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Useful tools for researchers...

Yes, this isn't a review of an article or neuroscience topic as such (more of those soon).  That said, I've found the following pieces of software have become indispensable to me as a researcher - and what's more, they're free.



I started using Mendeley (a reference and bibliographic organizer) a couple of years ago and was using Endnote (C) at the time.  I've found that as time has passed, Mendeley has become increasingly user friendly and my envy for those with the Mac software "Papers" has decreased exponentially.  This software practically does it all: import PDFs and it will automatically rename them according to your preference (mine are all author, year, title) which makes finding references later a breeze.  All your references will be saved to a single directory (which you can further subdivide into folders according to author name, year, title, or journal).  

There is also in-text citation integration for word and LaTex which last time I checked, Papers had only just implemented.  Multiple journal styles are available for download, and if you happened to write the document using one style and you need to switch to a journal specific citation method, you can change your style after the fact.

Perhaps one of the best (most underutilized) aspect of this software is the ability to collaborate with fellow researchers and share references and notes.  Likely the biggest barrier to this is that many people already have a citation system in place and getting an entire research group to move over to a new one is a bit of an undertaking - unless you happen to be the P.I., in which case you could just "suggest" it.  



Endnote has been gathering dust on my desktop for at least a year and I will likely uninstall it soon; Mendeley is just too good a competitor.  If you haven't checked it out, do so, it's definitely worth it.


The other software that I am starting to use much more regularly is 'R'.  This is largely due to a recent, much more user friendly interface that has been released - RStudio.   On it's own R is a pain to learn - one of the most trying things in the beginning (especially if one comes from a non-programming background) is actually loading data into the program in the correct format.  RStudio, a GUI front for R makes this and more far, easier, and in doing so, makes it much more likely that this tool will be used not only by statisticians, but by the wider scientific community.

R's Basic Terminal - quite daunting for those unfamiliar with programming or Linux/Unix based systems
The far more friendly RStudio Graphic User Interface.  R still runs the show, RStudio just makes sure it doesn't give you a headache in the process.


So, if you're using SPSS, STATA, MATLAB or otherwise, why consider RStudio?

Well, it's free, it's very good at statistical computing, and it has beautiful (publication level) graphical capabilities.  It's also highly customizable meaning that you can run the analysis you want/need to without being constrained by what the program thinks you should do (I'm looking at you SPSS).

Yes, it is a programming language, yes it will be a bit of a learning curve, but because the software is free, constantly updated and very well supported by a vibrant community, it's definitely worth the effort to get to know.  For the more nerdy, RStudio is also well integrated with LaTex which means that it is now quite easy to create beautiful PDFs containing text, code and outputs of your R analyses.  What's more, should you need to update your data, you can simply recreate the PDF from your code and it will update all the relevant data.


If you have any comments or suggestions for programs you've found useful for research, feel free to post below.  
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