Technology has simplified the life of PhD scholars in a great great way. I can virtually not imagine how much a struggle it must have been for the researchers of yesteryears to manage without technology in their lives. Some of the tools that can of real help, can be:
IPad: With the help of my supervisor, I got funds from the university to buy a Laptop/IPad. Since I already had a manageable laptop, I further invested in an IPad and since then, it has made my life easier manifold. It is handy, light weight, quick and helps me to do my research anywhere and anytime.
Google Drive/ Dropbox: As a research scholar who is on the move forever, there wouldn’t be another person thanking for the invention of Google Drive/ Dropbox and their likes. These are one place to store all your files and they are on the cloud and accessible anywhere you go without actually having to carry the data in a storage Dropbox. Dropbox is boon for researchers as it also supports a lot of software that I use for research. I am also able to share my data with my supervisor or peer group, anytime needed. This is super easy and super useful.
Google Scholar: Like I did, you would find most of the papers you need for you research on Google Scholars. It just so appears that Google scholar was created keeping in mind the need and the struggle of PhD researcher so we can’t thank them enough. I found more than 90 percent of the papers that I was looking for on Google Scholar rather than the physical brick and mortar library in my university.
Mendeley: Mendeley is the link that helps you to have an academic profile made virtual. It helps me to connect with likeminded researchers from all over the world, thus helping me to get constructive inputs from various places. To add to it, it connects itself with Dropbox and runs an automatic check with Google Scholar for verification. Awesome n surely a need for all research scholars. Just remember that it in an academic version of LinkedIn There you go with these five technological tools to make your PhD life much simpler. You could surely have a list specific to the android system. If you do so, we wait for your inputs here. Come n make researchers’ life simpler.
