Everyone develops their own set of software tools over time. There are lots of handy specialist software programmes out there. Look out for those that have a strong support community around them. This is what makes R such a pleasure to learn and Nvivo so frustrating. I’ve selected ones I use that should be useful for researchers whatever their specialism.
For my references: Zotero with WebDAV for file syncing. A free pCloud account gives me 10GB of storage. I will never need that many pdfs. It works with Google Docs which is another bonus.
For presenting: Google Slides – shareable and simple. The requirement to use Powerpoint for digital lecturing has put the kibosh on this for the now. Portability matters a lot to me and being able to drop work on the laptop and immediately pick it up on an iPad smooths things out.
For literature reviews: any spreadsheet programme will do here. I use Numbers because it’s free, on my mac and iOS, and the file saving system means it writes changes immediately – no crash risk. I started using a spreadsheet for literature reviews following a post by Elaine Gregerson https://alawuntoherself.com/2016/05/20/how-i-use-excel-to-manage-my-literature-review/ and see also https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/gradhacker/organizing-your-literature-spreadsheet-style
For extended writing: Scrivener is one of a few word processors that are designed with writers in mine. Draft, store, organise and restructure anything from an article to a book.
For collaborative writing: Google Docs is easily shared and has a low barrier to entry. I’ve long since surrendered to the vampire squid on that front.
There’s plenty of other incidental software and platform choices we make – email, word processing, cloud storage, anti-virus and it’s worth taking the time to use ones that will work for you. Here’s one overview to selecting the right tools and developing the right cast of mind: http://www.docs.is.ed.ac.uk/skills/documents/3933/3933.pdf
