You’re struggling to get your research project off the ground. What tools can help you succeed?

Initiating any research endeavor mandates meticulous planning of tasks, milestones, and deadlines. Leveraging a robust project management tool streamlines this process, facilitating organization, progress tracking, and team collaboration. Prominent examples include Trello, Asana, GitHub Projects, and Google Calendar. These platforms offer diverse functionalities, enabling the creation of boards, lists, cards, issues, and events to allocate and sequence tasks efficiently. Integration with complementary tools like Slack, Zoom, or Google Drive enhances communication and file sharing among team members, fostering seamless collaboration and expediting project advancement.

Data collection is a pivotal phase in research, and the choice of tools can significantly impact efficiency and accuracy. Depending on your research scope, diverse methods like surveys, experiments, web scraping, or API access may be employed. Leveraging specialized tools such as Google Forms, Qualtrics, Scrapy, or Postman can streamline and automate data collection processes. These platforms offer functionalities ranging from survey creation and distribution to web data extraction and API testing, facilitating seamless acquisition and storage of data. Furthermore, the flexibility to export data in various formats enhances compatibility with downstream analysis tools, ensuring comprehensive research insights.

To kickstart a research project, utilizing data analysis tools like Python's Pandas, R or MATLAB for statistical analysis, and visualization platforms such as Tableau or Power BI can streamline data interpretation. Additionally, leveraging cloud-based services like Google Colab or AWS Sagemaker for scalable computing power enhances efficiency, aiding in project success.

Mendeley is the reference manager I like to use. By downloading the Chrome Extension, you can quickly and easily collect and organise your references to use later. Mendeley is also compatible with Word, allowing you to add a reference list to the end of your papers with just one click!

One of the most effective ways to improve your presentation skills is to record yourself on your cellphone! Simply record yourself giving a mock presentation in the comfort of your office or own home, pretending you are speaking to an audience. Don’t look at the recording immediately, sleep on it, and then watch your recording the next day. You’ll notice areas you can improve, body language to avoid, and ways you can make a topic more digestible or interesting. Doing this as a continuous improvement process is an amazing way to improve your dissemination skills.

Presentation tools are insufficient. You can put together a presentation or a paper, but you will still need to reach your audience. Similarly with sharing a paper/presentation on a platform. That only gives a place to host your work. You will still need to market your work, so that your audience knows that it exists. Useful marketing tools: - mailing lists - your LinkedIn Profile List your publications on your profile, visitors can easily see new content. They are already interested in you and your work. - ycombinator's Hacker News The audience is techies, investors and members of the general public with an interest in STEM - Targeted subReddits These are members of the general public. with an interest in your research niche.