Research Software & Tools for Resource-Limited Scholars
The idea in this post is to share the software tools I use for my research, which I hope will be helpful for others, especially those without money or enough resources. Choosing Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is not only practical but also aligns with a more cooperative, non-profit-oriented approach to knowledge — something I believe is important for our shared future.
Why Free and Open Tools Matter
Politically, it feels better — aligns with sharing, cooperation, and resisting corporate enclosure and commodification.
Institutional Precarity & Loss
All around the world, most of us do not possess academic job security. Even those who do, recent political developments show that it is hard to take our “permanent posts” for granted — see Academics for Peace and the German cases of Nancy Fraser or Professor John Keane.
The institutions we are part of often provide us with necessary tools and resources. If we lose connection with these institutions, we lose these tools — including emails, databases, software — at least until we move to another one. But what happens if we can’t or we do not want to? Should we say goodbye to our research ideas, passion, etc.? Or what happens if we want to continue research at our own pace, without deadlines, without putting “who can fund what” first in our minds? FOSS software does not solve everything that capitalism and mainstream science created, but it helps to take a breath, I believe.Reliability vs Price & Fragility
Many proprietary softwares and apps I relied on intensively over the past 10+ years for research and academic work have shown themselves to be unreliable — Google shutting down apps without warning, Evernote forcing constant payments. Meanwhile, softwares like Zotero rarely disappoint me, and they are always free and open source (FOSS). I admit many FOSS softwares are hard to grasp at first, but over time I am convinced that the time spent learning them (often not rocket science) is worth it compared to the frustration caused by software companies.Purpose Over Profit
Those who experienced the difference between money-oriented and non-money-oriented organisations know it — Couchsurfing at the beginning had no money involved and was a great experience; Airbnb from the start was about money and you know what they do to the cities and people. FOSS softwares keep purpose (sharing, knowledge, cooperation) ahead of profit motives.
Tools for Research Work
Zotero (also on @zotero@fosstodon.org) — Alternative to EndNote or Citavi. I use it for collecting, organizing, annotating, and citing research sources, managing PDFs, and keeping my literature database independent from institutions.
- Zotero Connector: Save sources directly from your browser.
- Plugin: Zotmoov: Move PDFs to GDrive/Dropbox/Nextcloud.
- Zotero Connector: Save sources directly from your browser.
LibreOffice (also on @libreoffice@fosstodon.org) — Alternative to Microsoft Word or Google Docs. Unfortunately, I still haven’t got used to it and use mostly Google Docs for writing, editing tables, or offline work.
Google Scholar — Search engine for scholarly literature across disciplines. I use it to find papers about research subjects and/or authors; free but proprietary. It is the largest engine, so kind of unavoidable. You can set alerts about new publications for authors and subjects.
Semantic Scholar — Semantic search engine highlighting influential citations, key concepts, and connections. It functions like Google Scholar, but it was easier for me to find more relevant articles and authors.
ATLAS.ti (paid student version) & QualCoder (FOSS) — I used ATLAS.ti extensively for coding and analysing my interviews. It’s user-friendly but their customer service disappointed me. I tried R’s qualitative data analysis packages but found them too complex. I’ve recently come across QualCoder (FOSS) but haven’t used it yet — feel free to contact me on (@douuuu@mastodon.social if you have experience with it.
Open Science Framework (also on @OSFramework@mastodon.social) — A free, open-source platform for managing and sharing research projects, data, preprints, and workflows. I recently discovered this webpage and I am still experimenting with it, but it seems like an important step toward better and more transparent science practices.
Here is my profile: osf.io/bw36c.Joplin (also on @joplinapp@mastodon.social) — Alternative to Evernote. I use it for taking notes on research ideas, organizing reflections, and scraping web content related to my research. It replaced my old 1200+ Evernote notes because I didn’t want to depend on expensive plans or proprietary platforms.
Nextcloud (also on @nextcloud@mastodon.social) — Alternative to Google Drive or Dropbox. I use it for storing research files, PDFs, and syncing Joplin notes.
Super Productivity (also on @superproductivity@mastodon.social) — Alternative to Trello/Todoist. I use it for managing research tasks, tracking time spent on projects, and focusing on research-related work with integrated Pomodoro timers.
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Find this blog at @academically@blog.liberta.vip — and me on Mastodon: @douuuu@mastodon.social — License: CC BY-SA 4.0