Manage your time, organize your work, and be more creative in your research.
It’s not easy to find just one pair of shoes that’s right for every occasion. The same is true for reference management software – one size does not fit all. To help, we've compiled a list of nine questions you can ask yourself to find the best possible software for your needs.
For many graduate and postgraduate students in the Northern hemisphere, summer is a great time to finally get some dissertation writing done. But how to start? Our latest blog post looks at two approaches to consider each time you start a writing session.
Want to stop pulling all-nighters right before your exam? In our latest blog post, we share three tips for how you can study more effectively throughout the semester, remember information better long-term, and be less stressed going into your test.
Once you have one good source, you can use it to find others on the same topic by picking out sources from its bibliography. But what if you want to find out who cited the article you have in your hands after it was published? Is there also a way to track articles forwards in time?
It's every new academic's dream: an offer to have their work published as a book or journal article. However, some offers are too good to be true. Our latest blog post takes an in-depth look at predatory publishers and their tactics.
Could your reference management software use a little spring cleaning? We can help! Download our 10-step checklist and read our blog post to get everything back in order.
The open access publication model promises a piece of the pie for everyone. But how does this differ from the traditional academic publication process? And what's behind some of the recent publisher boycotts by large university systems? Read our latest blog post to find out.
Do you often feel like you’re searching for sources in the all the wrong places? Or maybe you’ve been able to locate one or two relevant sources but are struggling to find additional ones? If so, give the bibliography hacking method a try!
Online tools let you work on your own projects and collaborate with others anywhere there's an internet connection. To help you get a better feel for what's out there, we've described some of the different categories of tools in our latest post. We've gathered up some old favorites and fresh faces, so take a look and see if there's a cloud tool that might help your workflow.
Did you just get assigned your very first research paper and are wondering about the requirement to use “peer-reviewed” journal articles? Learn what peer-reviewed journal articles are and where to find them in our latest blog post.
Although Wikipedia is one of the most-visited websites in the world, its use in academic work remains controversial. Read our latest blog post to find out why this is and what role Wikipedia can play in writing your paper.
Find it hard to focus on your academic work when your phone is on your desk? You're not alone! Our latest blog post looks at how smartphones can distract you and offers some tips on how to concentrate when performing tasks in your reference management software.
It can sometimes be difficult to determine what type of source you have and how to enter it in your reference management program. Read on for our tips for recognizing, adding, and citing different source types in Citavi.
Exercise more, save money ... this year, why not set some goals that will really make a difference for your academic writing? Read our latest blog post for some reference management resolutions.
Any major endeavor such as a dissertation or portfolio can take a toll on a person's mental health. If you find yourself with a bad case of the project blues, we've gathered some of our personal tips to help you start feeling better.
We all know how our words can get taken out of context when what we say is told to someone else. Just like you don't want to spread gossip in your personal life, you also don't want to misrepresent the ideas in the sources you cite. Usually, you can double check your source to make sure that you have accurately written about the author’s ideas. But what do you do if you don’t have the original source but just a quotation from another author?
Reference management programs are one of the best tools an academic can use. However, they can also cause unnecessary headaches if you're not familiar with some basic knowledge of what they can and can't do. Our tips are designed to help – whichever program you happen to be using!
Summarizing is a skill we do intuitively all the time in daily life – just think how often you've told someone about an entire vacation in only a few sentences.
So, why can it seem so difficult when you’re forced to do it in an academic context? Our latest blog post examines the summary in more detail and offers tips for how you can use summarizing techniques to better understand difficult texts.
Are your stacks of papers and books growing at such an alarming rate that you're worried about being buried alive by them if they ever topple over? Find out what's causing this to happen and (finally!) de-clutter your desk.
Website content can change frequently, but what if you need to cite online sources in your thesis? How can you be sure the information will still be available five months from now? In this blog post we offer some tips for keeping the contents of the webpages you check secure so that you'll always be able to refer back to the source for your citations.
When you start a project, it's easy to go nuts and squirrel away every potentially useful source in your reference management program. To avoid getting overwhelmed, we recommend three steps for gaining control of your stockpile: collect, select, and inspect.
If you want your thesis to really shine, it's a good idea to have another person proofread or copyedit it. But what's the difference between proofreading and copyediting, anyway? Should you hire a freelancer or agency? And, is it academically dishonest to use a copyeditor?
Our latest blog post looks at all these questions and more.
Writing a research paper involves keeping track of the ideas and information you read. This week's blog post discusses three different methods for doing so along with our recommendations for when to use each one.
Want to work on a thesis with a company but scared to contact them and not sure where to start? Our support team member Jana shares her experiences writing a thesis for a company and how it continues to help her in her job today.
Large writing projects can often be overwhelming. If you sometimes feel paralyzed by how much you have to do, take a look at the simple but effective tip from novelist Anne Lamott in our latest blog post.
Summer, sunshine, vacation... as soon as you finish up that one thesis chapter, that is! Sometimes you can't avoid having to take work along with you. When that happens, our ten tips can help you finish by the time you reach your destination.
From our help desk:
How can I find the journal article my professor mentioned?
My professor recommended a journal article for my research paper... but he didn't mention the exact title, author, or journal name. Now how on Earth can I find it?
Alex
Are you always the last to find out about the latest news? Don't let this happen in your academic life! Take charge and let automated tools assist you in keeping up-to-date on the latest developments in your field.
Like meerkats humans are social animals. But then why do team projects sometimes seem like such a struggle? We can't answer that question, but we can offer a few tips to help make the whole process go more smoothly.
Citation style rules can be frustrating. What if there were a way you could automatically format all the citations and your bibliography instead of tediously having to type all the punctuation marks by hand? Although it almost sounds too good to be true, this is exactly what reference management programs are designed to do.
Do you do a lot of academic reading on your computer screen? If so, the information you read might be harder for you to recall later on than if you would read on paper. Our latest blog post looks at some study findings and offers suggestions for what you can do.
It's the moment all academics fear: the creative block. Push past yours with a little help from a technique that rock legend David Bowie used to employ.
Terrible at multi-tasking? You're not alone! Discover task completion strategies that really work in our latest blog post.
You’ve got a pretty good memory, don’t you? You know exactly what you ate for breakfast this morning, what happened yesterday in your favorite Netflix series, and the findings of the main researchers in your field. Or do you...?
Setting Up a Paper-Writing Workflow
Large writing projects can seem overwhelming. There’s so much to do that it can be hard to know where to begin.
One thing that can help is setting up a workflow for yourself. Whether you’re writing your first research paper or already have many behind you, it always pays to take a look at your process and see if there are any areas you can improve.
The Perfect Fit: 5 Steps for Finding Academic Sources without Frustration
Can't find any good sources for your paper? Feel like you're searching for a needle in a haystack? Then our first blog post was written for you! Follow our five easy steps to stop inefficient searches and start finding high-quality scholarly journal articles on your topic.
Planned Accidents is written by the team behind Citavi and reflects a basic premise of our software: better organization leads to better research. If you have your sources and processes in order, you can free your mind for making connections and generating new ideas. Join us every other week for helpful tips, workflows, and strategies that can help anyone who does academic research, at any level.