Commonly Used Apps by Ph.D. Students

Student life involves dealing with long assignments, tests, exams, making notes, etc. Higher the class, the burden of work to accomplish increases more.

Postgraduate is different from that of being a Ph.D. student. Ph.D. can be a bit overwhelming. Not just the reading lists, but other things. There is a thesis to write, grants to apply for, research trips to arrange, articles to write, etc.

Ph.D. demands inevitable work that demands quick action and timely work. The higher the class, the higher will be the responsibility. So a Ph.D. student has to be a pro in multitasking. The digital world supplies us with a ton of apps that will make life just a bit easier to manage. Most of these apps can be used on a phone, or can even be synced across multiple devices.

So, in between the responsibilities, a Ph.D. student makes his or her work easy to do by making use of the various applications:

1. Evernote:

Evernote is a great note-taking app for taking notes, organizing, task management, and archiving. It makes it easy for you to capture multiple things like images, videos, notes, articles, screenshots, audio recording and so on. You can easily tag your notes and organize into notebooks, share with your friends or keep them with you as private. The best thing about it is that it works everywhere including android, iOS, Mac, windows, etc.

2. BibDesk:

This application is a bibliography manager. It is used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. It can also be used to organize and maintain a library of documents in PDF format and other formats. When bibDesk is used in conjunction with latex, then it automatically formats citations and compiles a reference list in your final PDF format.

3. Latex:

 It is a document preparation system. All the documents here are coded in .tex format. In this application figures, tables and page numbering is automatic. It is best used while writing a thesis or one can also make use of the preformatted template or makeup of your own.

4. Documents to go:

It is a mobile office productivity suite that allows users to edit and create Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, excels and files easily on their device. You can also sync your important files in Google Docs and more. This app is available for blackberry, Android and iOS.

5. Good Reader:

This is a super-robust PDF reader with the perfect combination of document reading and file management capabilities like advanced reading, highlighting capabilities, excellent file manager, annotating, text file reader and editor for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. This application is highly advisable for reading and annotating the best articles.

6. Blue fire:

This e-reader app provides convenient features such as reading, highlighting, bookmarking and annotating PDF’s. Only with a single click, you are able to highlight the important, lookup for a definition, share your excerpts via social networking sites. Through this, you can create a large library of books, organize books and can even export.

It also provides a search option where you can search for a single word or a particular name, or even for a particular paragraph within the context in the eBook.

7. Dragon dictation:

This is a speech recognition application like Siri, even better than it especially for a long chunk of the sentence. Dragon Dictation app is powered by Dragon Naturally Speaking. This app allows users to see the text generated through speaking instead of typing. This application is for iOS users only but gives us all in one voice solution.

8. Notability: 

This app records sound illustrates any notes you have to make, and it automatically saves to apps like Dropbox. It has an excellent interface full of tools for handwriting, drawing, annotating pdfs, making shapes, highlighting, moving objects around, adding audio and more.

9. Google Scholar:

This provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly research such as thesis, abstract and articles, books and many more from many disciplines and. It helps you to identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.

10. Instapaper:

This is a web application that allows users to save online content for future references. It facilitates easy reading of long text content. One can save a whole article to Instapaper so as to read afterward without an internet connection. You can even adjust the text size so that you are comfortable in reading it. Such types of editing and offline facility and features are not available in any of the applications.

11. Audible:

Though textbooks or very technical books are not found inaudible, a researcher should invest time in reading the non-technical parts of their field just as much as they read the technical parts. Though we don’t all have the time to read but we have the time to listen and Audible contains a huge selection of audiobooks in every field. You may even find audibles about how to go through your Ph.D. or how to deal with your advisor.

12. Lecture capturing apps (Sound Note and Share Your Board):

The students attending lectures may miss out on many of the important points in the notebook. But lecture capturing applications are a great option.

Some of the lecture capturing apps are sound notes and share your board. The sound note application is available for iOS and perfect for students. It acts as a notepad and an audio recorder. In this way, it helps the students to record the whole of the lecture both in audio and visual form.

Another application called to share your board is an app which allows users to capture the whiteboard and store all the data for later revision purpose.

13. Socrative

The students apart from their regular studies must also go through other knowledgeable. One of such apps is Socrative. This app is useful for students to prepare for quizzing and preparing various thesis and assessments.

14. Wake up apps (Sleep if you can and Sleep cycle)

The students of Ph.D. have to work and study day in day out. For them remaining healthy is necessary and sound sleep is also of utmost importance. Some of the wakes up apps are ‘sleep if you can’ and another one is ‘sleep cycle’.

‘Sleep if you can’ is the app that allows users to set it up by registering a photo of an area or room in your house. Then once the alarm is set, the only way to make it stop ringing is to get out of bed and go to take a photo of the registered area.

‘Sleep cycle’ app helps in correcting the user’s sleeping patterns by waking them up during their lightest sleeping phase. It first notes both the time and the movement when the user went to sleep.

So above are some of the apps that are widely used by Ph.D. students. These apps help make students work easier and without any hassle-free.

A student’s time is also saved along with the money as some of the apps are free. So these applications are time as well as money savior.  It makes the work for a student easier as paperwork is reduced and writing every bit is time-consuming.