8 useful research paper writing tools and resources

Todoist is a task management app that can help you stay organized during the writing process.

Writing an academic paper is not just about putting the words on paper. In fact, some researchers might argue the writing is one of the easier parts! Your tasks before you start writing are also critical to your writing success.

If you’ve read our Writing your paper free guide, you’ll know that it’s important to prepare before you start writing. You need to organize your thoughts, materials, and the steps you plan to take to prepare your article for submission. This is where Todoist comes in.

Todoist can be used for planning, scheduling, and building the outline for your personal, work, and academic tasks. Part of its appeal is its simple functionality and portability.

It can be used on your phone, tablet, and computer with great collaboration and integration capabilities. This could be like having your personal assistant with you at all times.

Todoist is free to use, but for higher project limits or additional features like reminders, you can decide if you need an upgraded paid version.

An example of a simple outline:

If you’re looking for a productive way to take notes and sort through your research materials, Evernote can be a useful tool to consider.

You can organize your research by creating a notebook structure to keep similar notes together. You can also make your notes more useful by adding texts, images, and documents.

Another useful feature is capturing audio notes with the inbuilt recorder. It’s easy to share and discuss your notes and notebooks, without having to leave the Evernote app.

Keep in mind you can also seamlessly create Todoist tasks from Evernote notes, and vice versa to double your productivity.

The basic version of Evernote is free and lets you create unlimited notes but with a limitation of storage space to 60MB a month. For more storage you will require to upgrade to a paid subscription plan.

Here’s what it might look like to get started:

Grammarly is a typing assistant that uses artificial intelligence to identify any errors in spelling, grammar, and punctuation, then suggests an appropriate replacement.

When you install it on your laptop or computer, it will flag any errors in your text and provide you with an alternative, or even prompt you to remove particular phrases.

Keep in mind that your paper might contain technical terms or phrases that Grammarly may not understand, which could be flagged as errors. So, make sure you look over the prompts from Grammarly before accepting changes.

The basic function of Grammarly is free, which helps identify most spelling and grammar errors, but for a more robust check on everything you write, a paid upgraded premium version is available.

Also, you could consider using a professional academic editor, who will make sure your manuscript meets scholarly English standards.

High-quality research deserves proper academic writing. Ref-n-Write is a tool with an impressive library of phrases used in academic writing. Using artificial intelligence technology, the tool provides details on choosing the right academic phrase, cross-referencing previous work, suggesting new ideas, and more.

Non-native English speakers may find this tool helpful to paraphrase their text and improve their English writing skills through practice. To test out the referencing, paraphrasing and phrase bank tools, you can sign up for a free trial.

Don’t allow language be an issue in getting your research published. Please read this guide for more information on how to break language barriers and publish in international journals.

Hemingway Editor is an editing tool that can help you refine your writing, pinpointing areas of your work that will affect readability. Clear writing is important to communicate your research effectively to readers.

This tool also guides you on how to improve the sentences in your document. It highlights sentences that are hard to read, words or phrases with simpler alternatives, passive voices, as well as the number of adverbs present in your work.

Hemingway App has a free version but it also has a paid version with additional features for publishing, formatting and more .

For confidence about the quality of your paper, also consider the extra step of using experts in subject-relevant editing. They will make sure your work is free of grammatical, spelling, and other common language errors.

To save you time, our downloadable article and journal templates are a useful resource for formatting your manuscript. Our template will help you format your work correctly for submission, and make sure you have the information the target journal expects to see.

Make sure you download the relevant template and apply it to your research paper, following the instructions provided.

Remember to follow the instructions regarding your specific research article’s format. Here’s a guide on the variety of different types of research articles.

You can also focus on your research and save valuable time by letting experts in academic formatting look after the format of your manuscript.

This checklist is a useful resource to help you quickly review all you need to write an effective paper.

Whether you are writing a paper for an assignment or to submit to a journal, this list contains important information on what makes a good research paper.

Follow the steps in our 10-point checklist, to help guide how you plan and organize your research to write an impactful paper.