Wondering what your PhD is worth?
Having difficulty navigating through various aspects of research?
Well, the answer to the first question is you can get a lot out of your PhD other than gaining deep understanding in a specific research area. Check out 5 transferable skills that you can add to your resume and brag about in your job interviews.
The second question’s answer is today’s blog topic. It takes effort to protect your sanity throughout your PhD. This includes a LOT of self-learning on the side. Things that your classes or advisor will not always teach you. For example, you are expected to know how to manage references as a PhD student. Now, if you are unsure how to manage them, you have to either ask a peer or put additional time and effort to find resources and teach yourself.
This is just one example, there are numerous other things that you self-teach during PhD, whether this is a skill or a software. I have previously discussed skills at length. So, today’s blog is all about the software that you can get familiar with. Wondering why?
- To make your life as a PhD student easier and more organized
- To stand out as a well-equipped professional who pairs up hard work with smart work when applying for jobs
Reference manager
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Regardless of your research area, you will use some software to manage your references. For example, you will need to manage references each time you write a manuscript, prospectus, grant, or your dissertation. By the end of your PhD, I’d assume to have a library of more than 200-500 or even more references and there is no manual way to manage them. Instead of stressing over the references and wondering how to retain them once you move on, keep them in one place so you can carry them wherever you go after PhD.
Here is how referencing software, specifically Endnote can help you-
- Keep all your references in one place virtually – you can create your own library of references and divide them according to your manuscripts to revisit later.
- Cite while you write avoiding the hassle to go back and forth to cite each paper – scientific writing takes effort and focused time. You don’t want to think about manual citing when you are trying to conceptually write your manuscript section. There is an easy way to “cite while you write” where you keep your Endnote open while writing in Word. Next, under the “Endnote” tab, select “keep the formatting off”. This will avoid interruption while you are trying to write while you still continue adding in-text citations. Once you complete working, turn it back on so it loads all the in-text citations and save the document.
- Customized citation style – scientific journals have varying referencing style such as APA, MLA, Vancouver, Etc. Sometimes, they have very specific style that they require for their bibliography. Endnote allows you to create a customized citation style saving you SO MUCH time going to each reference and manually trying to make changes to it.
- Find a paper in your virtual library quickly rather than trying to remember specific keywords for Google Scholar or other database – Endnote allows you to save a PDF of the article along with the reference which makes it very easy to navigate through the references. Further, it also has a feature of adding a new reference from the online database. This saves you time and energy to import the references from a database like PubMed into Endnote.
Other commonly used referencing software are Zotero and Mendeley. Take the time once to explore these software. Compare and select the one that fits with your needs. No more wasting time to save citations or references manually.
Statistical software
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Outside of public health research, this is one of the most under-appreciated aspects of research, if you ask me. Each day, I learn something new in statistics and I realize the importance of learning at least one statistical software to become a sound researcher.
This is essential even if your research is biomedical, clinical, or basic. Even if advanced levels of statistics are not required for your research area, learning a statistical software may come in handy while running the simplest of the statistical tests or generating graphs or charts by yourself. Also, for those interested in industry careers after your PhD, proficiency with a statistical software will make you a stronger candidate because statistics are widely used in industry careers.
Some commonly used software for statistics are SPSS, SAS, R, and Python, among others. If you feel under confident working with numbers, taking an online course to learn SPSS might be the easiest because it doesn’t require coding, at least for beginner-level tests. For more advanced approach, SAS is a good starting point to learn basic coding to generate statistical tables and figures. Lastly, depending on the job opportunities you aim for, learning R or Python can be worth the time.
Be sure to pick at least one software and self-teach how to generate descriptive statistics like mean, standard deviation, confidence intervals, p-values, and more. Also, once you feel comfortable with these, you can easily learn how to create beautiful graphs and scatterplots.
Canva
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Not everyone of us PhD students are savvy at creating beautiful slides, documents, infographics, and more. Creating something from scratch is time consuming and you may have more important things to do. Canva is free, easy to use, and extremely helpful in creating graphics, videos, charts, posters, presentations, and much more.
They have a variety of templates to choose from and you can modify each piece according to your needs. If you come from a public health or behavioral research PhD, Canva is extremely useful in creating research material like the recruitment flier, infographics for an interdisciplinary audience presenting the data and findings, and research posters for conferences.
Apart from this, you can also use Canva for personal use such as creating resumes, cover letters, business cards, knowledge maps, and tracking personal growth.
Grammar checker
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In general, it is a good practice to run a quick check through your manuscript, grant, or PhD dissertation to ensure there are minimal grammatical errors. In the era where we constantly use abbreviations and emojis over texts, this sometimes underestimates the importance of grammar and punctuations in scientific writing.
Especially if your native language is not English, you might not recognize certain grammatical errors. This can be a problem if it becomes a usual practice on your end to send your advisor/committee, a draft full of grammatical errors or submit a manuscript with errors. As PhD students, you are expected to ensure such formatting checks. Using a quick grammar checker like Grammarly will help you rectify the mistakes AND learn from them to become more proficient in the written language.
If you still choose to not use any checker, run a “grammar check” in Word at the minimum and get rid of all the red lines automatically highlighted by Word. This will at least take care of any mis-spelled words, incorrect punctuations, and inconsistent spacing.
Plagiarism checker
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You are not just a student pursuing a PhD, but also an emerging research professional. This comes with a responsibility of conducting your research ethically at all times. One of the basic responsibilities as researchers is to ensure that you pull from the previous literature and integrate it in your manuscript as opposed to blankly copying and pasting it. That is clearly plagiarism and strongly discouraged.
Plagiarism can happen unintentionally too. Even if you do not copy and paste sentences from previous research articles, some sentences can still be considered as plagiarized when entered into a plagiarism checker due to the similarities in the structure. Would you prefer to use the plagiarism checker yourself and modify the sentences to make it more original? Or someone else does it while their review and let you know that about 40% of your text is plagiarized? If this is unintentional, you might end up feeling embarrassed for something you didn’t intend to do.
Think about it.
Here are some common plagiarism checkers – Grammarly, Scribbr, and Unicheck. Make it a mandatory practice within your writing routine or formatting checklist.
One bonus tip..
This is a lot to start with if you have little familiarity or awareness with these software. My suggestion is to pick one software at a time and play around with it. Get comfortable and use it for a couple weeks. Once you understand how to use it, move on to explore another one.
These software will not only make your PhD life easier and organized but also save you time, effort, and protect your sanity throughout your PhD.
If you found this insightful, my newsletter will cover 5 additional MUST-USE software. Be sure to join the community.
Here are some blogs you will find helpful-
7 insights into how to prepare for your PhD viva/dissertation
5 transferable skills to add to your resume
Why and how to navigate a conference for the first time?
10 Problematic behaviors during PhD and how to break the pattern using 30 actionable steps – PART 1 and 2
Featured photo for this blog – Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash