, you would notice the problem right away. But it's quite difficult to realize that there's a pile of abstract work to be done because your workflow is somehow defective. If you have a visual representation of your workflow, it's easier to detect bottlenecks and solve them.

There are a few management rules like:

• limit the number of tasks in progress and never pull new tasks until there's space available in the "in progress" column (I usually like to create very fine-grained tasks and limit it to only one in progress at a time),
• kanban is a "pulled system" instead of a "push system". You'll pull work to your desk when you finish what you're doing now (instead of waiting until someone push work onto your desk when they need you to do it). This prevents both being overwhelmed by work to do and having free time because no one give you work to do.
• organize tasks in order of priority,
• reduce waste: if you do something and abandon when it's almost done, you've wasted that time. It would be better to spend this time working on something that you would work on until completion. Or maybe you just need to push a little bit harder and bring this to completion.
• stablish "acceptance criteria". What are the criteria this piece of work must satisfy to be accepted as finished?
• stablish and measure what is "value" to you. If value is the quality of a text, then stablish levels of quality and measure the quality of your text. If value is getting things done quickly, than measure the time you take to do things.
• Stablish priority: what brings you the most value should be done first. Or rather: what have greater cost-of-delay should be done first.

Lean/Kanban works very well for software development and I needed something to organized the writing of my thesis. So I divided the thesis in chapters.sections.subsections (in the typical latex fashion) not longer than 3 paragraphs. Then I defined levels of quality (level A, the text is ok to be delivered, level B, it must undergo some review, level C, references must be checked, etc..., until level F when there's no text at all). So my tasks are: "bring subsection 2.1.3 to quality D". Now it's very easy to assign priority and measure the amount of work done / to do. There are even some scripts to graph your progress and extract some metrics.

But what is really important is that it allowed me to focus on the small scale work to do and have clear short term landmarks, and also think on the large scale structure of the thesis and have large scale landmarks.

Some reading on Kanban and Lean for software development (I believe most of it can be seamlessly applied to academic work - most of the problems are the same):

http://www.slideshare.net/kanbantool/kanban-in-4-easy-steps

http://www.kanbanway.com/lean-software-development-using-kanban

http://www.slideshare.net/davidpeterjoyce/pulling-value-lean-and-kanban

Nice question. Curiously, I've been used the dotproject , it's a FLOSS (i.e, an open-source software) alternative to msproject. It may sound weird for somebody, for a couple of reasons (isn't it a tool for huge projects? yep, and I can ask someone: isn't my thesis a huuuuge project? lol)... but, believe or not, it's been good to keep my tasks on track. Besides, as it is web-based, I've provided my advisor with access to such a tool, so that he may monitor my tasks, especially because I've been out of my country, for a while (due to an internship).

I've really thought about implementing some features to extend this tool so as to include things that are interesting, and unfortunately dotproject doesnt include.

btw, if anyone either know any tool (as a good answer for the main question) or is interested in extend the dotproject in order to come up with a tool for helping researchers to keep their tasks on trach, please tell me!

• 1 Could you add a link to dotproject (and also expand "FLOSS," which is a non-standard acronym, even though I guess it stands for "freely-licensed open-source software")? –  aeismail Commented Apr 19, 2012 at 7:52
• Absolutely, @aeismail! Thanks for the advice! ;) –  Ivan Machado Commented Apr 19, 2012 at 13:47

Redmine is a popular open-source project management tool. It has lots of capabilities (issue tracking, time management, gantt charts, wikis, etc); see the overview on the linked page. You download and run it on your own server.

It really depends on what you are looking for in a project management tool. In my opinion, Basecamp is good in term of basic task management. And I really liked its Calendar feature. It was easy to set a milestone and adjust schedules in a click. But in the new version of BC it’s no longer an option, as calendars are now events, so I need to edit each part of the schedule manually. I personally preferred the good old version of BC, it was simple and clear. My team agreed with me and, we decided to switch to another tool.

We’ve evaluated Trello , but it had no calendar feature at all. Asana didn’t quite fit our scheduling needs either. We realized that we lacked the ability to view all the projects on a monthly progress chart. Whether it’s per project or per team member, Asana couldn’t give that to us. In the end, we settled for Wrike . I like its Gantt chart even better than the Calendar we used. Thanks to it I can visualize my whole project, set dependencies between tasks, and adjust them with just drag-and-drop. And the Dashboard view is all clean and uncluttered, just like BC’s used to be. So, we are sticking with it for now.

• Similar thoughts here. Evaluated Asana . Nice to have columns relating to certain things to do (for instance could be write manus, with cards representing parts of it..). Gave Trello quick shot but didn't get convinced somehow. Now started playing with Wrike - seems like best solution so far. –  user203 Commented Dec 7, 2017 at 2:31

I highly recommend Wunderkit (recently released) and Wunderlist for organizing to-do list, and taking notes. I think the people at 6wunderkinder have been doing great job.

Eclipse PPM is a good tool - it's project/project portfolio management software. Quite a few universities and colleges use it.

• 1 I've never heard of Eclipse... could you add some detail on it's use (free/commercial, use case, etc)? –  eykanal Commented Apr 25, 2012 at 15:18
• 3 At first, I thought it was a plug-in for Eclipse.org , but it doesn't seem so. To be honest, I don't really like the fact that you need to give your name/address just to see a demo ... –  user102 Commented Apr 25, 2012 at 15:48

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Software, Tools, and Apps that PhDs Must Have

We often are asked to recommend some of the must have software programs, tools, and apps for PhD students, professors, and academics, so we have put together a comprehensive list. These selections are based on our experience using some of them and recommendations made by several of Stephanie’s colleagues via Facebook. Interestingly, for some of the tools listed, there was a lack of consensus about their usefulness so in some instances we provided a few pros and cons to help you make the best decisions based on your needs.

This post was written by Stephanie A. Bosco-Ruggiero (PhD candidate in Social Work at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service) and Jessica Russell ( freelance writer) on behalf of Dave Maslach for the R3ciprocity project (Check out the YouTube Channel or the writing feedback software ). The R3ciprocity Project started out as a side-project, where David Maslach created an App to help others get feedback on their work (r3ciprocity.com – it is seriously inexpensive and easy to use. You have to try it!) , but it is beginning to grow into a real movement. R3ciprocity helps students, faculty, and research folk by providing a real and authentic look into doing research. It provides solutions and hope to researchers around the world.

As a PhD candidate, a professor, or academic much of your time is spent doing research, so it’s important to do as much as possible to ensure your projects and tasks run as smoothly as possible. The list below includes software, apps, and tools to help you take notes, manage projects, do statistical analysis, edit and cite your writing, convert files to and from PDF and eBook format, survey respondents, help you concentrate, and aid in graphic and art creation. We also threw in some tools to help with self care including mindfulness and meditation apps. 

This list is not all inclusive. If there is another app or tool you think people should be aware of, let us know in the comments. 

Check out this article on what PhD students do all day. You will be surprised.

Here’s a vlog Dave recording on how to speed up research productivity that you might want to check out as well. 

Note Taking

There are times when an idea or inspiration pops up in the moment and you need to jot it down, or you’re focusing on one task and you think of something that will help with another. Note taking apps and software programs help you jot down those ideas to save for later. Check out this amazing post on how professors check for plagiarism – it is pretty helpful). They also help you organize your notes for teaching, research, and other projects. Get a program that is web based so you can sign on anywhere, including your phone. Most allow syncing via multiple OS and Browsers. Of course, you may always also benefit from a simple electronic post it app that you can install on your desktop (don’t go too crazy though, I once crashed my laptop by having like a hundred notes). Phones of course also have handy note taking and reminder apps. But we recommend the following apps and tools for more comprehensive academic note taking: 

Google Keep

In July 2021, I polled the R3ciprocity YouTube community about the best note-taking software, and here is the results from 174 responses! Thank you! As you can see, the best note-taking software is OneNote or Evernote, but many people have others that they use.

Check out this article on how many years it takes to do a doctorate degree. It goes into quite a bit of detail.

Word Processing

Writing will take up a bulk of your time and using software that has a great UX and is easy to navigate will reduce the time you spend with unnecessary editing and fumbling with tools that slow you down. The software we recommend are staples of the industry and are most popular among writers. Make sure you explore Microsoft Word online as well. It is useful when you have work across multiple devices. Microsoft can be seamlessly integrated with OneDrive but make sure your settings are right so you don’t lose anything! The usefulness of Good docs and drive also cannot be understated. 

Stephanie resisted Google Docs for a long time because I feared I would lose something or the document would not look as polished as a Word document, but you can download your file as a Word document, plain text, PDF, etc. The thing that really sold me on Google Docs though was the ability to work with a team to collaborate on writing, provide suggested edits, accept or reject edits, and be able to do all of this real time. You can also easily chat to the side of the document as you collaborate and edit. You can keep your documents in shared drive and designate who has permission to access and edit. 

Microsoft office/Word

Google Docs/Drive

Libre Office – Open-source, but uncommon.

I did a poll on the R3ciprocity YouTube community in July 2021 on the most popular word processing software, and here are the results:

You might want to watch this video about writing Apps for PhDs:

Grammar Checking, editing, and Proofreading

Hey, did you hear about this neat proofreading and editing program called r3ciprocity 😉 It allows you to pay forward the favor of proofreading and reviewing by collecting credits which you can then use when you need your work reviewed. You can also buy credits if needed. Check out Dave’s platform at https://www.r3ciprocity.com/ The platform is also building a community of scholars that can be helpful to you when you need scholarly work reviewed or just need to bounce around some ideas. 

(Here is a good blog post on getting feedback on your work – you will love it.)

Be careful using automated proofreading or editing software or tools as they may not pick up on the nuances of your work or the points you are trying to make. Also, try to use alternatives before you hire a pricey writing consultant, proofreader, editor, or coach. Sometimes hiring someone is needed, but if you need lighter editing and reviewing check out r3ciprocity.com and contact Dave if you have any questions about the platform. 

Check out how to log-in to the R3ciprocity platform.

Here is Dave discussing how and when to purchase credits on his proofreading and editing platform R3ciprocity:

There are a number of other resources for grammar checker Apps and editing resources that you might want to check out in this blog post.

Statistical Analysis

Of course you are going to need statistical analysis software to complete that thesis or dissertation, and as an academic, analyze your data and produce manuscripts. Many doctoral programs train their students using IBM’s SPSS but some also or alternatively train their students in R or Stata. Stephanie personally prefers the point and click functionality of SPSS which also allows advanced coders to exclusively use syntax to conduct analyses. Personally, she prefers to use a mix of point and click and syntax. There is a plethora of guidebooks and manuals, print and online, to help you become fluent in SPSS. New versions are released regularly and students can purchase SPSS inexpensively (read more below). However, for those who prefer to code and use syntax R and Stata may be more challenging and enjoyable to use.

SPSS (Paid, easy to learn)

R (Free, open-source, and powerful)

Stata (Paid, combination of open source and paid, powerful) – Dave’s Pick

Since, there is confusion and it matters a lot about what software you should choose early in your career, I (Dave) polled the R3ciprocity community on YouTube in February, 2021 to find out the most common statistical software that researchers use. 106 people responded. Here are the results:

I was actually quite surprised by these results. I knew that R and SPSS would be rated fairly high, but I was surprised by the fact that Stata only got 16.2% of the votes. Stata is such a powerful, and underrated tool. However, I suspect that it is fairly uniquely used by more economics, finance, and business folks. As someone who has used all of these software (other than R), I would highly suggest it. The instructions material alone is a great benefit.

EBook Converter/PDF Converter

Publishing your manuscript may require turning it into a readable digital format that will translate easily to multiple electronic devices. Whether you are self-publishing, want to convert your work into a polished format, or need this capability for another reason we’ve found that these are some of the best tools out there. 

Epubor Ultimate

Foxit Phantom PDF Editor/Reader

MikTex LaTex – LaTex is preferred in the basic sciences.

Project Management/Task Management

Research and writing can be overwhelming with the minutia of details you need to record and track. You may also need to keep these details on behalf of or with a writing or research team. Project and task management software will help you stay on task and warn you when you are falling behind. Additionally these programs help when you’re collaborating with a team. Everyone using these tools can get both a big picture view of the project timeline as well as dive into the details to understand how to best manage the project.

Survey Research/ Experience Management

At some point you will send out a survey for your research, or perhaps for another purpose. These survey and experience management tools help you gather that data as well as measure and analyze the results. They both allow you to export to statistical analysis software and have different levels of functionality and pricing. Make sure your university does not have a license before you spend your own money on these tools. Survey Monkey might be more accessible for beginners but Qualtrics is not difficult to use. You might even give Google forms a try for quick, basic surveys of students or another smaller group of respondents. 

Survey Monkey

Google Forms – Great for small tasks.

We conducted a poll of the R3ciprocity YouTube community about the most popular survey tool in March 2021. 56 people responded. The most popular survey tool for researchers is Google Forms. 55 percent of the respondents preferred Google Forms. Honestly, this surprised me because I thought it would be Qualtrics, however this might be explained by the younger and more international audience on the R3ciprocity channel.

Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis

Stephanie does not have a whole lot of experience with qualitative data analysis but has heard that the following programs are quite helpful. They provide some free training and practice modules as well as manuals and guides. Find out which software your department uses and whether you can use it on campus to complete your research. A personal license may be expensive. If you are doing qualitative data collection such as interviews or focus groups you should also download a handy recorder for your device such as Audacity. 

Reference/Citation Managers

Make your life easier by using a citation manager. These programs help you to manage your sources as well as help you build your reference lists. Doing this task manually is silly if you are an advanced researcher. You must have a citation manager if you are completing a dissertation and it is highly recommended for a thesis. Your university may offer a specific program for free so you might go with that one, but others are often either free or low cost, especially the web based versions. Endnote has Endnote Web and Zotero is very easy to integrate into your word processing programs, use collaboratively, and use only. Some people feel that Mendeley and Endnote are clunky. Stephanie personally really likes Endnote but recommends taking some in depth tutorials to learn how to use it properly.

Endnote (Dave’s and Stephanie’s preference)

Don’t know which is best for you? Check out our survey on the best citation software for PhDs.

Illustration/Graphics

Your writing may require graphics, diagrams, and other forms of art. Some people rely on the tools native to Microsoft products, but we’ve found that the following programs help further and enhance creativity. Additionally they make creating graphics to support your writing easier and look more professional. Stephanie especially recommends Canva. She discovered it when her students kept mentioning that they were using it to create graphics, brochures, and other illustrated products for social policy advocacy class. It is super easy to use and the library of images is great. You can make business cards, social media posts, infographics, brochures, and more! It’s the hot tool in illustrated document creation today. 

If you need a website for your organization or you want to develop an academic profile site you could use Canva for ideas, photos, and structure. WordPress takes some getting used to but it is inexpensive and versatile. For an academic profile/portfolio you might simply use Academia.com’s template which allows you to feature your writing, projects, interests, experience, etc.

Strata 3D Modeling

Canva (Dave’s pick).

Microsoft Visio (Good for schematics).

Lucidchart (Dave’s pick).

AutoDesk (A favorite for CAD).

Meeting Software

These days we are all familiar with meeting online. From job interviews to meeting with colleagues, the following are the most used software programs for online collaboration with video and sharing tools. One of these platforms may be available to students for free so investigate before paying for any of them. Stephanie prefers Zoom but has heard great things about Teams. WebEx is great for delivering webinars. 

Microsoft Teams

Google Meet (reliable, but less functionality than Zoom)

Skype (Seems to be losing ground)

FaceTime – Reliable, but only works with other FaceTime users.

In July 2021, I (Dave) polled the R3ciprocity YouTube community about the meeting software that they most use. It turns out that Zoom is a by far the most popular, with 67% of responses selecting Zoom. Most PhDs tend to use Zoom. However, 17% use Google Meet as well.

Programming

What would a PhD without programming? It seems that more and more of us are doing programming during grad school. Here are some best picks that you will use:

Python (Open-source).

Microsoft Visual Studio C++

MatLab (Scientific computing – Dave’s pick).

MapleSoft (Scientific computing).

MathCad (Pretty awesome Engineering software).

In August 2021, I polled 124 PhDs on the R3ciprocity community on YouTube on what is the best programming language for PhDs. Here it is: The most common programming language for PhDs is Python. Around 60% of PhDs use Python as their favorite programming language for their research projects. Python is preferred to Matlab 4 to 1.

Self Care/ Mindfulness

It’s important to practice self care during your doctoral studies or as a professional academic. Taking time out daily with these self care apps will help you center yourself and reduce stress. In addition they will help you stay on task and make your life one in which you can find a calm space to just be mindful wherever you are. If you have a VR headset there are some mind blowing meditation apps you can use to fully immerse yourself in a blissful meditative state. 

White Noise Generator

Some people need complete silence when writing, while some need a portion of their brain to be occupied by music or white noise. When it’s important that nothing distracts you from focusing, especially outside noise from loud environments, we recommend the following to help you stay focused and block out the noise. 

MyNoise.net

Don’t forget that your finances are super important during your PhD. You have to keep your financial life together to get through your PhD Program. Here are some that Dave suggests:

Mint.com (Free, Dave uses it everyday).

Every Dollar (Dave Ramsey’s product).

Data Transparency

Don’t forget to use tools for data transparency. For example, the Open Science Foundation (OSF) offers a suite of tools designed to facilitate transparent and collaborative research. These tools include project management platforms, data repositories, and preprint archives, all aimed at enhancing the rigor and reproducibility of scientific work. Check it out: Open Science Foundation website .

Gaining access to software and tools for free

We hope you found this list of suggestions helpful. Remember, do not spend a lot of money on software or other tools if you can get them for free through your university. Most schools now provide a Microsoft suite of tools, including OneDrive, to students for free. Check your IT department’s web page and list of free downloads. Of course, Google apps are free as well. Often, you can’t go wrong with Google but there are apps and tools that may be better that you have to purchase, just don’t spend a whole lot of money, especially if you’re a student. 

When it comes to survey or data analysis software your university may have purchased a license making the software free for students, faculty, and staff users situated on campus. In certain cases, you may also be able to access these software programs for home. What comes to mind is a university wide or department based Qualtrics license or a comprehensive Zoom license. Just check with your department or university before you purchase anything. If you must purchase SPSS for use at home as a student or university affiliated researcher go to studentdiscounts.com . They offer a full array of options for purchasing SPSS licenses for personal use on your own PC or Mac at a deep discount. You just have to provide proof of your university affiliation. 

One more recommendation is to definitely take advantage of a cloud based file storage tool such as OneDrive or Dropbox. If you are not in the habit of backing up your local computer files on a thumb drive, you must back them up on the cloud. Stephanie likes Google Drive, OneDrive, and Dropbox. Which one works best for you might depend on whether you often collaborate, which word processing software you are using, where you access your files, and which one you use for free. Many universities include limited free OneDrive storage as part of the Microsoft Suite offerings. 

Did you benefit from this post? Do you know of anyone at all that could use feedback on their writing or editing of their documents? I would be so grateful if you read this post on how to get feedback on your writing using R3ciprocity.com or let others know about the R3ciprocity Project. THANK YOU in advance! You are the bees knees.

If you enjoyed this blog, you might be interested in reading these other posts on blog.r3ciprocity.com . 

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10 Best Apps for PhD Students | 2024

Best Mobile Applications for Researchers

There are millions of mobile applications available in the Android play store, but still, there are very few useful apps only available for researchers. We analyzed more than 50 applications and identified the 10 most appropriate applications for researchers based on daily activities like research collaboration, data collection, document reading, updating real-world issues related to their domain, resource gathering, daily schedule maintenance, and journal reading. This post gives an explanation to use the top 10 Useful Mobile Apps software 2024 for PhD Scholars that are really the best apps for PhD Students.

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose   – Zora Neale Hurston

10 Best Android Apps for PhD Students

Here are 10 of the best Android apps that can be extremely helpful for graduate students in their academic pursuits. I’ll also provide some insights on how these apps can benefit you.

• These apps are essential for creating, editing, and presenting documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
• Store and sync your documents, making them accessible from any device. Collaboration features are a plus for group projects.
• A reference manager and academic social network. It helps you organize your research, collaborate with peers, and discover the latest research.
• An excellent note-taking app that allows you to capture and organize ideas, research notes, and web clippings.
• Another robust reference manager that simplifies the process of collecting, organizing, and citing research materials.
• Enhance your writing by checking grammar, spelling, and style. It’s an indispensable tool for proofreading.
• Manage your projects and tasks effectively. Great for keeping track of deadlines and staying organized.
• Boost your productivity by using the Pomodoro technique. Stay focused and limit distractions during study sessions.
• Access a wide range of educational content in various subjects, making it a great resource for learning beyond your coursework.
• Turn your smartphone into a portable scanner. Scan and digitize documents, notes, and books for easy reference.

10 Best iOS Apps for PhD Graduate Students

Here are 10 iOS apps that can be incredibly helpful for graduate students:

• An excellent note-taking app that allows you to write, draw, and annotate PDFs.
• A reference management tool that helps you organize and cite your research materials.
• A writing assistant can help you improve the clarity and correctness of your writing.
• Another powerful reference manager with a mobile app for on-the-go access to your research library.
• A versatile note-taking app that syncs across devices and allows you to organize your thoughts and research.
• If you struggle with staying focused, this app helps you stay on track by growing virtual trees when you avoid your phone.
• A comprehensive digital notebook that’s great for organizing your research notes.
• Access a vast database of scholarly articles and research papers.
• A project management app that can help you organize your tasks and deadlines.
• If your research involves multiple languages, this app can help you learn and practice them.

These apps cover a range of functions, from note-taking and reference management to productivity and language learning. They can be valuable tools for graduate students in various disciplines.

Best Apps for PhD Students

1. mendeley.

What is the Mendeley App?

Mendeley is a free reference manager and PDF reader crafted especially for researchers. It helps you to organize your literature in a proper manner so you could effectively use it during your thesis writing or dissertation. Mendeley is available in both mobile and desktop applications, It will help you to read your collected articles wherever you go.  

How to Use it for Research?

• Create a free account at www.mendeley.com and download a desktop version in your system.
• Add all your Journals , Magazines, Book Chapters, Thesis , and other materials in an organized manner.
• Segregate the files based on year, author, publication, and domain using TAG option.
• Download the Mendeley mobile application and log in with the same account.
• Allow the application to synchronize with your account.
• Now you can see all the files that you saved on your desktop that will appear in the mobile application.

Organizing Resources is the first step towards the solution

2. Flipboard

What is Flipboard App?

Flipboard is the most popular mobile application used by millions of people every day, It helps you to keep yourself updated with your domain-related information and also read the daily news, blog posts, and trending topics all together in one place. Flipboard allows the user to collect posts based on their passion and interest. The powerful and smooth user interface gives a pleasant feel to reading more articles.  

• Download the Flipboard mobile application and create your account.
• Flipboard will give a virtual tour to learn the basic features of the application.
• Click  “WHAT’S YOUR PASSION?” Next to the Flipboard icon.
• Search for your domain. Ex: Machine Learning.
• It will show many sub-categories inside the topic. Based on your requirement personalize the magazine. That’s it!
• Keep up with the news related to your domain every day with The Daily Edition.

Don’t be outdated, Because you are working for the future!

3. Researcher

What is a Researcher App?

Researcher is a free journal-finding mobile application that helps you to read new journal papers every day that are relevant to your research. It is the most popular mobile application used by more than 3 million scientists and researchers to keep themselves updated with the latest academic literature.

• Download Researhcer mobile application on your mobile.
• Open and search for your required journal in the search bar.
• You can follow any number of journals and you can read new articles as well.

4. Plagiarism Checker

What is Plagiarism Checker App?

Plagiarism Checker is a free application that works with Plagiarisma.net. It will detect duplicate content in your papers from more than five popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, Babylon, Google Scholar, and Google Books.

• Download Plagiarism Checker mobile application.
• No need for registration so you can directly go into the app.
• Scan your essay, article, term paper, or dissertation with a single tap of your smartphone.
• It also has voice support and direct URL support.
• Save results to HTML, PDF, EPUB. That’s it!

5. Google Keep

What is Google Keep App?

Google Keep is a free remainder application from Google LLC, It helps researchers quickly capture what’s on their mind and get a reminder later at the right place or time. 

• Download Google Keep mobile application.
• Log in with your Google account.
• Record a voice memo and Keep will transcribe it so you can find it later.
• Take quick notes.
• Schedule your daily plan and enable the remainder.
• Take handwritten notes.
• Capture important results using the camera and save them.
• Access it when you working on a desktop or laptop as well.

6. Curiosity

What is Curiosity App?

Curiosity is a very popular mobile application from curiosity.com, it helps researchers to learn new scientific inventions in a more detailed way with videos.

How to Use it for Research? 

• Download the Curiosity mobile application.
• Create an account to access the app.
• Read inspiring articles from your topics.
• Watch smart videos from millions of creators.
• Personalize your favorites, then follow your favorite categories. 

7. Paperity

What is Paperity App?

Paperity is a free mobile application for researchers from www.paperity.org. It helps you to aggregate various open-access journals through your mobile.

• Download Paperity mobile application.
• Browse the most recent articles.
• Browse journals and their Tables of Contents of Open Access papers.
•  Search papers and their full text for specific keywords, phrases, authors, publication dates, languages, and countries of origin. 
• View and read full-text PDFs of more than one million articles. All for FREE!

What is Slack App?

Are you doing Collaborative Research? Then Try this useful mobile application Slack it brings team communication and collaboration into one place so you can get more work done, whether you belong to a small lab or doing collaborative research with researchers from another part of the world. Make effective conversations on different topics using #TAG. 

• Download Slack mobile application.
• Include your lab members using their Email-ID.
• Communicate with your lab mates and organize your conversations by topics, projects, or anything else that matters to your work.
• Message or call any person or group within your team.
• Integrate into your workflow, the tools, and services you already use including Google Drive, Salesforce, Dropbox, Asana, Twitter, and Zendesk.
• Customize your notifications so you stay focused on what matters.

What is Dropbox?

Dropbox is a free another free mobile application for researchers to make creative collaboration space, store all files together in one central place, and safely sync them across all your devices.

• Download Dropbox  mobile application.
• Create a Dropbox account and choose a free version. (Limited space only but more than enough for document files).
•  Work on files with others through shared folders.
• Use the document scanner to turn receipts, whiteboards, and notes into PDFs.
• Comment on files to share feedback with your team
• Sync, share, and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files.

10. Camscanner

What is Camescanner App?

Camescanner is a mobile document scanning and sharing application, It helps you to scan, store, sync and collaborate on various contents across smartphones, iPads, tablets and computers.

• Download the Camscanner application and Create an account.
• Use your mobile camera to scan and digitize all kinds of paper documents.
• Using smart cropping and auto-enhancing ensures the texts and graphics in scanned documents.
• Easily share documents in PDF or JPEG format with friends in various ways.
• Instantly print out any documents in CamScanner with a nearby printer via AirPrint.

Hope, this article would help you to know about the 10 Best Apps for PhD Students.

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[…] 10 Useful Apps for PhD Scholars | 2020 […]

Hello, I loved this article! All of your resources listed here are spot on, thank you for taking the time to write this. I sent you an email about a tool we created by (a team of researchers) that is free for PHD and graduate students to use. We started this no-code app to help our own academic research students and faculty, and would love to help more people. Thanks again! – Pathverse Team

Mendeley App was removed in 2021 – the mobile web version is sadly close to unusable. If anybody finds a proper workaround or a usable third party app, please include that in the article.

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