research tools net

Top 21 must-have digital tools for researchers

Last updated

12 May 2023

Reviewed by

Jean Kaluza

Research drives many decisions across various industries, including:

Uncovering customer motivations and behaviors to design better products

Assessing whether a market exists for your product or service

Running clinical studies to develop a medical breakthrough

Conducting effective and shareable research can be a painstaking process. Manual processes are sluggish and archaic, and they can also be inaccurate. That’s where advanced online tools can help. 

The right tools can enable businesses to lean into research for better forecasting, planning, and more reliable decisions. 

• Why do researchers need research tools?

Research is challenging and time-consuming. Analyzing data , running focus groups , reading research papers , and looking for useful insights take plenty of heavy lifting. 

These days, researchers can’t just rely on manual processes. Instead, they’re using advanced tools that:

Speed up the research process

Enable new ways of reaching customers

Improve organization and accuracy

Allow better monitoring throughout the process

Enhance collaboration across key stakeholders

• The most important digital tools for researchers

Some tools can help at every stage, making researching simpler and faster.

They ensure accurate and efficient information collection, management, referencing, and analysis. 

Some of the most important digital tools for researchers include:

Research management tools

Research management can be a complex and challenging process. Some tools address the various challenges that arise when referencing and managing papers. 

.css-10ptwjf{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;background:transparent;border:0;color:inherit;cursor:pointer;-webkit-flex-shrink:0;-ms-flex-negative:0;flex-shrink:0;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-10ptwjf:disabled{opacity:0.6;pointer-events:none;} Zotero

Coined as a personal research assistant, Zotero is a tool that brings efficiency to the research process. Zotero helps researchers collect, organize, annotate, and share research easily. 

Zotero integrates with internet browsers, so researchers can easily save an article, publication, or research study on the platform for later. 

The tool also has an advanced organizing system to allow users to label, tag, and categorize information for faster insights and a seamless analysis process. 

Messy paper stacks––digital or physical––are a thing of the past with Paperpile. This reference management tool integrates with Google Docs, saving users time with citations and paper management. 

Referencing, researching, and gaining insights is much cleaner and more productive, as all papers are in the same place. Plus, it’s easier to find a paper when you need it. 

Acting as a single source of truth (SSOT), Dovetail houses research from the entire organization in a simple-to-use place. Researchers can use the all-in-one platform to collate and store data from interviews , forms, surveys , focus groups, and more. 

Dovetail helps users quickly categorize and analyze data to uncover truly actionable insights . This helps organizations bring customer insights into every decision for better forecasting, planning, and decision-making. 

Dovetail integrates with other helpful tools like ​Slack, Atlassian, Notion, and Zapier for a truly efficient workflow.

Putting together papers and referencing sources can be a huge time consumer. EndNote claims that researchers waste 200,000 hours per year formatting citations. 

To address the issue, the tool formats citations automatically––simultaneously creating a bibliography while the user writes. 

EndNote is also a cloud-based system that allows remote working, multiple-user interaction and collaboration, and seamless working on different devices. 

Information survey tools

Surveys are a common way to gain data from customers. These tools can make the process simpler and more cost-effective. 

With ready-made survey templates––to collect NPS data, customer effort scores , five-star surveys, and more––getting going with Delighted is straightforward. 

Delighted helps teams collect and analyze survey feedback without needing any technical knowledge. The templates are customizable, so you can align the content with your brand. That way, the survey feels like it’s coming from your company, not a third party. 

SurveyMonkey

With millions of customers worldwide, SurveyMonkey is another leader in online surveys. SurveyMonkey offers hundreds of templates that researchers can use to set up and deploy surveys quickly. 

Whether your survey is about team performance, hotel feedback, post-event feedback, or an employee exit, SurveyMonkey has a ready-to-use template. 

Typeform offers free templates you can quickly embed, which comes with a point of difference: It designs forms and surveys with people in mind, focusing on customer enjoyment. 

Typeform employs the ‘one question at a time’ method to keep engagement rates and completions high. It focuses on surveys that feel more like conversations than a list of questions.

Web data analysis tools

Collecting data can take time––especially technical information. Some tools make that process simpler. 

For those conducting clinical research, data collection can be incredibly time-consuming. Teamscope provides an online platform to collect and manage data simply and easily. 

Researchers and medical professionals often collect clinical data through paper forms or digital means. Those are too easy to lose, tricky to manage, and challenging to collaborate on. 

With Teamscope, you can easily collect, store, and electronically analyze data like patient-reported outcomes and surveys. 

Heap is a digital insights platform providing context on the entire customer journey . This helps businesses improve customer feedback , conversion rates, and loyalty. 

Through Heap, you can seamlessly view and analyze the customer journey across all platforms and touchpoints, whether through the app or website. 

Another analytics tool, Smartlook, combines quantitative and qualitative analytics into one platform. This helps organizations understand user behavior and make crucial improvements. 

Smartlook is useful for analyzing web pages, purchasing flows, and optimizing conversion rates. 

Project management tools

Managing multiple research projects across many teams can be complex and challenging. Project management tools can ease the burden on researchers. 

Visual productivity tool Trello helps research teams manage their projects more efficiently. Trello makes product tracking easier with:

A range of workflow options

Unique project board layouts

Advanced descriptions

Integrations

Trello also works as an SSOT to stay on top of projects and collaborate effectively as a team. 

To connect research, workflows, and teams, Airtable provides a clean interactive interface. 

With Airtable, it’s simple to place research projects in a list view, workstream, or road map to synthesize information and quickly collaborate. The Sync feature makes it easy to link all your research data to one place for faster action. 

For product teams, Asana gathers development, copywriting, design, research teams, and product managers in one space. 

As a task management platform, Asana offers all the expected features and more, including time-tracking and Jira integration. The platform offers reporting alongside data collection methods , so it’s a favorite for product teams in the tech space.

Grammar checker tools

Grammar tools ensure your research projects are professional and proofed. 

No one’s perfect, especially when it comes to spelling, punctuation, and grammar. That’s where Grammarly can help. 

Grammarly’s AI-powered platform reviews your content and corrects any mistakes. Through helpful integrations with other platforms––such as Gmail, Google Docs, Twitter, and LinkedIn––it’s simple to spellcheck as you go. 

Another helpful grammar tool is Trinka AI. Trinka is specifically for technical and academic styles of writing. It doesn’t just correct mistakes in spelling, punctuation, and grammar; it also offers explanations and additional information when errors show. 

Researchers can also use Trinka to enhance their writing and:

Align it with technical and academic styles

Improve areas like syntax and word choice

Discover relevant suggestions based on the content topic

Plagiarism checker tools

Avoiding plagiarism is crucial for the integrity of research. Using checker tools can ensure your work is original. 

Plagiarism checker Quetext uses DeepSearch™ technology to quickly sort through online content to search for signs of plagiarism. 

With color coding, annotations, and an overall score, it’s easy to identify conflict areas and fix them accordingly. 

Duplichecker

Another helpful plagiarism tool is Duplichecker, which scans pieces of content for issues. The service is free for content up to 1000 words, with paid options available after that. 

If plagiarism occurs, a percentage identifies how much is duplicate content. However, the interface is relatively basic, offering little additional information.  

Journal finder tools

Finding the right journals for your project can be challenging––especially with the plethora of inaccurate or predatory content online. Journal finder tools can solve this issue. 

Enago Journal Finder

The Enago Open Access Journal Finder sorts through online journals to verify their legitimacy. Through Engao, you can discover pre-vetted, high-quality journals through a validated journal index. 

Enago’s search tool also helps users find relevant journals for their subject matter, speeding up the research process. 

JournalFinder

JournalFinder is another journal tool that’s popular with academics and researchers. It makes the process of discovering relevant journals fast by leaning into a machine-learning algorithm.

This is useful for discovering key information and finding the right journals to publish and share your work in. 

Social networking for researchers

Collaboration between researchers can improve the accuracy and sharing of information. Promoting research findings can also be essential for public health, safety, and more. 

While typical social networks exist, some are specifically designed for academics.

ResearchGate

Networking platform ResearchGate encourages researchers to connect, collaborate, and share within the scientific community. With 20 million researchers on the platform, it's a popular choice. 

ResearchGate is founded on an intention to advance research. The platform provides topic pages for easy connection within a field of expertise and access to millions of publications to help users stay up to date. 

Academia is another commonly used platform that connects 220 million academics and researchers within their specialties. 

The platform aims to accelerate research with discovery tools and grow a researcher’s audience to promote their ideas. 

On Academia, users can access 47 million PDFs for free. They cover topics from mechanical engineering to applied economics and child psychology. 

• Expedited research with the power of tools

For researchers, finding data and information can be time-consuming and complex to manage. That’s where the power of tools comes in. 

Manual processes are slow, outdated, and have a larger potential for inaccuracies. 

Leaning into tools can help researchers speed up their processes, conduct efficient research, boost their accuracy, and share their work effectively. 

With tools available for project and data management, web data collection, and journal finding, researchers have plenty of assistance at their disposal.

When it comes to connecting with customers, advanced tools boost customer connection while continually bringing their needs and wants into products and services.

What are primary research tools?

Primary research is data and information that you collect firsthand through surveys, customer interviews, or focus groups. 

Secondary research is data and information from other sources, such as journals, research bodies, or online content. 

Primary researcher tools use methods like surveys and customer interviews. You can use these tools to collect, store, or manage information effectively and uncover more accurate insights. 

What is the difference between tools and methods in research?

Research methods relate to how researchers gather information and data. 

For example, surveys, focus groups, customer interviews, and A/B testing are research methods that gather information. 

On the other hand, tools assist areas of research. Researchers may use tools to more efficiently gather data, store data securely, or uncover insights. 

Tools can improve research methods, ensuring efficiency and accuracy while reducing complexity.

Should you be using a customer insights hub?

Do you want to discover previous research faster?

Do you share your research findings with others?

Do you analyze research data?

Start for free today, add your research, and get to key insights faster

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Top 13 Tools for Researchers in 2024!

Gone are the days of going to the library, studying numerous books, taking notes on paper, and doing research. Thanks to technology, we no longer have to do this tedious routine to do research. However, research is still a meticulous, painstaking process.

This is why we decided to uncover some of the best software tools for researchers that are going to help you conduct and maintain your research with ease. Read on…

List of Top 13 Best Tools for Researchers for better results:

Research today is dynamic. We often use the internet to browse websites, watch videos, study analytics, and conduct our research by exploring different types of digital content, making technology a major stakeholder in making our research success .

While the internet has made it easy for us to access worldly information with the click of a button (or mouse!), it has created a whole new set of problems.

Sorting through a seemingly infinite number of websites, verifying content, and curating only the best stuff can take a lot of time and effort. This is why we have brought you 13 essential research tools every researcher should use while working on the internet.

1. Bit.ai  

Online research means going through numerous websites, articles, blogs, images, videos, infographics, and more to find what you are looking for.

For our dynamic, interactive, and media-rich research, we need a tool that incorporates all facets of modern-day research under one roof. Simple text editors of the past just won’t cut it anymore! This is where Bit comes in.

Bit allows researchers and teams to collaborate, share, track, and manage all knowledge and research in one place.

It’s the perfect research tool to share multi-dimensional research with your peers and not just plain, boring text and slides.

Add articles, PDFs, videos, white papers, ebooks, audio samples- basically anything you can think of – and share it with your peers easily!

Other notable features of Bit include:

• An easy-to-use, minimal editor that supports Markdown.
• Collaborative, real-time editing, and communication with peers.
• Add any type of digital content (images, videos, etc) to your Bit document.
• A content library to save all your media files for quick access.
• Smart search, allows anyone to search and find any files, images, documents, links, etc quickly.

All-in-all, Bit is a must-have writing tool for researchers and authors!

Key Features of Bit: 

• Workspaces to store different research content easily
• Content library to store media assets
• Real-time collaboration with fellow researchers
• Free with limited functionality
• Paid plans start from Pro ($8/month), Business ($15/month), Enterprise (contact sales)

Read more:  How Bit.ai Can Help You Manage Your Academic Research?

2. elink.io

Research often involves going through hundreds of links and articles and compiling them in one safe space for future reference or publishing them for your audience.

This is why many researchers use bookmarking and curation tools like elink to quickly save their links under one roof and share them with their peers.

elink makes it easy for researchers to save content from around the web. They can save article links, videos, cloud files, social media posts, and much more!

Researchers have the option of saving content to their link library or adding them directly to content collections and sharing their research with their peers . To make the bookmarking process a breeze, elink also has a chrome extension .

Simply click on the extension or right-click on any webpage to save the content directly to your elink dashboard.

Researchers can edit the title and description to add their own voices or notes. They can even bundle links together and share their link collection with others as a newsletter or embed the collection on your blog/website!

Key Features of elink:

• Save links quickly using the chrome extension
• Create and share research links as a newsletter or embed it on your website
• Easy user-interface
• Paid plans start at Pro Monthly ($15/month), Pro 1 Year ($12/month), and Pro 2 years ($10/month).

3. GanttPRO

No matter what kind of research you do, you need to organize, plan, and stay focused on all of your activities.

Without a robust planning tool, researchers may fall behind the schedule and lose their progress.

GanttPRO project and task management tool makes it easy for single researchers and groups of any size to plan their tasks on a visually appealing Gantt chart timeline, follow their progress, and all the deadlines.

GanttPRO allows researchers to create a limitless number of tasks, groups of tasks, and subtasks on one timeline.

Besides, it’s a perfect planning tool for assigning tasks to your fellow researchers or creating virtual resources, whoever or whatever they may be. The software is a good choice for collaboration, time tracking, as well as sharing and exporting your schedules.

Key Features of GanttPRO:

• Dozens of ready-made templates.
• Real-time collaboration with fellow researchers.
• Elegant user interface with a short learning curve.
•   Free 14-day trial with all features available.
• Paid plans start from Team ($4.5/user/month), Individual ($15/month), Enterprise (contact sales).

4. Grammarly

Research work often involves hours of proofreading and spellchecking to make your research professional .

Grammarly, a writing enhancement tool will save you a ton of time and effort doing this dreaded task! Apart from basic spellchecking and corrections, Grammarly includes a grammar checker, a punctuation checker, a vocabulary enhancer, and even a plagiarism checker tool!

This awesome tool scans your research for more than 250 types of grammar mistakes in six distinct writing genres and leaves you with error-free writing. With thorough explanations for all your errors and weekly progress reports .

Grammarly is a must-have tool for researchers. It’s available as a browser extension, a desktop app, a web-based app, and a Microsoft add-in. Many of the Grammarly alternatives are also available in the market that is equally good.

Key Features of Grammarly: 

• Works with the majority of online tools like Word, Slack, etc.
• Plagiarism checker tool
• Tone detector
• Paid plans start from: Premium ($11.66/month), Business ($12.50/month)

Read more:   10 Best Writing Apps To Make You A Better Writer!

5. Typeset.io

With over 100,000+ verified journal formats to choose from, Typeform makes the process of research a bit too easy! Quickly copy-paste or upload your paper on Typeset and follow any citation style you need.

Typeset also has a plagiarism and grammar checker built in to ensure your writing is error-free. Once done uploading and citing, click on autoformat to generate your report in seconds.

You can also download your research in PDF , Docx, LaTeX file, or even as a Zip file. With collaboration features built-in, you can invite your fellow researchers to the platform and work together.

Key Features of Typeset: 

• Over 100,000+ journal formats to choose from
• Plagiarism and grammar checker tool
• Editing services to improve your publication chances
• Paid plans start from: Researcher ($8/month), Team($6/month), Journals / Publishers (contact sales)

6. Scrivener

Scrivener is another great tool for research writing and keeping your notes organized.

Used by researchers, screenwriters, novelists, non-fiction writers, students, journalists, academics, lawyers, translators, and more, Scrivener is a tool made for long writing projects.

On signing up, you are quickly presented with its editor, with a sidebar to keep everything in place. You can also break your content into manageable sections of any size and leave Scrivener to join them together.

For novelists and storytellers, there’s also a corkboard to visualize your storyline and move cards around as you like.

The outliner keeps a synopsis of what you have already written, along with word count data and metadata. Users can arrange their research articles and other files in folders and subfolders.

Key Features of Scrivener: 

• Desktop and mobile apps
• Outline creator
• Easy organization
• Paid plans start from $40.84/one-time fee

7. ProofHub

You must organize, prepare, and stay focused on all of your efforts, regardless of the type of research you conduct.

Researchers may go behind schedule and lose progress if they don’t have a good task management tool. ProofHub is an all-in-one project and team management application that allows research teams and organizations of any size to efficiently plan their research projects in one spot.

ProofHub allows you to create, assign and track tasks using effective task management features like Kanban boards and table view. Researchers can also get a visual idea of how their project is progressing using robust Gantt charts.

ProofHub also allows you to store and jot down all the data or information collected through your research in Notes. You can even create different notebooks and store your information according to the topic. Not just that, you can even share your research work with your team members.

Teams can also share and store files, documents, and images in ProofHub’s files section. Managers can track their team’s time spent on a specific research task using automatic and manual timers.

Team members can also brainstorm ideas or have real-time discussions in ProofHub’s discussions section and make way for better research work. 

Key features of ProofHub:

• Ready to use project templates
• Task management
• Time tracking and project reporting
• Team collaboration (chat, notes, and discussions)
• File management
• Online proofing
• 14-day free trial with all the features.

8. Google Scholar

Next up is an amazing research tool by Google called Google Scholar. Google Scholar provides a quick way to broadly search for scholarly literature from one location.

Look for articles, theses, books, abstracts, and court opinions, from professional societies, online repositories, universities, academic publishers, and other websites.

Researchers can also explore related works, citations, authors, and publications easily. Create a public author profile and see who’s citing your recent publication. Google Scholar also allows its users to keep up with recent developments in any area of research.

Key Features of Google Scholar: 

• Create a public author page
• Look for information across Google’s database
• Easy to use
• Free to use

Endnote wants you to research smarter by simplifying the tiresome work of formatting bibliographies, finding full text, and searching for references.

Endnote is collaborative in nature as it allows you to share selected groups of references, manage team access, and track activity and changes from one single dashboard.

With smarter insights, Endnote automatically finds the impact of your references and finds the best-fit journal for your papers.

The platform also enables users to automatically create, format, and update bibliographies. Quickly export your references and full-text PDFs into EndNote and start working instantly.

With a bunch of EndNote templates and plug-ins, researchers can enhance their Endnote experience and get the most out of the platform.

Key Features of Endnote: 

• Import filters for prior research
• Track your teammates’ activity on your shared library
• Automatic reference and link updating
• Paid plans start from $249

10. Evernote

Evernote is a note-taking app that can be very useful while conducting research . The app helps you store all your personal ideas, to-do listsm4, notes, and research links in one place.

Create separate tags and folders for the different types of information you are saving and keep it all organized.

Evernote auto-syncs across all your devices, including desktop, smartphone, and tablet, so you can switch between devices without losing your data.

Its Chrome browser extension called the Evernote web clipper is a great add-on for saving articles or other content on the internet while doing your research.

Just click the browser extension to save the entire page or highlights to your Evernote notebook along with any notes you have about that page.

Key Features of Evernote: 

• Keep notes, articles, and other content in one place
• Chrome extension for clipping content
• Set reminders
• Paid plans start from Plus ($34.99 per year or $3.99 per month), Premium ($69.99 per year or $7.99 per month), and Evernote Business (contact sales)

11. Mendeley

Mendeley is a reference management software that allows researchers to create references, citations, and bibliographies in multiple journal styles with just a few clicks.

Quickly access your library from anywhere – from anywhere. Windows, Mac, Linux, etc and add papers directly from your browser with a few clicks or import any documents from your desktop to your library.

With its research network, researchers connect and network with over 6 million users. Users can create groups to carry out discussions, discover research, and follow curated bibliographies.

There are also over 250,000 + science, technology, and health jobs to advance your career and grant info from over 5000 organizations to fund your next research !

Key Features of Mendeley: 

• Annotate and organize documents
• Find and create groups with fellow researchers
• Grant information from over 5000 organizations
• Paid plans start from $55/year for 5 GB to $165/year to unlimited storage

12. ContentMine

ContentMine offers a variety of text mining services to help researchers find, download, analyze, and extract knowledge from academic papers.

ContentMine builds its own open-source code to help out researchers find papers and not waste time on the internet doing so. They can also convert academic papers , PDFs to HTML, or to almost any format.

ContentMine can also extract data from tables and graphs, reducing the time taken to conduct a meta-analysis. The platform also offers consultancy as well as training workshops to educate people on the work they do and how.

Key Features of ContentMine: 

• Extract data from tables and graphs
• Quickly mine text from hundreds of papers
• Workshops and training
• Contact sales

13. ResearchGate

The last tool on our list of awesome tools for researchers is a platform called ResearchGate. ResearchGate gives you access to over 135 million publication pages, allowing you to stay up to date with what’s happening in your field.

With a built-in community, researchers can share their research, collaborate with peers, and discover new papers and bibliographies.

ResearchGate also provides deep analytics on who’s been reading your work and keeps track of your citations. With over 17 million users, ResearchGate is a research community to join!

Key Features of ResearchGate: 

• Share and find researchers
• Analytics to see who’s reading your work
• Citation tracking

Before you go!

Our team at  bit.ai  has created a few awesome templates to make your research process more efficient. Make sure to check them out before you go, y our team might need them!

• Case Study Template
• Research Paper Template
• Competitor Research Template
• Brainstorming Template
• SWOT Analysis Template
• White Paper Template

Final Words

There you have it folks, our list of amazing websites, apps, and software to use while conducting your research. Research is hard work- from finding and managing content to organizing and publishing- research takes a lot of time and effort.

However, with our awesome list of tools, researchers are surely going to get out the most of their time and effort and get work done more efficiently. Did we miss any awesome tool for researchers out there? Let us know by tweeting us at @bit_docs.

Further reads:

• Top 11 Code Editors for Software Developers
• Collaborative Research: Definition, Benefits & Tips!
• Best Resource Management Tools and Software
• How to Write a Research Proposal?

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About Bit.ai

Bit.ai is the essential next-gen workplace and document collaboration platform. that helps teams share knowledge by connecting any type of digital content. With this intuitive, cloud-based solution, anyone can work visually and collaborate in real-time while creating internal notes, team projects, knowledge bases, client-facing content, and more.

The smartest online Google Docs and Word alternative, Bit.ai is used in over 100 countries by professionals everywhere, from IT teams creating internal documentation and knowledge bases, to sales and marketing teams sharing client materials and client portals.

👉👉Click Here to Check out Bit.ai.

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Top 16 Digital Tools That Every Researcher Should Know About

Using digital tools for researchers effectively can be the difference between an average and an excellent piece of research. But today, with the long list of research tools available online, it is only natural for busy researchers to be baffled when it comes to making the right choice for specific needs. With considerations of time, cost, effectiveness and quality, there is a lot to check before you make the choice. We don’t want you to spend hours just looking for the best tools for researchers, so we’ve rounded up some of the most effective digital tools for researchers to make your life simpler.

In this comprehensive article, we have compiled a list of 16 useful online tools for researchers at various stages of the research journey. These tools will streamline your research process, help you stay organized, and provide you with easy access to the information you need. From reference management software to digital libraries, these cutting-edge tools cater to the needs of both experienced and novice researchers alike. Whether you’re working on a major research project or just starting out, this blog will help you get ahead of the curve and make your research journey a tad (we aren’t making big promises) bit easier.

Table of Contents

Why are digital tools for researchers important

Before any digital tools for researchers were introduced, academics had to rely on old-school manual methods that were typically time-consuming, labor-intensive, and also limited in scope. For instance, you had to subscribe to journals or physically visit libraries and spend hours searching and sifting through tomes before finding the most relevant information. And once that was done, the process of organizing, storing, and referencing data was another challenge you had to overcome.

In contrast, online tools for researchers offer a wealth of information and resources at your fingertips today. With the option to search and access vast amounts of knowledge with a few clicks, researchers are able to boost their efficiency and effectiveness at work.

And it’s not just limited to online tools for researchers that allow you to easily store, organize, and manage information, there are a number of tools that can help you hone your writing, check for plagiarism, find the right journal, collaborate with other researchers, and share your knowledge, ideas, and resources. The rapid development of digital tools for researchers have revolutionized the way researchers work, making way for faster innovation and more groundbreaking research.

Types of tools for researchers

There are various types of online tools for researchers to choose from. These tools can be classified into various categories such as planning and management of research projects, literature search, data collection and analysis, reference management, editing and paraphrasing, and collaboration and communication. These digital tools for researchers have revolutionized the way academics work, adding to their time, productivity and effectiveness; this in turn makes research more accessible, efficient, and collaborative. Let’s take a look at some top tools for researchers across these key stages in the researcher journey.

Reference Management Tools

Reference management tools are great time saving tools for researchers. Not only do they allow you to create a library of relevant articles, they help you format your references, detect duplicate entries and replace incomplete references, and even share articles with other researchers. Furthermore, they are also extremely useful tools for researchers when it comes to correctly linking sources and citing referenced articles.

Among the top reference management tools for researchers, Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote are the most widely used.

Zotero has quickly become one of the must-have tools for researchers to capture and preserve high-quality publication data from various sources, including journal articles, websites, newspapers, and PDFs. Its integration with popular Word processors such as Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs allows you to efficiently manage citations and bibliographies as you write. The software’s built-in PDF reader enables you to identify and extract cited quotations and comments, which can be directly saved as notes. What sets Zotero apart is its advanced search feature, which enables users to perform complex searches, such as locating articles added in the last month by mentioning a specific keyword and creating auto-updating collections. Zotero can also identify retracted papers and sends out an alert when you attempt to cite a retracted paper.

Zotero follows the freemium model, where one can get 300 MB in the free version with additional storage available for a fee starting at $20/year .

An offering by Elsevier, Mendeley is among the best reference management tools for researchers that combines an intuitive, user-friendly interface with powerful organizational features. With Mendeley, you can store and manage sources, take notes, collaborate with others, and discover new research in your field. Mendeley’s PDF viewer has an excellent, easy-to-use, built-in capability with the option of editing a document simultaneously with other Mendeley users. ‘Mendeley Notebook’, a feature of Mendeley, helps you collate all your highlights and notes from multiple PDFs. ‘Mendeley Cite’, another of its features, is a citation plugin for Microsoft Word that lets you insert references and bibliographies into your document.

Mendeley is a free citation and paper management tool with up to 2 GB of cloud storage. It has a desktop application, mobile app, and Chrome browser extension, making it a top choice among tools for researchers.

Mendeley offers both a free and a premium version, where users get 2 GB in the free version and additional storage space with pricing starting at $55/year .

Endnote is one of the paid reference management tools for researchers. It allows researchers to insert citations into the text, and simultaneously creates a bibliography with its “Cite While You Write” feature in Microsoft Word. Additionally, one can align and format the article as per the target journal requirements using its “Manuscript Matcher” feature. You can also conduct large-scale literature reviews with Endnote’s powerful analysis tools. Endnote is available in the cloud and accessible anywhere, providing researchers with the flexibility to work from any location.

Endnote offers a range of pricing options, starting at $124.95/year . It is one of the must-have tools for researchers keen on saving time and energy!

Academic Writing Tools

If you are not taking advantage of academic writing tools for researchers, well, you’re missing out on a lot. The range of things academic writing tools can do for you is astonishing – language editing, abstract writing, plagiarism checking and so much more! While there are a number of online tools for reseachers that can help improve your academic writing, here are our top choices in this category that you should know about.

iThenticate

iThenticate by Turnitin is an online plagiarism checker designed specifically for researchers and academics to review their manuscripts prior to journal submission and publication. iThenticate is one of the most popular tools for researchers looking to check their writing for originality and ensure they have cited all sources appropriately.

With its advanced plagiarism detection technology, iThenticate compares a submission to an extensive database of web pages and scholarly content before producing a similarity score and report. Researchers can use this report to eliminate any inadvertent instances of plagiarism and other blunders in their research papers.

The price for an iThenticate license starts at $100 for a manuscript and is valid for multiple plagiarism checks for this single document over a year. If you need to check more than one manuscript, you can opt for an annual license at a higher price.

One of the well-known tools for researchers, Scholarcy is an innovative AI engine that helps you analyze different sections of an article, filter out the noise, and deliver a precise structured summary of the research. Scholarcy doesn’t just condense papers into referenced lay summaries, it highlights key claims and statistics mentioned in the research paper that are most useful to your work.

It also extracts all the tables and figures and links to their cited location in the text, saving researchers hours of time searching for the most relevant papers. The smart AI engine is also a great tool for researchers looking to generate lay summaries that can help promote their research to a broader audience

You can use the free Scholarcy browser extension on Chrome or Edge to create summary flashcards online or build your own personal interactive library with a subscription of $7.99 per month.

Scrivener is among the underrated tools for researchers that can help make researchers’ lives simpler if used effectively. It has a user-friendly interface that allows researchers to easily organize their research notes, documents, and outlines. Scrivener gives you three ways to organize your projects: the Binder – which lets you manage folders and text, the Outliner – which helps you outline your research before you write it, and the Corkboard – to help you plan and organize your ongoing tasks.

Scrivener also has a mobile app that syncs with your devices ensuring everything is in one place. This makes it a great option for those who want to walk around and research ideas or take notes on your phone.

Scrivener offers a free trial period, with lifetime licenses available from $63.56 for MacOS and Windows.

Paperpal is as multifaceted as a Swiss Knife and stands tall among online academic writing tools for researchers. With in-depth language and grammar checks, instant and precise academic translations, relevant subject-specific writing recommendations, and critical technical checks, its suite of tools has you covered from the first draft itself. Use the Paperpal for Word plug-in and improve your language as you write in Microsoft Word, including real-time suggestions on vocabulary and phrasing.

Turn to Paperpal for Web to enhance your content with instant checks to ensure error-free language and grammar, clarity, and readability. Choose Paperpal for Manuscript if you have a manuscript ready for submission; its comprehensive language and technical checks ensure your work meets journal guidelines by flagging problem areas that could lead to desk rejection.

The best part about Paperpal, also something that makes it different from other more generic grammar editing tools, is that it is tailored for researchers and academic writing. You can get up to 500 edits for free on Paperpal for Word and Web or enjoy unlimited support at just $99 per year. Paperpal for Manuscript gives you an edited version of your article with suggestions in track changes for just $29.

Project Management Tools

There are several online tools for researchers to manage and organize their work, including keeping track of task completion, setting deadlines, and just having everything in one place. Four tools for researchers that must be there in your productivity kit are Trello, GanttPRO, Evernote, and My Research Projects.

You can use Trello to visually organize your ideas on its boards with the help of interactive cards. These cards can be used in multiple ways – you can create lists, assign tasks, message and tag those you are collaborating with, link files, add due dates–all on the virtual “back” of the card. You can also drag cards between lists, copy cards that you use often (or rather, use the cards as templates), and send cards to other boards. Basically, you can see your entire research process on a single Trello board.

This is a useful tool for researchers involved in large collaborative projects that span the globe. Trello has a free version that offers limited features with pricing models starting at $5 a month.

GanttPRO is another tool for researchers that helps you organize your thoughts better. A Gantt chart timeline on GanttPRO is the best way to visualize tasks, know their start and end dates, and track your progress along the way. The vertical and horizontal axes in a Gantt Chart present a visual summary of how various aspects of your research project are progressing, which allows you to address specific tasks that need extra or immediate attention.

GanttPRO is hosted in the cloud, which makes is easily accessible. It offers users a free trial with the option to choose from plans starting at $7.99 per month.

A productive way to jot down notes and ideas and sort through your research materials, Evernote is one of the most popular online tools for researchers. With Evernote, you can organize your research by a simple notebook structure to keep similar notes together or creating tags and folders for specific purposes.

You can save webpages, articles, or screenshots to your Evernote notebook and use the handy multimedia feature to enhance these by adding new text, images, documents, and even audio messages captured with its inbuilt recorder. Evernote also helps you sync your notes across devices so you can manage your notes across multiple platforms.

The basic version of Evernote lets you create and save notes but has limitations on storage space. You can buy more storage by opting for a paid subscription plan, which is currently available from $5.83 a month at ongoing discounted prices.

My Research Projects

My Research Projects by Researcher.Life is designed for researchers and helps you plan, manage, and communicate your work effectively. It promises end-to-end support in transforming your research into a well-written manuscript with suggestions on suitable journals for your research and guidance on the most relevant literature to cite. You can use the comprehensive submission readiness check to ensure your manuscript meets journal guidelines, with checks for language quality, structural completeness, clarity and consistency, and mandatory declarations. You can also generate detailed article summaries to help you convey your research findings more effectively.

My Research Projects lets you check one manuscript and get a detailed report for free by subscribing to Researcher.Life. You can unlock premium checks for multiple manuscripts by upgrading to the Prime Pack for $99 a year.

Academic Search Engines

As researchers you are expected to keep up with the latest developments in your own and related research fields. Yet, with the exponential growth in research output, this is far from easy. This is what makes academic search engines invaluable to academics searching for relevant scientific information. They use keywords to help researchers find, access and read about the latest most relevant research, including peer-reviewed articles, genuine information, author home pages, and university websites.

Google Scholar, R Discovery, and Scopus are our top tools for researchers in this category.

R Discovery

R Discovery is a strong contender when it comes to the best literature search and reading tools for researchers. An AI-powered app for researchers, R Discovery boasts of an expanding library of research content that includes over 100 million research papers across 9.5 million topics and more than 32,000 journals worldwide. It uses your topics of interest to create a personalized reading feed, with suggestions on top reads, smart summaries, and other features to help you discover the right research in minutes.

This includes open access articles, preprints, and pay-walled content (accessible through institutional credentials) across all major subject areas, including biology, medicine, philosophy, political science, environmental science, social sciences, and psychology. The best part is that this app for researchers continually upgrades its features and eliminated predatory journals to ensure you have access to reliable research that works for you.

R Discovery is one of the many tools for researchers developed by Researcher.Life and is completely free to install and use. It is available on both mobile and web, allowing for streamlined reading on your preferred device.

Google Scholar

If you’re an academic, you probably have used Google Scholar sometime in your research journey. It is one of the most used tools for researchers and acts as an online search engine for academics looking for scholarly literature and relevant sources to cite. It is tailored for academics, which means you can use different keywords to look up various research articles, theses, books, and conference papers to support your research study.

Researchers can also search for authors, journals, and other titles and can even create an account to save their search results. The one drawback here though is that you will need to keep searching until you find related research, and even then you will still need to browse through these individually to find the most relevant content for your research topic.

Another popular academic search tool for researchers is Scopus, an offering by Elsevier that is very similar to Google Scholar and Microsoft Academic. The largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed research with over 1.7 billion cited references, Scopus houses content indexed from more than 25,000 active titles and 7,000 publishers, all carefully vetted and selected by an independent review board.

With Scopus, you can look for articles, journals, and any other sources that will help you write better research. You can also refine your literature search by filtering for author name or affiliation among others. Scopus also has analytical tools to help you visualize and compare research data – that is, you can view author, journal, and article impact metrics through the detailed research output and trends reports that Scopus provides.

Scopus works as an API that can be integrated into an institution’s repository or research information management systems. While it is free to use for non-subscribers, there is limited access to content with additional costs to access paywalled articles on this platform.

Journal Selection Tools

Given the enormous number of scholarly journals around and new ones coming up every year, it can be hard to select the best journal for your research paper. Despite its challenges, the process of finding the perfect journal, which is respected, relevant, and reliable, is one of the most critical tasks to get right for researchers. This is why good online journal finders are invaluable tools for researchers.

Elsevier’s Journal Finder tool and the Global Journal Database (GJD) are two pretty effective journal selection tools for researchers.

Journal Finder

The Journal Finder tool by Elsevier, one of the largest publishers of peer-reviewed journals across disciplines, is a great solution for authors looking to shortlist journals for their work. Just use relevant keywords, titles, or your research paper abstract to get a list of recommended Elsevier journals that publish research similar to yours.

Its intelligent machine learning algorithm uses terms specific to the corresponding research field to generate the best matches for your article. You can choose from the top of the list or sort this further using filters based on your preferences. The Journal Finder also lists journals with open-access publishing options and those that cover multidisciplinary research fields.

Elsevier can be used for free to search for journals related to your research.

Global Journal Database

The Global Journal Database, developed by Researcher.Life, comprises of more than 43,000 journals indexed in reputed public directories like Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Scopus, and Web of Science. Researchers can search for relevant journals using the title or ISSN, similar topics, research paper abstracts, and even manuscripts; the advanced AI engine will use this to generate the best journals for you.

Each journal recommendation comes with a detailed journal report that has key information about shortlisted journals, including publisher details, journal metrics, author instructions, the editorial review process, and even a list of the latest articles published. With the Global Journal Database, you can see where your preferred journal is indexed and browse its publishing history to better understand its scope. The broad journal coverage, multiple search modes, and detailed journal reports make this an exceptional tool for researchers, simplifying and speeding up the often-daunting journal selection process.

The Global Journal Database is available free with a Researcher.Life Essentials Pack subscription.

Wrapping Up

Researchers everywhere are on a quest to uncover new insights and come up with ground-breaking research. Choosing the right digital tools for researcher and using these effectively can make your journey from brainstorming to breakthroughs a smoother, easier, and faster one.

If you’re looking for a seamless transition between various tools, choose Researcher.Life, which brings together innovative solutions to accelerate and optimize each stage of your research journey. Turn to Paperpal the next time you’re perplexed by language nuances, swipe through R Discovery’s reading recommendations to keep up with the latest developments, manage your research effectively with My Research Projects, or find the right journal for your paper with the Global Journal Database. Experience Researcher.Life and its many bespoke tools for researchers.

Editage All Access is a subscription-based platform that unifies the best AI tools and services designed to speed up, simplify, and streamline every step of a researcher’s journey. The Editage All Access Pack is a one-of-a-kind subscription that unlocks full access to an AI writing assistant, literature recommender, journal finder, scientific illustration tool, and exclusive discounts on professional publication services from Editage.  

Based on 22+ years of experience in academia, Editage All Access empowers researchers to put their best research forward and move closer to success. Explore our top AI Tools pack, AI Tools + Publication Services pack, or Build Your Own Plan. Find everything a researcher needs to succeed, all in one place –  Get All Access now starting at just $14 a month !    

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10 free online tools for scientific research

 X min read 

As the landscape of scientific research evolves, the shift towards online tools has introduced a sea of resources that can profoundly impact the productivity and effectiveness of scientific endeavors.

The key is to identify tools that enhance your research without complicating your process.

While diving into this ocean of resources, there are several important things to look for:

• Ease of Use: Opt for tools with intuitive interfaces.
• Artificial Intelligence: Look for AI integration to automate and enhance research tasks.
• Data Security: Ensure compliance with the latest data security and privacy standards.
• Software Integration: Favor tools that offer seamless integration with existing systems.
• Accuracy: Verify that the tools provide precise and correct information.
• Free Access: Confirm that there’s a genuinely free offer, not just a trial period that requires future payment.

With these criteria in mind, let’s explore ten free online tools that could become indispensable for your scientific research.

1. Semantic Scholar

Powered by AI, Semantic Scholar is a free, nonprofit research tool that stands out for its smart search capabilities.

It sifts through millions of publications to bring you the most relevant and impactful studies, cutting down the time you’d typically spend on literature review.

With a focus on AI, Semantic Scholar offers personalized recommendations, citation summaries, and key phrase extractions that make keeping up with your field’s latest a breeze.

Visit Semantic Scholar

2. Connected Papers

Connected Papers offers a unique visual take on research, building an interactive graph that shows the connections between scientific papers.

It’s like having a bird’s-eye view of the research landscape, allowing you to trace the development of ideas and how they relate to one another. This can uncover pivotal papers that might otherwise slip through the cracks.

Visit Connected Papers

3. Scholarcy

Scholarcy is your AI-powered reading companion, making sense of complex academic papers by breaking them down into digestible summaries.

Imagine having the ability to absorb the core themes and conclusions of a dense, 30-page document in a matter of minutes. Scholarcy makes this a reality, highlighting the methodology, results, and discussions that are central to understanding the paper’s contribution to the field.

This tool is perfect for researchers who are pressed for time but need to stay ahead of the curve. With Scholarcy, you can easily grasp the essence of lengthy publications and build a knowledge base faster than ever.

Visit Scholarcy

4. Consensus

Imagine if you could quickly gauge the consensus of the scientific community on a particular topic. That’s exactly what Consensus aims to do.

Powered by the sophisticated GPT-4 model, Consensus operates as a dynamic search engine that delivers not just search results but a synthesized understanding of where the scientific agreement lies on complex subjects.

With its AI-driven analysis, it reviews multiple studies and delivers a consensus view, helping to inform your research stance.

It’s like a digital synthesis of expert opinions at your fingertips.

Visit Consensus

5. Research Rabbit

Research Rabbit is more than just a tool; it’s your research exploration partner. It helps you discover and organize literature in a personalized research landscape.

The magic of Research Rabbit lies in its ability to learn and adapt to your research behavior, suggesting not just content but also potential pathways your research could take.

It’s much like having a personal librarian who not only knows your research interests but also suggests connections you might not have considered, leading to innovative ideas and directions.

Visit Research Rabbit

6. Audemic.io

Audemic.io stands out in the digital research tools space by transforming the way we consume scientific literature. It leverages the power of audio to make research papers accessible in a format that’s perfect for the multitasking researcher.

Whether you’re commuting or running an experiment, Audemic.io ensures that you can keep up with the latest publications by listening, making the continuous learning process a seamless part of your daily routine.

Visit Audemic.io

Zotero revolutionizes the way researchers manage their references.

Zotero is a haven for anyone looking to organize their sources, offering an intuitive platform for collecting, organizing, and citing research materials. With it, you can easily create bibliographies and in-text citations in a variety of citation styles, which are essential for manuscript preparation.

Zotero holds the distinction of being the oldest tool on this list. Having stood the test of time since its inception in 2006, it proves that a tool does not require all the bells and whistles, or even AI technology, to remain relevant and useful in the fast-paced world of academic research.

Its continued popularity underscores the fact that reliability, ease of use, and a user-focused approach never go out of style.

Visit Zotero

8. Protocols.io

Protocols.io is an indispensable tool for researchers who understand that the devil is often in the details—particularly when it comes to experimental protocols. This platform allows for the creation, sharing, and collaborative refinement of protocols.

Not only does it provide a dynamic space for protocol management, but it also seamlessly integrates with SciNote —a comprehensive electronic lab notebook—allowing for an efficient transition from planning to execution.

Visit Protocols.io

9. Scite.ai

Scite.ai takes a novel approach to assessing the reliability of scientific papers.

Using a sophisticated AI, it analyzes citation contexts to provide “Smart Citations,” allowing researchers to see how a paper has been cited, and if its findings have been supported or contradicted.

This insight is crucial in gauging the impact and reliability of research findings , offering a new dimension to the citation analysis that goes beyond mere numbers.

Visit Scite.ai

10. SciNote ELN

Managing research data effectively is critical, and SciNote ELN is the online tool designed for this task.

It’s an electronic lab notebook that helps you keep your research data organized and secure. With features that support project management, team collaboration, and inventory tracking, SciNote is not just a digital notebook—it’s a central hub for managing all aspects of your research projects.

It’s designed to bring order to the complexity of research data, ensuring that every finding and experiment is documented comprehensively.

Visit SciNote ELN

Final Thoughts

In the current research landscape, these tools are more than conveniences; they’re necessities for staying current, connected, and creative in your work.

Whether you’re looking to manage data, streamline processes, or consume literature in innovative ways, the digital solutions available can significantly enhance the efficiency and impact of your research.

Each of these tools offers a unique angle on the research process, tailored to save time, foster collaboration, and enhance discovery.

By incorporating these into your workflow, you embrace a future where technology and science go hand in hand, creating a symbiosis that propels both forward.

Whether through AI-powered summaries or visual mapping of the literature, these tools embody the innovative spirit of the scientific community. By leveraging these resources, researchers can stand on the shoulders of the digital giants to reach new heights in their academic and professional pursuits.

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15 Best Free Web Tools to Organize Your Research

How to stay organized when researching and writing papers

• Emporia State University
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Organizing research is important not only for your own sanity, but because when it comes time to unfold the data and put it to use, you want the process to go as smoothly as possible. This is where research organizers come in.

There are lots of free web-based organizers that you can use for any purpose. Maybe you're collecting interviews for a news story, digging up newspaper archives for a history project, or writing a research paper over a science topic. Research organizers are also helpful for staying productive and preparing for tests.

Regardless of the topic, when you have multiple sources of information and lots to comb through later, optimizing your workflow with a dedicated organizer is essential.

Patrick Tomasso / Unsplash

Many of these tools provide unique features, so you might decide to use multiple resources simultaneously in whatever way suits your particular needs.

Research and Study

You need a place to gather the information you're finding. To avoid a cluttered space when collecting and organizing data, you can use a tool dedicated to research.

• Pocket : Save web pages to your online account to reference them again later. It's much tidier than bookmarks, and it can all be retrieved from the web or the Pocket mobile app .
• Mendeley : Organize papers and references, and generate citations and bibliographies.
• Quizlet : Learn vocabulary with these free online flashcards .
• Wikipedia : Find information on millions of different topics.
• Quora : This is a question and answer website where you can ask the community for help with any question.
• SparkNotes : Free online study guides on a wide variety of subjects, anything from famous literary works of the past century to the present day. 
• Zotero : Collect, manage, and cite your research sources. Lets you organize data into collections and search through them by adding tags to every source. This is a computer program, but there's a browser extension that helps you send data to it.
• Google Scholar : A simple way to search for scholarly literature on any subject.
• Diigo : Collect, share, and interact with information from anywhere on the web. It's all accessible through the browser extension and saved to your online account.
• GoConqr : Create flashcards, mind maps, notes, quizzes, and more to bridge the gap between your research and studying.

Writing Tools

Writing is the other half of a research paper, so you need somewhere useful to go to jot down notes, record information you might use in the final paper, create drafts, track sources, and finalize the paper.

• Web Page Sticky Notes : For Chrome users, this tool lets you place sticky notes on any web page as you do your research. There are tons of settings you can customize, they're backed up to your Google Drive account, and they're visible not only on each page you created them on but also on a single page from the extension's settings.
• Google Docs or Word Online : These are online word processors where you can write the entire research paper, organize lists, paste URLs, store off-hand notes, and more.
• Google Keep : This note-taking app and website catalogs notes within labels that make sense for your research. Access them from the web on any computer or from your mobile device. It supports collaborations, custom colors, images, drawings, and reminders.
• Yahoo Notepad : If you use Yahoo Mail , the notes area of your account is a great place to store text-based snippets for easy recall when you need them.
• Notion : Workflows, notes, and more, in a space where you can collaborate with others.

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Your personal research assistant

Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research.

Available for Mac, Windows, Linux, and iOS

Just need to create a quick bibliography? Try ZoteroBib .

Meet Zotero.

Collect with a click..

Zotero automatically senses research as you browse the web. Need an article from JSTOR or a preprint from arXiv.org? A news story from the New York Times or a book from a library? Zotero has you covered, everywhere.

Organize your way.

Zotero helps you organize your research any way you want. You can sort items into collections and tag them with keywords. Or create saved searches that automatically fill with relevant materials as you work.

Cite in style.

Zotero instantly creates references and bibliographies for any text editor, and directly inside Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs. With support for over 9,000 citation styles, you can format your work to match any style guide or publication.

Stay in sync.

Zotero can optionally synchronize your data across devices, keeping your files, notes, and bibliographic records seamlessly up to date. If you decide to sync, you can also always access your research from any web browser.

Collaborate freely.

Zotero lets you co-write a paper with a colleague, distribute course materials to students, or build a collaborative bibliography. You can share a Zotero library with as many people you like, at no cost.

Zotero is open source and developed by an independent, nonprofit organization that has no financial interest in your private information. With Zotero, you always stay in control of your own data.

Still not sure which program to use for your research? See why we think you should choose Zotero .

Ready to try Zotero?

Table of Content

Maximize your research potential: Top 20 research tools you need to know

In today’s digital age, with a plethora of tools available at our fingertips, researchers can now collect and analyze data with greater ease and efficiency. These research tools not only save time but also provide more accurate and reliable results. In this blog post, we will explore some of the essential research tools that every researcher should have in their toolkit.

From data collection to data analysis and presentation, this blog will cover it all. So, if you’re a researcher looking to streamline your work and improve your results, keep reading to discover the must-have tools for research success.

Revolutionize your research: The top 20 must-have research tools

Research requires various tools to collect, analyze and disseminate information effectively. Some essential research tools include search engines like Google Scholar, JSTOR, and PubMed, reference management software like Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote, statistical analysis tools like SPSS, R, and Stata, writing tools like Microsoft Word and Grammarly, and data visualization tools like Tableau and Excel.  

1. Google Scholar –  Google Scholar is a search engine for scholarly literature, including articles, theses, books, and conference papers.

2. JSTOR –  JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.

3.PubMed – PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics.  

4. Web of Science : Web of Science is a citation index that allows you to search for articles, conference proceedings, and books across various scientific disciplines.  

5. Scopus – Scopus citation database that covers scientific, technical, medical, and social sciences literature.  

6. Zotero: Zotero is a free, open-source citation management tool that helps you organize your research sources, create bibliographies, and collaborate with others.

7. Mendeley – Mendeley is a reference management software that allows you to organize and share your research papers and collaborate with others.

8. EndNote – EndNoted is a  software tool for managing bibliographies, citations, and references on the Windows and macOS operating systems.  

9. RefWorks – RefWorks is a  web-based reference management tool that allows you to create and organize a personal database of references and generate citations and bibliographies.

10. Evernote –   Evernote is a digital notebook that allows you to capture and organize your research notes, web clippings, and documents.

11. SPSS – SPSS is a statistical software package used for data analysis, data mining, and forecasting.

12. R – R is a free, open-source software environment for statistical computing and graphics.

13. Stata – Stata is a  statistical software package that provides a suite of applications for data management and statistical analysis.

Other helpful tools for collaboration and organization include NVivo, Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams. With these tools, researchers can effectively find relevant literature, manage references, analyze data, write research papers, create visual representations of data, and collaborate with peers.  

14. Excel –   Excel is spreadsheet software used for organizing, analyzing, and presenting data.

15. Tableau – Tableau is a data visualization software that allows you to create interactive visualizations and dashboards.

16. NVivo – Nviva is a software tool for qualitative research and data analysis.

17. Slack – Slack is a messaging platform for team communication and collaboration.

18. Zoom –   Zoom is a video conferencing software that allows you to conduct virtual meetings and webinars.

19. Microsoft Teams – Microsoft Teams is a collaboration platform that allows you to chat, share files, and collaborate with your team.

20. Qualtrics – Qualtrics is an online survey platform that allows researchers to design and distribute surveys, collect and analyze data, and generate reports.

Maximizing accuracy and efficiency with research tools

Research is a vital aspect of any academic discipline, and it is critical to have access to appropriate research tools to facilitate the research process. Researchers require access to various research tools and software to conduct research, analyze data, and report research findings. Some standard research tools researchers use include search engines, reference management software, statistical analysis tools, writing tools, and data visualization tools.

Specialized research tools are also available for researchers in specific fields, such as GIS software for geographers and geneticist gene sequence analysis tools. These tools help researchers organize data, collaborate with peers, and effectively present research findings.

It is crucial for researchers to choose the right tools for their research project, as these tools can significantly impact the accuracy and reliability of research findings.

Summing it up, researchers today have access to an array of essential research tools that can help simplify the research process. From data collection to analysis and presentation, these tools make research more accessible, efficient, and accurate. By leveraging these tools, researchers can improve their work and produce more high-quality research.

Written by Prasad D Wilagama

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12 Best Tools for Researchers in 2024

Every project needs to conduct research. It’s the best way to avoid making expensive mistakes and create a product that the target audience will love. There are many helpful research tools out there that you can use to make your research easier. That is why we have brought you the best tools for researchers to conduct research and surveys. Let’s explore them below.

What is the need for research tools for researchers?

Every researcher focuses on managing multiple tasks, getting good results, and using time well, no matter what research they do. All of these require a well-planned and organized system. To do this, every researcher needs research tools. The best tools for researchers make this job easier.

Market research tools help researchers write their project proposals, reports, academic papers, and articles by helping them avoid language mistakes, cite sources, build networks, and search for journals to publish.

12 Best tools for researchers in research and survey

So, let’s get right into it! We have made a list of the 12 best tools that every researcher should try. We will discuss their most important features and prices so you can compare them and choose what works best for you.

01. QuestionPro InsightHub

QuestionPro InsightHub is one of the best research tools and the most powerful tool for sharing, showcasing, and analyzing your insights data.

It is a built-for-insights platform that helps insights teams organize, be more agile, and conduct market research. InsightsHub is a place to store and search all of your insights data, research methods, and project lifecycles.

It lets you create a project and then links a survey to that project. When the research is done, put the most important findings and nuggets inside each project. It makes them easy to find later and links them to other projects.

Best features:

• Strong integrations with your present research ecosystem and technology.
• Multilingual support for 50+ languages and double-byte character sets.
• Real-time reporting dashboard
• Unified platform to organize, explore, research, and discover research data in one repository.
• Democratized insights

Premium pricing starts at $99 monthly.

02. QuestionPro Research Suite

QuestionPro Research Suite is a set of research and analysis tools for researching and changing experiences. It is the best set of enterprise-level research tools in the industry that can help you find insights for your brand.

You can solve your research problems with surveys that are easy to make and give you complex, real-time information. So, It can be the perfect research tool for researchers.

• Monitor consumer behavior across categories and remain ahead of the curve With Market segmentation.
• Allow you to experience the impact of change by A/B testing across questions, segments, and ideas.
• It allows you to do academic research, capturing qualitative and quantitative insights.
• Analyze your pricing research data to determine market factors, including competition intelligence, purchase behavior, and pricing sensitivity.

QuestionPro premium pricing plan begins at $99 per month.

03. SurveySparrow

The SurveySparrow Survey Tool is an automated survey tool that is easy to use and was made by a group of researchers and app developers. Because it is easy to use, powerful, and flexible, the SurveySparrow survey tool benefits academic users and scientific researchers.

• SurveySparrow template library to create polls or an online survey.
• Survey customization
• Survey data can be exported to Excel, PDF, and JSON.

Premium plans begin at $19 monthly.

04. Qualtrics

Qualtrics is another great survey software option and one of the best tools for researchers. It can handle everything from simple questionnaires to complex research surveys.

Qualtrics is a great choice for survey solutions that are tailored to customers, employees, and brands. Its drag-and-drop survey builder lets you make survey forms that are very flexible and easy to use.

• Drag and drop functionality for easy-to-use
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Real-time dashboard

Premium plans start at $1500 yearly.

Simple text editors from the past need to be better. For our dynamic, interactive, and media-rich research, we need a tool that combines all aspects of modern research under one roof. And this is where Bit.ai comes in.

Bit lets researchers and teams work together, share, track, and manage all their knowledge and research in one place. It is the perfect market research tool for sharing multi-dimensional research with your peers, not just plain, boring text and slides.

• Easy-to-use interface
• Use the content library to save media files for convenient access.
• Organized workspaces

Paid plans start from Pro at $8.00 monthly.

06. Elink.io

Researchers can easily save content from around the web with Elink.io. They can save links to articles, videos, cloud files, social media posts, and much more. If you are looking for the best online tools for researchers, Elink.io is for you.

Researchers can change the title and description to add their own voices or notes. They can even group links together and send them to others as a newsletter or put them on your blog or website.

• Chrome extension to save links quickly.
• Make and distribute a newsletter within minutes.

Premium plans start at $ 15.00 monthly.

07. GanttPRO

The GanttPRO project and task management tool makes it easy for single researchers and groups of any size to plan their tasks on a visually appealing Gantt chart timeline, track their progress, and meet all their deadlines.

GanttPRO lets researchers add as many tasks, task groups, and subtasks as they want to one timeline.

• Several dozen templates.
• Easy collaboration with colleagues.

Premium plans start from $4.5.00 per user monthly.

08. Grammarly

Grammarly is one of the best tools for researchers. Fixing grammar, sentence structure, and silly spelling mistakes can take hours. With Grammarly’s brilliant editor, all these mistakes are automatically fixed.

Aside from fixing basic spelling and grammar mistakes, Grammarly has a punctuation checker, a tool to improve your vocabulary and find plagiarism. So, after the entire research process, all of your work can be done under one roof.

Best features: 

• Accessible via Word, Slack, etc.
• Grammarly’s Chrome extension provides real-time grammar checks online.
• Allow you to detect document tone and dependability.
• Allows custom goals to be set.

Premium plans start from $11.66.00 monthly.

09. Typeset.io

Typeset.io claims to be a more innovative alternative to Word and Latex that all researchers should use. You can start your research with a simple interface or by importing your Word files.

• Over 100,000 journal formats
• Editing services to improve your publication chances
• Built-in collaboration tools allow other researchers to have a platform to work with.

Premium plans start from $8.00 monthly for researchers.

10. Endnote

Endnote can be considered one of the best tools for researchers in their research process. Endnote helps you to do smarter research by making it easier to format bibliographies, find full texts, and find references.

An endnote is a collaborative tool because it lets you share selected groups of references, manage team access, and keep track of activity and changes from a single dashboard.

• Variety of templates and plug-ins.
• Automatic reference management software

Paid plans start from $249.00

11. Mendeley

Mendeley is software for managing references. Researchers can create references and citations in various journal styles with just a few clicks. Researchers can connect and network with more than 6 million users through its research network.

• Annotate and organize documents

Premium plans start from $55.00 yearly.

12. ResearchGate

ResearchGate gives you access to more than 135 million pages of publications. It lets you know what’s going on in your field. Researchers can share their work, work together with other researchers, and find new research papers and bibliographies through a built-in community. It can be one of the best tools for researchers.

• Citation tracking
• Analytics to see who reads your work
• Discover new ideas

It is free to use.

There are a lot of best tools for researchers. If you are a researcher and want the best tools that fit your needs, you should take the time to figure out what features you need.

We hope this post has helped you determine which research tools are best for you. Every survey tool on the list has both common and unique features. In this situation, it’s important to know what your options are and what features and pricing they provide.

QuestionPro InsightHub and QuestionPro Research Suite are the best tools for researchers to do surveys. It lets professors, students, employees, and customers make and take as many surveys as they want for academic or administrative purposes related to the institution.

This tool allows you to build web forms, do offline research projects, collect and evaluate data, and do much more. Try QuestionPro right now!

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Frequently Asking Questions

A good research tool has three main qualities. Validity, dependability, and usability are examples of these. A researcher should examine data collection tools in terms of these criteria while choosing them.

Case studies, checklists, interviews, observations, and surveys or questionnaires are all data collection tools. It is critical to select data-gathering tools since research is conducted in various ways and for various goals.

Many factors can undermine a study’s internal validity, including errors in measurement or participant selection, and researchers should consider and avoid these flaws.

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Top 12 Must Have Online Tools for Researchers at All Stages

Research is undoubtedly one of the most painstaking and thorough processes. Irrespective of your discipline, stage of work and career, research can be an arduous and time-consuming task. Right from browsing the library shelves and internet for literature, performing experiments, writing papers, to publishing papers, researchers are always running with the clock’s hands. No matter what your field of research, there’s an online tool out there to help you organize your notes, cite your sources, find important articles, connect with colleagues, and much more. However, with so many options available at a mouse click, it gets difficult to find a tool that delivers best results. As the search for reliable resources can be frustrating at times; we will discuss the features of 12 most recommended online tools for researchers at all stages in academia.

Table of Contents

What is the Need of Online Tools for Researchers?

Regardless of his/her research area, every researcher’s focus today is on managing various tasks, delivering productive results, utilizing time efficiently, and documenting research that is publication worthy. All these require a well-planned and organized system, which is achieved by monitoring the progress and collaboration of your projects, finding pertinent literature, writing your project proposals, reports, and articles, avoiding language errors, citing original sources, building networks, searching for journals for publication, etc. How do you plan on handling all this by yourself?—The first resort is surfing the internet to find a solution. Several online tools for researchers make this an easier task. However, with uncountable information available online, it can become a time-consuming nightmare to evaluate what works and what doesn’t.

Most Important Online Tools for Researchers

The 6 types of online tools for researchers that are essential at various stages of research are as follows:

A. Project Management Tools

Project management is a set of proven techniques for proposing, planning, implementing, managing, and evaluating projects, combined with the art of managing people. These tools are used to manage project progress, resource application, and collaboration processes. It involves creating a hierarchical task list, following up for task completion, setting deadlines, formulating plan of action, and assigning resources.

Two of the most used project management tools in academia are Trello and GanttPro.

Trello allows users to organize their ideas through the use of panels, cards, and lists. It’s an easy to access system with a simple drag and drop cards function. It allows users to list and schedule activities, establish completion times, and view progress percentages.  The user can create multiple boards for different subjects.  Additionally, Trello saves the boards in cloud as well as in user’s profile. It offers free and paid versions, depending on the user’s requirements.

2. GanttPRO

GanttPRO is an online Gantt chart program for project management that allows intuitive creation of schedules. It is a paid software which also offers free trial version.  GanttPRO allows sub-division of major tasks into minor tasks and offers cost calculation per task. While using a Gantt chart, you can immediately see all the information you need on your chart, including your team’s tasks, their sequences, deadlines, and priorities. GanttPRO is hosted in the cloud, which makes is easily accessible for every team member using any web browser.

B. Grammar Checker Tools

Grammar checker tools are used to detect grammatical, spelling, punctuation, sentence formation errors, etc.  Its purpose is to enhance the language of a paper in question. Given the need of the hour, the internet pool is overflowing with several grammar checker tools that suggest fixes and explain the nature of the suggested fixes. For knowledge to be disseminated unambiguously, it is essential that the literature is written correctly. Especially for non-native researchers, the use of grammar checker tools is a must.

Two most recommended grammar checker tools for researchers are Trinka AI and Grammarly.

1. Trinka AI

Trinka AI is the world’s first grammar and language improvement tool designed specifically for academic and technical writing. It is unique as it not only checks grammar, punctuation, and spelling, but also provides explanations for correcting errors. It offers free version that includes access to all its features. The paid version offers uninterrupted usage and higher monthly limits along with access to the add-in for MS Word. It allows you to choose between the US and the UK style to make it easily accessible for researchers all over the world.

Its custom-built features such as maintaining academic tone, providing unbiased language, concept clarity, sentence structure, and alternative word choice makes it better than most grammar checker tools. It also offers subject-specific corrections, select style guides preferences, and 20+ publication readiness checks . It provides detailed explanations as to why a correction is suggested. Furthermore, it helps researchers in reducing word count by suggesting alternatives without changing the context.

2. Grammarly

Grammarly is a popular browser application or extension developed to check grammar, punctuation , context, sentence structure, and readability. It is a real-time plagiarism detector on various platforms, including MS Word, WordPress, Facebook, etc. It is available in free and paid version. The free version offers basic spelling and grammar checks , as well as some suggestions. While the paid version offers the basic revisions and vocabulary improvement suggestions; additionally, it provides citation suggestions and can detect plagiarism.

C. Reference Management Tools

Reference management tools help in managing the literature used for research development, thus offering an alternative to a time-consuming task for researchers. These tools allow you to organize articles and their citations, share them with other researchers, detect duplicate entries, format the list of references, search and replace any reference, etc.  Furthermore, it allows researchers to correctly link and cite the works referenced in their articles.

Among many reference management tools available online, Mendeley and EndNote are two of the most widely used.

1. Mendeley

Mendeley is a freely available reference management tool to streamline your referral management workflow. It allows you to store, organize, and search all your references in just one library and generate citations. It includes citation options using various writing style guides needed as per your target journal. The program is compatible with Word (including Mac), LibreOffice, and OpenOffice. It can also be used with LaTex exporting BibTex. Furthermore, its version is also available for Android. Its feature of highlighting and annotating PDFs helps in better organization of multiple documents in one place.

EndNote is a paid reference management application, which allows researchers to insert citations into the text while simultaneously creating a bibliography with the “Cite While You Write” feature in MS Word. Additionally, it aligns and formats the article as per the requirements of the journal of interest using “Manuscript Matcher”. Furthermore, it organizes references automatically and enables sharing of work amongst remote computers.

D. Plagiarism Checkers

The academic world is riddled with plagiarism and perhaps due to the dizzying pace of publications, researchers can unknowingly fall prey to the derisive act of plagiarism.  To avoid getting your manuscript rejected and consequently affecting your image as a researcher, it is wise to run your manuscript through a plagiarism checker tool. These tools can not only help you in checking plagiarized content , but also help in identifying potential collaborations with researchers that belong to the same field.

To detect plagiarism, researchers can opt for plagiarism checker tools such as Enago’s Plagiarism Checker and Duplichecker.

1. Enago’s Plagiarism Checker

Enago’s plagiarism checker is a unique tool for quick, comprehensive, and dependable plagiarism checking, especially for research. It helps you assess the originality of a manuscript using advanced plagiarism software and provides a report highlighting areas in your text if the program recognizes existing material in it. It is easy to access with one click upload button. Furthermore, it includes an AI-based grammar check feature that checks your document for grammar errors typical to academic writing, and provides a tracked changes file that you can download and review.

In addition, its power editing mode enhances your document by correcting sentence structure, word choice, and subject-specific phrasing. Its extensive scholarly database of over 91+ billion web pages and 82+ million published articles ensures thorough plagiarism check as compared to other checkers. The tool is cost-effective with most reliable results. More importantly, a detailed interactive color-coded and plagiarism percentage report can be reviewed online and also be downloaded in PDF format if needed.

2. Duplichecker

Duplichecker offers a free version for texts of up to 1000 words and is available in paid versions for word count above 1000. It provides plagiarism percentage and highlights similar content to the list of sources. However, it does not provide detailed report. It has a limited database access as it compares your document only to Internet sources and online books. Lastly, the plagiarism report is easy to read and is downloadable in PDF and MS Word format.

E. Journal Finder

One of the common rejection factors of research journals is that the subject of the research is not within those contemplated by the journal. The journal search engines help researchers to choose the best suitable journal for publishing their research. These tools are very useful to avoid getting involved in a manuscript submission process that would be wrong from the beginning.

The two effective and reliable journal finder tools are Enago Open Access Journal Finder (Enago OAJF) and Elsevier Journal Finder (Elsevier JF).

1. Enago’s Open Access Journal Finder

Enago’s OAJF is a freely available tool that protects you from falling prey to predatory publishers. It solves issues such as journal legitimacy and reports article processing fees through a journal index validated and issued by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). It allows you to find pre-screened and quality journals in the public domain. Enago’s exclusive search algorithm allows you to compile a concise list of journals related to your research work.

2. Elsevier Journal Finder

Elsevier Journal Finder allows you to enter the title and abstract of your article to easily find journals that are most likely suitable for your publication. It uses intelligent search technology and vocabularies specific to the corresponding research field to match your article to scientific journals.

F. Social Networking for Academics

Research advances when shared; hence, the connection and exchange of ideas between researchers is essential. To socialize, work networks are a great help that encourages collaborative effort at a distance. This makes it possible to publicize the profile of a researcher to the scientific community, as well as promote their research and establish links with other work teams across the globe.

Two most commonly used academic networks include Academia.edu and ResearchGate.

1. Academia.edu

Academia.edu is a freely accessible platform for sharing research documents and connecting with academics across the globe. As of now, over 22 million articles and about 31 million academics, professionals, researchers are active on the platform. Academia.edu’s algorithms generate about 20 million article recommendations per day. It is also possible to exchange knowledge in effective formats of video, short content, dataset, etc. You can receive notifications when you are cited and referenced, acknowledged as a co-author, and expressed gratitude for your co-operation.

2. ResearchGate

ResearchGate is also a freely available networking platform to connect scientists and make research available to everyone. Currently, there are over 20 million researchers from more than 190 countries connecting through ResearchGate to collaborate and share their work. It also allows interactive conversations with researchers on the platform.

Do you use any of the above mentioned online tools? Do you think that these online tools for researchers can significantly ease your effort? Which are some other tools you know of that you find useful for academic work? Let us know in the comments section below! You can also visit our  Q&A forum  for frequently asked questions related to different aspects of research writing and publishing answered by our team that comprises subject-matter experts, eminent researchers, and publication experts.

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The top list of academic search engines

1. Google Scholar

4. science.gov, 5. semantic scholar, 6. baidu scholar, get the most out of academic search engines, frequently asked questions about academic search engines, related articles.

Academic search engines have become the number one resource to turn to in order to find research papers and other scholarly sources. While classic academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus are locked behind paywalls, Google Scholar and others can be accessed free of charge. In order to help you get your research done fast, we have compiled the top list of free academic search engines.

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles
• Abstracts: only a snippet of the abstract is available
• Related articles: ✔
• References: ✔
• Cited by: ✔
• Links to full text: ✔
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, RIS, BibTeX

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany. That is also where its name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates)
• Abstracts: ✔
• Related articles: ✘
• References: ✘
• Cited by: ✘
• Export formats: RIS, BibTeX

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open-access research papers. For each search result, a link to the full-text PDF or full-text web page is provided.

• Coverage: approx. 136 million articles
• Links to full text: ✔ (all articles in CORE are open access)
• Export formats: BibTeX

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need anymore to query all those resources separately!

• Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports
• Links to full text: ✔ (available for some databases)
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX (available for some databases)

Semantic Scholar is the new kid on the block. Its mission is to provide more relevant and impactful search results using AI-powered algorithms that find hidden connections and links between research topics.

• Coverage: approx. 40 million articles
• Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese, its index contains research papers in English as well as Chinese.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles
• Abstracts: only snippets of the abstract are available
• Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX

RefSeek searches more than one billion documents from academic and organizational websites. Its clean interface makes it especially easy to use for students and new researchers.

• Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 1 billion documents
• Abstracts: only snippets of the article are available
• Export formats: not available

Consider using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with Google Scholar and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

Google Scholar is an academic search engine, and it is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. Sematic Scholar was publicly released in 2015 and uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.

BASE , as its name suggest is an academic search engine. It is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

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13 Market Research Tools: Best in Class for 2023

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Discover your competitors' strengths and leverage them to achieve your own success

Most market research tools are designed to make it quicker and easier to find relevant data . Whatever the market, product, or purpose, the right research tools can do just that.

But, let’s be honest, some do it far better than others.

Whether you’re an enterprise firm with complex needs and a budget to suit or a smaller business needing free market research tools, read on to discover which online tools for market research are hot right now.

Note: The top market research tools list has been collated using review platforms like G2 , along with direct feedback I collected from over 500 business leaders in June, 2o22.

#1 Best overall market research tool: Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence

Most-loved feature: The Benchmarking tool

We might be a little biased, but this really is the fastest way to see how you measure up against competitors in any sector or location. Analyze market leaders and rising stars to unpack and track their digital success instantly.

Quick Explainer

Similarweb Research Intelligence is a single source of truth for the online world. Giving any business the ability to quickly analyze the online aspects of any industry or market in an instant. It displays critical insights in a way that makes it easy to view trends, competitive performance, audience insights, growth opportunities, and more. It’s the only market research analysis tool that brings together data from desktop, mobile web, and apps to provide a complete view of the digital landscape.

Key abilities

• Competitive benchmarking
• Market research
• Company research tool
• Audience analysis
• Consumer journey tracker
• Mobile app intelligence

Freemium Version: Yes, there is a lite version of the product that provides limited data for a single user, and a single location.

Free Trial: Yes, there’s a 7-day trial available. Try it out here .

Ongoing Subscription: Yes, you can pay monthly or annually for a subscription. Different levels are available, and each package is tailored. Review pricing and plans for Similarweb here.

Like what you’ve seen so far?

See our market-leading digital research tool in action in this quick 2-minute clip.

#2 Best free market research tool: Think with Google

Most-loved feature: Find my Audience

A way to discover new audiences on YouTube based on things like habits, interests, and intended plans to purchase.

Think with Google is a suite of digital research tools that curate resources from a huge pool of data across the web. It presents them as insights that aren’t typically available elsewhere. It’s a unique way to view trends, insights, and stats. Data isn’t offered in real-time but serves more as a library of figures and facts that take the form of articles, videos, interviews, case studies, and more. In addition to being a place people can go for forward-looking perspectives and data, there are several tools designed to help marketers.

Key functions

• High-level insights into most local or national markets
• Behind the scenes look at cross-platform digital campaigns
• Consumer insights
• Deck-ready stats (not in real-time)
• A range of tools to inform marketing objectives and actions

Freemium Version: The entire suite of market intelligence tools is free.

Free Trial: As a free market research tool, no trial is needed.

Ongoing Subscription: You can subscribe to a newsletter, but not the product.

#3 Best digital research tool for content and FAQ development: Answer the Public

Most-loved feature: Search listening alerts

A pro feature that sends you weekly emails that indicate how search behaviors shift over time. It takes the specific phrase or keywords you’re tracking in the platform and updates you weekly.

Quick Explainer 

Discover the questions people are asking online about key terms, products, or services. It’s designed to help content teams and website owners develop new content ideas, and relevant FAQs that are based on the types of queries people ask online.

• Track important keywords and phrases
• Get weekly emails about changes in search behavior
• Enter any keyword to uncover relevant questions or search terms
• Folders to help organize your research

Freemium Version: Yes. You get a limited number (3) of searches per day.

Free Trial: No.

Ongoing Subscription: Yes. You can pay monthly or annually for this service. Pay-monthly fees are a flat rate of $99. Discounts are offered for yearly subscriptions.

#4 Best tool for market research surveys: SurveyMonkey

Most-loved feature: Question bank

A library of hundreds of questions, pre-written by survey methodologists.

As far as market research surveys go, it’s the leading online research tool for surveys worldwide. With plans to suit the individual through to the enterprise, it’s a feature-rich, easy-to-use platform that encompasses creation, collection, and analysis under one roof. Surveys are optimized for any device and integrate with platforms like Zoom, Salesforce, Marketo, and more.

Key functions 

• Create and send unlimited surveys, quizzes, and polls
• Pop-up online surveys
• Mobile app access to create, send and analyze surveys on-the-go
• Team collaboration function (unlocked with a team plan)
• Survey builder
• Customization and branded surveys (available with advantage or premier plans only)

Freemium Version: Yes

Free Trial: Occasionally, free trials are offered for premium plans.

Ongoing Subscription: Yes, you can pay annually or monthly. There are three different plans to choose from, ranging from $25 to $129 per month.

Helpful: Check out our blog and see 18 different ways to use market research surveys .

#5 Best online research tool for marketplaces: Similarweb Shopper Intelligence

Most-loved feature: Cross-shopping analysis

Cross-shopping analysis shows you how loyal a segment of customers is to a brand, along with what other brands they browsed or bought from. Uncover competitors and discover new partnership opportunities; these are game-changing insights if you sell on any marketplace.

Similarweb Shopper Intelligence is a type of online market research tool that helps you uncover and analyze browsing and buying behavior across marketplaces. Using its data, businesses can track category, product, and brand performance with ease. It helps ecommerce organizations to detect potential threats, unearth new product or category opportunities, discover new potential partnerships, and optimize search strategy and performance.

• Monitor consumer demand for any product, brand, or category
• Retail search strategy optimization
• Consumer behavior insights
• Track cross-shopping, loyalty, and purchase frequency
• Analyze brand awareness

Note: This solution uses a unique data methodology via multiple networks and partnerships. At the time of writing, there is no other consumer behavior insights tool for market research that offers this quality of data for marketplaces.

Freemium Version: No.

Free Trial: Yes. There is usually a 7-day trial available here .

Ongoing Subscription: The price is determined by things like the number of categories and/or domains you want to access. Each quote is customized to a client’s specific needs.

Want to know a little more?

Watch this quick clip to see the best ecommerce digital market research tool in action.

#6 Best market research tool for brand tracking: Latana

Most-loved feature: MoE (margin of error) Readings

To deliver transparency on data confidence levels, Latana’s dashboard includes a feature that allows clients to toggle-on, or toggle-off, margin of error (MoE) readings on all data points. These are highlighted using a traffic-light system of confidence (red=low confidence, orange=medium confidence, and green=high confidence). This small feature makes a big impact — it helps clients to correctly interpret the data and to visibly see quality shortcomings.

Latana is a B2C brand tracking tool that provides granular insights about online audiences. It helps organizations understand how key segments of consumers feel about brands and portrays relevant standings vs. industry rivals.

• Focus on niche consumer segments that matter to your business
• Uncover rival’s audience data and identify opportunities to grow
• Understand brand perception, and track how it changes over time
• Discover the most well-known brands in your industry
• Track rival’s brand awareness across gender, age income, location, and education
• Find out the main purchase drivers for your industry
• Infrastructure gives reach to over 6 billion smartphone users globally for representative brand opinions

I caught up with Latana’s CMO, Angeley Mullens. Here’s what she has to say about their offering.

Ongoing Subscription: Pricing for Latana isn’t available online. All packages are tailored to individual brands and their specific needs.

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Get the data you need to adapt to market changes and industry trends in an instant.

#7  Best research tool for social media listening: Hootsuite

Most-loved feature: Multi-channel insights

It’s a legacy feature, but one which makes it the best online research tool for social listening and monitoring. Having the ability to easily schedule posts, ad campaigns, and handle responses for every social media channel from within a single platform is what makes this a market-leading digital research tool.

Hootsuite continues to claim the number 1 spot on G2’s list of digital research tools for social media monitoring . It’s a tool to help you manage all aspects of business social media, across multiple channels, in a single platform. As well as being able to manage your socials, it also keeps you up-to-date with the latest trends and activities of your rival’s social media channels.

• Publish and schedule social media posts
• Measure cross-platform results
• Message management
• Social media trend analysis
• Social media ad-campaign management

Freemium Version: Yes. You can get a free version that supports 2 social accounts and 1 user.

Free Trial: Yes. A 30-day free trial is available here .

Ongoing Subscription: There are four plans; professional, team, business, and enterprise; ranging from $49-$739.

#8 Best digital research tool for prospecting: Similarweb Sales Intelligence

Most-loved feature: Insights generator tool

The insights generator shows you unique facts for your prospects and accounts; with complete visibility into their digital strategy and performance. It’s ideal for refining sales and marketing efforts while staying focused on growth.

Similarweb Sales Intelligence helps organizations find viable prospects by showing you who to reach out to, when to do it, and how to capture their attention. The lead generator tool helps you find the right prospects, and key insights help create engaging outreach emails. For sales departments, ecommerce and mar-tech sectors, this type of digital research tool can take prospecting and engagement to a completely new level; along with revenue and growth.

Key functions: 

• Lead generation and enrichment
• Digital insights for 100M+ ecommerce websites, publishers, and advertisers
• Fraud detection
• Sales engagement
• SFDC integration

Free Trial: Yes, if you would like a free trial, please request that here.

Ongoing Subscription: Prices for this digital market research tool varies depending on the package and options chosen. Grab a live demo of the product and get a tailored quote here .

Insightful : If you’re looking at market research tools for the ecommerce industry, bookmark our Ecommerce Trends and Predictions for 2023 to read later.

#9 Best market research analysis tool for data visualization: Tableau

Most-loved feature : Connects to almost any data source

As a clear market leader, and a no-brainer for larger organizations with business intelligence analytics and teams. Tableau leads the way in online research tools for data visualization . It connects to a huge range of data sources and pulls information into a highly-appealing dashboard that is designed to make it easier and faster to explore and manage data . It takes data from platforms like Similarweb, then combines it with other data sources before presenting crisp, clear, insights that have the power to shape strategies and drive key transformations.

• Lightning-fast analytics
• Smart dashboards for richer insights
• Live connection to almost any data source, with automatic updates
• Drag-and-drop style UI: easy to use

Freemium Version: No. However, students and teachers get a year’s free access to the platform.

Free Trial: Yes. You can subscribe to a free 30-day trial.

Ongoing Subscription: Most plans are offered annually, with prices ranging from $15 per month upwards. The price depends on whether you use their hosted or on-premise versions, the number of users, and the inclusion of specific plugins.

#10 Best market research tool for UX testing: Loop11

Most-loved feature: Online usability testing

This feature analyzes the usability of a website with users performing live tasks on a site. It helps you understand user behavior, and shows how and why a website is used.

Loop11 is a market research tool that provides usability testing to help organizations build better websites and products. It comes with a pack of useful features that provide both moderated and unmoderated testing, helping businesses to find the right audience to test prototypes and products. It’s designed to help you see how appealing a product is to a particular audience, determine their preferences, then build these insights into a design.

• Ability to test across multiple devices, including tablet, mobile, or desktop
• User-friendly test builder that requires no coding
• Easy-to-add surveys that collect psychographic and demographic data
• Provides useful metrics like time on task, task completion rates, and NPS
• Mapping of customer journeys during a test period

Free Trial: Yes, a 14-day trial is available here .

Ongoing Subscription: All plans come with the option to pay monthly or annually. Prices range from $199-$599 per month.

#11 Best research tool for measuring customer experience: Temper

Most-loved feature: Rating stream

See real-time feedback as customers respond to questions via website or email channels. The stream provides a detailed view of ratings, comments, locations, referrers, email addresses, and more.

Temper allows any company to find out how customers feel about their product at all times. It directly provides first-party data to a business, preventing the need to design and distribute complex surveys. It can be placed as a widget on the site or in emails, and questions are asked to gain real-time feedback from visitors and customers alike.

• Easily deploy questions across website and email channels
• Quickly spot poor experiences to identify problematic areas of a business or product
• The rating graph gives you a real-time view of results for any question asked
• Public rating wall shows how you’re performing, instilling confidence and trust
• Ratings come with open text fields to give additional context to responses
• Referrer data gives you the ability to segment feedback and relative performance
• Tracking variables let you send data with ratings, such as order numbers, user IDs, etc.
• User targeting lets you determine who sees questions and how often they see them

Freemium Version: There is no freemium version. However, their hobby plan gives you a slimmed-down version of the product and costs $12 per month.

Ongoing Subscription: Four plans are available, ranging from hobbyist to enterprise. The lowest pricing tier starts at $12 monthly, and their top-tier solution costs $199 monthly. All plans are pay-monthly, with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

#12 Best online market research tool for focus groups: Remesh

Most-loved feature: Common topics

In just a few clicks, you can view the themes and topics that are most common with your focus group across an entire session. It groups similar responses, specific phrases, and interesting responses in seconds.

Remesh facilitates live, qualitative conversations with focus groups of up to 1000 people at a time. Replicating the focus group format online delivers powerful segmentation and dynamic capabilities that speed up your time to insight and let you hold a real-time conversation at scale.

• Launch a live conversation with up to 1000 people at a time
• Organize and analyze responses in an instant
• Segment your audience based on demographic and response data
• Share visuals and text-based content with the group to get instant feedback
• The algorithm analyzes open-ended responses in real-time

Freemium Version: No

Free Trial: Yes. However, you must first book a demo with a member of their team.

Ongoing Subscription: Remesh provides custom pricing plans that can only be obtained once you’ve taken a demonstration of their platform with a member of their team.

#13 Top collaboration and documentation tool for market research: BIT.AI

Most-loved feature: Content library + smart search

While it sounds quite basic; in essence, this tool for market research professionals makes it quicker and easier to keep track, share, and store key data. Forget trawling through emails, slack, and g-docs to find files; the smart search feature helps you locate files in an instant.

A dynamic platform that helps researchers collaborate, track, share, and manage research data in a single place. This is one of the best online market research tools for those who need a place to bring together resources like websites, PDFs, articles, images, infographics, blogs, reports, videos, etc. it’s low-cost and connects to some of the most widely used tools. Being able to share multidimensional data with others, or simply keeping track of secondary market research in a single place makes it a firm favorite.

• Over 100 integrations with applications like Tableau, Miro, G-docs, Onedrive, and more
• Real-time editing and live collaboration
• Content Library
• Smart search
• Supports a huge range of content and file types

Freemium Version: Yes. Available for teams of up to 5 collaborators.

Free Trial: Yes, a free trial is available here .

Ongoing Subscription: A range of packages are available, costing between $8-$20 monthly.

Best market research tools for startups

There is another often-forgotten set of tools used for market research that are ideal for startups. If you’ve got zero budget and a little time on your hands, you can do most types of desk research for free. Sources include:

• Company reports, case studies, and whitepapers
• Research and trade associations
• Media coverage
• Internal sales or usage reports
• Academic or scientific journals
• Government and non-government agencies
• Public library records
• Competitor websites
• Educational institutions

Helpful: Check out this article about how to do market research for a startup .

Wrapping up….

With cost and time key considerations for anyone looking at tools for market research, it’s vital to choose wisely. While free market research tools are all good and well, they won’t always serve you when you’re on a deadline or require key insights on a specific competitor, market, or product.

Similarweb helps companies win in the digital world. Whatever the market, goal, or business size, its solutions are designed to help organizations understand their market and compete and beat rivals.

Take it for a test run today. Trial any Similarweb solution free for the first 7-days using this link .

Need to know more about the ROI of Similarweb? 

What are the best market research tools for secondary research?

The internet is probably the best tool for market research there is. It’s a goldmine of secondary market research data. But beware of data validity and check your information is coming from a trusted source.

What are the best market research tools for surveys?

Survey monkey is considered the best online market research tool for surveys, but key players like Typeform and Zoho follow closely behind. Budget and features usually determine the right tool for your needs.

What are the best free market research tools?

The best free tools for market research include: Answer the Public, Think with Google, Similarweb lite, SurveyMonkey’s basic plan, and Hootsuite’s free plan.

What are the best market research tools for qualitative research?

Qualitative research includes things like focus groups, open-ended surveys, case studies, and observation research. As such, the best tool for online research like this would be something like BIT.ai’s documentation and collaboration tool. Another useful tool for qualitative market research would be an online survey provider, like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, or Google Forms.

What are the best market research tools for quantitative research?

As this type of research is focused more on numbers, the best quantitative market research tools include things like Similarweb Digital Research Intelligence and Tableau. Each performs a different function but works together to collect, analyze, and present data in the most useful way possible.

by Liz March

Digital Research Specialist

Liz March has 15 years of experience in content creation. She enjoys the outdoors, F1, and reading, and is pursuing a BSc in Environmental Science.

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Discover Essential Research Tools for Effective Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) | Boost Your M&E Process with Reliable Data Collection, Analysis, and Reporting Tools | Find the Right Instruments, Software, and Techniques to Enhance Your M&E Methods | Enhance Decision-making and Program Improvement in M&E with Powerful Research Tools.

Table of Contents

• What are research tools?x
• Research tools in M&E

Essential research tools commonly used across disciplines

How do i choose a research tool, what are methods vs tools in research, future trends and innovations in research tools for m&e, what are research tools.

Research tools refer to a wide range of resources, methods, instruments, software, or techniques that researchers use to collect , analyze , interpret, and communicate data and information during the research process.

These tools are designed to facilitate and enhance various aspects of research, such as data collection , organization, analysis, visualization, collaboration, and documentation. Research tools can be both physical (e.g., laboratory equipment, survey instruments) and digital (e.g., software, online databases).

They are essential for conducting research effectively, efficiently, and rigorously across different disciplines and research domains. Examples of research tools include laboratory equipment, survey questionnaires, statistical software, data visualization tools, literature databases, collaboration platforms, and more.

The choice of research tools depends on the specific research objectives, methods, and requirements of the study.

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Research Tools in M&E

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is a crucial component of research and program evaluation . Here are some essential research tools commonly used in the field of M&E:

• Logic Models and Results Frameworks: Logic models or results frameworks are visual tools that help clarify the theory of change and establish the logical connections between project activities, outputs, outcomes, and impacts. They provide a framework for designing M&E systems and identifying key indicators.
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): KPIs are measurable indicators that track progress and performance toward project or program goals. They help monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of interventions. Examples of KPIs can include the number of beneficiaries reached, percentage of target achieved, or cost per output.
• Surveys and Questionnaires: Surveys and questionnaires are useful tools for collecting quantitative data in M&E. They allow you to gather information from a large number of respondents and measure variables and indicators systematically. Online survey tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms can simplify data collection and analysis.
• Interviews and Focus Groups: Qualitative data collection methods, such as interviews and focus groups, can provide in-depth insights into participants’ experiences, perceptions, and attitudes. These methods are particularly valuable for understanding the contextual factors and mechanisms underlying program outcomes.
• Observations and Field Notes: Direct observations and field notes are often used to collect qualitative data in real-time. They help capture detailed information about program implementation, participant behaviors, and contextual factors that might not be evident through other methods.
• Data Analysis Software: Statistical software packages like SPSS, Stata, or R are commonly used for quantitative data analysis in M&E. These tools enable researchers to clean, analyze, and interpret large datasets efficiently. Qualitative data analysis software such as NVivo or Atlas.ti can assist with organizing and analyzing qualitative data.
• Data Visualization Tools: Tools like Excel, Tableau, or Power BI allow you to create visual representations of M&E data. Visualizations help communicate complex information and findings in a clear and compelling manner to stakeholders and decision-makers.
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS): GIS tools like ArcGIS or QGIS enable researchers to analyze and visualize spatial data. They can help identify geographical patterns, hotspot analysis, and map program impact or reach.
• Evaluation Management Systems: Evaluation management systems like DevResults or DHIS2 provide a centralized platform for managing M&E data, including data entry, analysis, reporting, and visualization. These systems streamline data management processes and facilitate collaboration among evaluation team members.
• Theory-Based Evaluation Approaches: Theory-based evaluation approaches , such as the Theory of Change or Contribution Analysis, help guide the evaluation process by explicitly linking program activities to intended outcomes and impacts. These approaches provide a framework for designing evaluations and analyzing the causal mechanisms at work.

It’s important to note that the selection of research tools in M&E should align with the specific objectives, scope, and resources of the evaluation. Tailor the choice of tools to the needs of the evaluation design and ensure that they provide reliable and valid data to inform decision-making.

There are numerous research tools available to support various types of research, and the choice of tools depends on the specific field of study and research goals. However, here are some essential research tools commonly used across disciplines:

• Library Databases: Online databases such as PubMed (biomedical literature), IEEE Xplore (engineering and computer science), JSTOR (humanities and social sciences), and Scopus (multidisciplinary) provide access to a vast collection of academic journals, articles, conference papers, and other scholarly resources.
• Google Scholar : This search engine specifically focuses on scholarly literature. It allows you to find academic papers, theses, books, and conference proceedings. It’s a useful tool for accessing both open access and subscription-based scholarly content.
• ResearchGate : ResearchGate is a social networking platform for researchers. It enables collaboration, networking, and access to research publications, preprints, and datasets. Researchers can also ask and answer questions related to their field of expertise.
• Reference Management Software: Tools like Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote help researchers organize and manage bibliographic references. They allow you to collect, store, annotate, and cite references, making the citation process more efficient and streamlined.
• Data Analysis Tools: Depending on your research field, you may need specific data analysis tools. For statistical analysis, software such as SPSS, R, or Stata is commonly used. For qualitative research, NVivo and Atlas.ti assist with analyzing textual data.
• Collaboration and Communication Tools: Tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, or Google Workspace facilitate collaboration and communication among research teams. They provide features like file sharing, real-time editing, video conferencing, and project management.
• Data Visualization Tools: Tools like Tableau, Plotly, or Excel can help create visual representations of data. These tools make it easier to present and interpret complex data sets, enabling researchers to communicate their findings effectively.
• Online Survey Tools: Platforms like SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, or Qualtrics allow researchers to design and distribute online surveys. These tools simplify the data collection process and provide features for analyzing and visualizing survey responses.
• Reference Search and Document Delivery: Tools like interlibrary loan systems, WorldCat, or services like Unpaywall can help you access research articles and resources that may not be available in your institution’s library.
• Academic Social Networks: Platforms like Academia.edu or LinkedIn can help researchers showcase their work, connect with peers, and discover potential collaborators or mentors.

Remember that the choice of research tools may vary depending on your specific research field and requirements. It’s essential to explore and evaluate the available options to find the tools that best align with your research goals and needs.

Choosing the right research tool in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) requires careful consideration of various factors.

Here’s a step-by-step process to help you choose a research tool for your M&E study:

• Define Your Research Objectives: Clearly articulate the purpose and goals of your M&E study. Determine what specific information you need to collect, analyze, and communicate through the evaluation process.
• Identify Data Needs: Identify the types of data you will be working with (quantitative, qualitative, spatial) and the specific indicators or variables you need to measure. Consider the level of detail, precision, and reliability required for your data.
• Assess Available Resources: Evaluate the resources available to you, including budget, time constraints, technical expertise, and access to technology or specialized equipment. Consider the level of support you may need in terms of training, technical assistance, or collaboration.
• Research Tool Options: Conduct research to explore the range of research tools available in M&E. Consult academic literature, practitioner resources, online forums, and professional networks to identify commonly used tools in your specific field or context.
• Evaluate Tool Suitability: Evaluate each research tool option against your specific needs and constraints. Consider factors such as ease of use, data quality, scalability, compatibility with existing systems, and cost-effectiveness. Assess whether the tool aligns with the type of data you are working with and the analysis and reporting requirements of your M&E study.
• Seek Recommendations and Feedback: Consult with experts, colleagues, or M&E professionals who have experience with the tools you are considering. Seek recommendations and feedback on their effectiveness, limitations, and user-friendliness. Their insights can provide valuable perspectives in selecting the most appropriate tool.
• Trial and Testing: If feasible, conduct small-scale trials or pilot tests with a subset of your data or research participants. This allows you to assess the usability and functionality of the tool, identify any potential issues, and gain practical experience in its implementation.
• Consider Integration and Compatibility: Consider the compatibility of the research tool with other tools or systems you may be using in your M&E process. Evaluate how well the tool integrates with existing data management, analysis, or reporting systems to ensure smooth workflows and data interoperability.
• Training and Support: Assess the availability of training resources, user guides, tutorials, and technical support for the research tool. Consider the level of training required for you and your team to effectively utilize the tool and ensure proper implementation.
• Make an Informed Decision: Based on the evaluation and assessment of the above factors, make an informed decision on the research tool that best meets your M&E objectives, data requirements, available resources, and user needs.

Remember, the choice of a research tool should be driven by the specific context, research objectives, and resources available to you. It’s important to consider trade-offs and select a tool that maximizes the quality and efficiency of your M&E study.

In the context of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E), methods and tools have similar meanings as in general research, but they are applied specifically to the M&E process :

• M&E Methods: M&E methods refer to the systematic approaches and frameworks used to assess, measure, and evaluate the effectiveness, efficiency, and impact of programs, projects, or interventions. These methods provide a structured and rigorous approach to collecting and analyzing data to inform decision-making. M&E methods may include baseline studies, surveys, interviews, focus groups, case studies, statistical analysis, impact evaluation designs, and more. They guide the overall evaluation design and determine the data collection and analysis techniques used in M&E.
• M&E Tools: M&E tools are the specific resources, instruments, software, or techniques used within the M&E methods to support the data collection, management, analysis, visualization, and reporting processes. These tools provide practical means to implement M&E methods effectively. Examples of M&E tools include data collection templates, survey questionnaires, data analysis software (e.g., SPSS, Stata, R), visualization tools (e.g., Excel, Tableau), logic models, results frameworks, evaluation management systems (e.g., DevResults, DHIS2), and more. M&E tools assist in streamlining and enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of the M&E process.

In M&E, methods establish the overall approach to evaluating and assessing programs or interventions, while tools are the specific resources or techniques used within those methods to facilitate data collection, analysis, and reporting. M&E methods guide the evaluation design and data analysis, while M&E tools provide the means to execute those methods effectively. Both methods and tools are crucial in conducting rigorous and effective M&E, ensuring that data is collected, analyzed, and interpreted in a systematic and reliable manner to inform decision-making and program improvement.

As the field of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) continues to evolve, researchers and practitioners are exploring new trends and innovations in research tools to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of evaluations. Here are some emerging trends and future directions in research tools for M&E:

• Integrated Data Platforms: With the increasing volume and complexity of data generated in M&E, there is a growing need for integrated data platforms that streamline data collection, management, analysis, and reporting processes. These platforms bring together various tools and functionalities into a unified system, allowing for seamless data flow and collaboration among stakeholders.
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning: AI and machine learning technologies hold great potential for automating data analysis, identifying patterns and trends, and generating insights from large datasets in M&E. By leveraging AI algorithms, researchers can gain deeper insights into program performance, identify predictive indicators, and make data-driven decisions more efficiently.
• Mobile Data Collection Tools: Mobile data collection tools are becoming increasingly popular for conducting surveys, collecting field data, and monitoring program activities in real-time. These tools enable researchers to capture data using smartphones or tablets, allowing for faster data collection, improved data quality, and enhanced accessibility in remote or resource-constrained settings.
• Blockchain Technology: Blockchain technology offers opportunities for enhancing the transparency, security, and integrity of M&E data. By leveraging blockchain-based platforms, researchers can ensure the immutability and traceability of data, reduce the risk of data manipulation or fraud, and enhance trust and accountability in the evaluation process.
• Open Data and Data Sharing Platforms: There is a growing movement towards open data and data sharing in M&E, driven by the desire for transparency, collaboration, and knowledge exchange. Open data platforms facilitate the sharing of evaluation data, findings, and resources among stakeholders, enabling greater reproducibility, accountability, and innovation in the field.
• Citizen Science and Participatory Approaches: Citizen science and participatory approaches involve engaging community members and stakeholders in the research process, from data collection to interpretation and decision-making. By involving local communities in M&E efforts, researchers can gather diverse perspectives, foster ownership, and ensure the relevance and sustainability of evaluation initiatives.
• Ethical Considerations and Data Privacy: With the increasing use of digital technologies and data-driven approaches in M&E, there is a growing awareness of the need to address ethical considerations and data privacy concerns. Researchers must prioritize ethical principles such as informed consent, data confidentiality, and protection of vulnerable populations to ensure responsible and ethical conduct of evaluations.

By embracing these emerging trends and innovations in research tools, M&E practitioners can enhance the quality, rigor, and impact of evaluations, ultimately contributing to more effective and evidence-based decision-making in development and humanitarian efforts.

Research tools play a crucial role in the field of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) by supporting data collection, analysis, visualization, and reporting processes . The choice of research tools should be guided by the specific objectives, context, and data requirements of the evaluation.

Essential research tools in M&E include data collection instruments (surveys, interviews, observation checklists), data analysis software (SPSS, Stata, R), data visualization tools (Excel, Tableau), logic models, KPI frameworks, GIS software, evaluation management systems, and collaboration platforms.

By selecting and utilizing appropriate research tools, M&E practitioners can enhance the efficiency , accuracy, and effectiveness of their evaluations, leading to evidence-based decision-making and program improvement.

It is important to evaluate and choose tools that align with the evaluation design, data type, available resources, and technical expertise to ensure rigorous and meaningful evaluation outcomes in M&E.

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Home » Research Methods – Types, Examples and Guide

Research Methods – Types, Examples and Guide

Table of Contents

Research Methods

Definition:

Research Methods refer to the techniques, procedures, and processes used by researchers to collect , analyze, and interpret data in order to answer research questions or test hypotheses. The methods used in research can vary depending on the research questions, the type of data that is being collected, and the research design.

Types of Research Methods

Types of Research Methods are as follows:

Qualitative research Method

Qualitative research methods are used to collect and analyze non-numerical data. This type of research is useful when the objective is to explore the meaning of phenomena, understand the experiences of individuals, or gain insights into complex social processes. Qualitative research methods include interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and content analysis.

Quantitative Research Method

Quantitative research methods are used to collect and analyze numerical data. This type of research is useful when the objective is to test a hypothesis, determine cause-and-effect relationships, and measure the prevalence of certain phenomena. Quantitative research methods include surveys, experiments, and secondary data analysis.

Mixed Method Research

Mixed Method Research refers to the combination of both qualitative and quantitative research methods in a single study. This approach aims to overcome the limitations of each individual method and to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the research topic. This approach allows researchers to gather both quantitative data, which is often used to test hypotheses and make generalizations about a population, and qualitative data, which provides a more in-depth understanding of the experiences and perspectives of individuals.

Key Differences Between Research Methods

The following Table shows the key differences between Quantitative, Qualitative and Mixed Research Methods

Examples of Research Methods

Examples of Research Methods are as follows:

Qualitative Research Example:

A researcher wants to study the experience of cancer patients during their treatment. They conduct in-depth interviews with patients to gather data on their emotional state, coping mechanisms, and support systems.

Quantitative Research Example:

A company wants to determine the effectiveness of a new advertisement campaign. They survey a large group of people, asking them to rate their awareness of the product and their likelihood of purchasing it.

Mixed Research Example:

A university wants to evaluate the effectiveness of a new teaching method in improving student performance. They collect both quantitative data (such as test scores) and qualitative data (such as feedback from students and teachers) to get a complete picture of the impact of the new method.

Applications of Research Methods

Research methods are used in various fields to investigate, analyze, and answer research questions. Here are some examples of how research methods are applied in different fields:

• Psychology : Research methods are widely used in psychology to study human behavior, emotions, and mental processes. For example, researchers may use experiments, surveys, and observational studies to understand how people behave in different situations, how they respond to different stimuli, and how their brains process information.
• Sociology : Sociologists use research methods to study social phenomena, such as social inequality, social change, and social relationships. Researchers may use surveys, interviews, and observational studies to collect data on social attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.
• Medicine : Research methods are essential in medical research to study diseases, test new treatments, and evaluate their effectiveness. Researchers may use clinical trials, case studies, and laboratory experiments to collect data on the efficacy and safety of different medical treatments.
• Education : Research methods are used in education to understand how students learn, how teachers teach, and how educational policies affect student outcomes. Researchers may use surveys, experiments, and observational studies to collect data on student performance, teacher effectiveness, and educational programs.
• Business : Research methods are used in business to understand consumer behavior, market trends, and business strategies. Researchers may use surveys, focus groups, and observational studies to collect data on consumer preferences, market trends, and industry competition.
• Environmental science : Research methods are used in environmental science to study the natural world and its ecosystems. Researchers may use field studies, laboratory experiments, and observational studies to collect data on environmental factors, such as air and water quality, and the impact of human activities on the environment.
• Political science : Research methods are used in political science to study political systems, institutions, and behavior. Researchers may use surveys, experiments, and observational studies to collect data on political attitudes, voting behavior, and the impact of policies on society.

Purpose of Research Methods

Research methods serve several purposes, including:

• Identify research problems: Research methods are used to identify research problems or questions that need to be addressed through empirical investigation.
• Develop hypotheses: Research methods help researchers develop hypotheses, which are tentative explanations for the observed phenomenon or relationship.
• Collect data: Research methods enable researchers to collect data in a systematic and objective way, which is necessary to test hypotheses and draw meaningful conclusions.
• Analyze data: Research methods provide tools and techniques for analyzing data, such as statistical analysis, content analysis, and discourse analysis.
• Test hypotheses: Research methods allow researchers to test hypotheses by examining the relationships between variables in a systematic and controlled manner.
• Draw conclusions : Research methods facilitate the drawing of conclusions based on empirical evidence and help researchers make generalizations about a population based on their sample data.
• Enhance understanding: Research methods contribute to the development of knowledge and enhance our understanding of various phenomena and relationships, which can inform policy, practice, and theory.

When to Use Research Methods

Research methods are used when you need to gather information or data to answer a question or to gain insights into a particular phenomenon.

Here are some situations when research methods may be appropriate:

• To investigate a problem : Research methods can be used to investigate a problem or a research question in a particular field. This can help in identifying the root cause of the problem and developing solutions.
• To gather data: Research methods can be used to collect data on a particular subject. This can be done through surveys, interviews, observations, experiments, and more.
• To evaluate programs : Research methods can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a program, intervention, or policy. This can help in determining whether the program is meeting its goals and objectives.
• To explore new areas : Research methods can be used to explore new areas of inquiry or to test new hypotheses. This can help in advancing knowledge in a particular field.
• To make informed decisions : Research methods can be used to gather information and data to support informed decision-making. This can be useful in various fields such as healthcare, business, and education.

Advantages of Research Methods

Research methods provide several advantages, including:

• Objectivity : Research methods enable researchers to gather data in a systematic and objective manner, minimizing personal biases and subjectivity. This leads to more reliable and valid results.
• Replicability : A key advantage of research methods is that they allow for replication of studies by other researchers. This helps to confirm the validity of the findings and ensures that the results are not specific to the particular research team.
• Generalizability : Research methods enable researchers to gather data from a representative sample of the population, allowing for generalizability of the findings to a larger population. This increases the external validity of the research.
• Precision : Research methods enable researchers to gather data using standardized procedures, ensuring that the data is accurate and precise. This allows researchers to make accurate predictions and draw meaningful conclusions.
• Efficiency : Research methods enable researchers to gather data efficiently, saving time and resources. This is especially important when studying large populations or complex phenomena.
• Innovation : Research methods enable researchers to develop new techniques and tools for data collection and analysis, leading to innovation and advancement in the field.

About the author

Muhammad Hassan

Researcher, Academic Writer, Web developer

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Methodology

Research Methods | Definitions, Types, Examples

Research methods are specific procedures for collecting and analyzing data. Developing your research methods is an integral part of your research design . When planning your methods, there are two key decisions you will make.

First, decide how you will collect data . Your methods depend on what type of data you need to answer your research question :

• Qualitative vs. quantitative : Will your data take the form of words or numbers?
• Primary vs. secondary : Will you collect original data yourself, or will you use data that has already been collected by someone else?
• Descriptive vs. experimental : Will you take measurements of something as it is, or will you perform an experiment?

Second, decide how you will analyze the data .

• For quantitative data, you can use statistical analysis methods to test relationships between variables.
• For qualitative data, you can use methods such as thematic analysis to interpret patterns and meanings in the data.

Table of contents

Methods for collecting data, examples of data collection methods, methods for analyzing data, examples of data analysis methods, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research methods.

Data is the information that you collect for the purposes of answering your research question . The type of data you need depends on the aims of your research.

Qualitative vs. quantitative data

Your choice of qualitative or quantitative data collection depends on the type of knowledge you want to develop.

For questions about ideas, experiences and meanings, or to study something that can’t be described numerically, collect qualitative data .

If you want to develop a more mechanistic understanding of a topic, or your research involves hypothesis testing , collect quantitative data .

You can also take a mixed methods approach , where you use both qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Primary vs. secondary research

Primary research is any original data that you collect yourself for the purposes of answering your research question (e.g. through surveys , observations and experiments ). Secondary research is data that has already been collected by other researchers (e.g. in a government census or previous scientific studies).

If you are exploring a novel research question, you’ll probably need to collect primary data . But if you want to synthesize existing knowledge, analyze historical trends, or identify patterns on a large scale, secondary data might be a better choice.

Descriptive vs. experimental data

In descriptive research , you collect data about your study subject without intervening. The validity of your research will depend on your sampling method .

In experimental research , you systematically intervene in a process and measure the outcome. The validity of your research will depend on your experimental design .

To conduct an experiment, you need to be able to vary your independent variable , precisely measure your dependent variable, and control for confounding variables . If it’s practically and ethically possible, this method is the best choice for answering questions about cause and effect.

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Your data analysis methods will depend on the type of data you collect and how you prepare it for analysis.

Data can often be analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. For example, survey responses could be analyzed qualitatively by studying the meanings of responses or quantitatively by studying the frequencies of responses.

Qualitative analysis methods

Qualitative analysis is used to understand words, ideas, and experiences. You can use it to interpret data that was collected:

• From open-ended surveys and interviews , literature reviews , case studies , ethnographies , and other sources that use text rather than numbers.
• Using non-probability sampling methods .

Qualitative analysis tends to be quite flexible and relies on the researcher’s judgement, so you have to reflect carefully on your choices and assumptions and be careful to avoid research bias .

Quantitative analysis methods

Quantitative analysis uses numbers and statistics to understand frequencies, averages and correlations (in descriptive studies) or cause-and-effect relationships (in experiments).

You can use quantitative analysis to interpret data that was collected either:

• During an experiment .
• Using probability sampling methods .

Because the data is collected and analyzed in a statistically valid way, the results of quantitative analysis can be easily standardized and shared among researchers.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Chi square test of independence
• Statistical power
• Descriptive statistics
• Degrees of freedom
• Pearson correlation
• Null hypothesis
• Double-blind study
• Case-control study
• Research ethics
• Data collection
• Hypothesis testing
• Structured interviews

Research bias

• Hawthorne effect
• Unconscious bias
• Recall bias
• Halo effect
• Self-serving bias
• Information bias

Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings.

Quantitative methods allow you to systematically measure variables and test hypotheses . Qualitative methods allow you to explore concepts and experiences in more detail.

In mixed methods research , you use both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods to answer your research question .

A sample is a subset of individuals from a larger population . Sampling means selecting the group that you will actually collect data from in your research. For example, if you are researching the opinions of students in your university, you could survey a sample of 100 students.

In statistics, sampling allows you to test a hypothesis about the characteristics of a population.

The research methods you use depend on the type of data you need to answer your research question .

• If you want to measure something or test a hypothesis , use quantitative methods . If you want to explore ideas, thoughts and meanings, use qualitative methods .
• If you want to analyze a large amount of readily-available data, use secondary data. If you want data specific to your purposes with control over how it is generated, collect primary data.
• If you want to establish cause-and-effect relationships between variables , use experimental methods. If you want to understand the characteristics of a research subject, use descriptive methods.

Methodology refers to the overarching strategy and rationale of your research project . It involves studying the methods used in your field and the theories or principles behind them, in order to develop an approach that matches your objectives.

Methods are the specific tools and procedures you use to collect and analyze data (for example, experiments, surveys , and statistical tests ).

In shorter scientific papers, where the aim is to report the findings of a specific study, you might simply describe what you did in a methods section .

In a longer or more complex research project, such as a thesis or dissertation , you will probably include a methodology section , where you explain your approach to answering the research questions and cite relevant sources to support your choice of methods.

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28 Tools & Resources for Conducting Market Research

Published: April 30, 2024

Conducting market research pulls details together to help you choose new products or services to launch. They also help identify your audiences and best marketing strategies so you are ready to act without the guesswork.

Businesses use market research software to minimize risk and make more data-driven choices.

I own a small business, and by gathering facts and opinions, I can better predict whether new products or features — and for more prominent companies, even locations — will succeed before investing.

Here are 28 of the best tools for conducting market research, including a few recommendations directly from HubSpot market researchers and bloggers who use them.

Helpful Market Research Tools & Resources

1. similarweb.

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Similarweb is probably the highest quality, most well-known, and most convenient way to get and compare traffic information about any website you land on — short of having an expert analyst whispering in your ear, which could get awkward. Their free suite of products — including the Chrome extension — is worth exploring and gives you useful, high-level information. The deep insights come from taking advantage of their database of real-world information on global website performance gathered over time, which they’ve already been building for over 10 years. They have their finger on the pulse of online business worldwide, from sales to sites to stocks.

Microsoft, Amazon, and even Google use Similarweb and the insights they provide on other enterprise-level operations down to small businesses. If you want to know how your company stacks up and then initiate a robust research and marketing campaign, these are serious tools that can help you grow.

What I like: One of their add-ons is called App Intelligence, and it can benchmark your growth and track your progress against millions of apps — for both iOS and Android — and provide daily insights on app rankings, engagement, retention, and more.

Pricing: Starter plans cost $125 per month paid annually; professional plans cost $333 per month billed annually; team and enterprise plans have custom pricing.

For Max Iskiev , market research analyst at HubSpot, one research tool stands out from the rest: Glimpse.

He told me, “Glimpse is my favorite research tool. It’s quick and easy to use, allowing me to design and launch short surveys for real-time insights on trending topics.”

Writers for the HubSpot Marketing Blog have also used Glimpse to run short, 100-person surveys for articles (case in point: Are Sales Reps Rushing Back to the Office? ).

Not only is Glimpse valuable for doing quick pulse-checks on the latest trends, but it also leverages the power of AI for even deeper insights.

“Glimpse really shines when it comes to open-ended questions, using natural language processing and AI to analyze emotion and sentiment, saving time, and offering invaluable insights,” Iskiev shared.

Best for: Those who can invest in AI tools for their businesses but don’t need a decade’s deep dive like users of Similarweb might.

Pricing: Starter Plan - Free; Professional - $500/month; Advanced - $1,000/month; Enterprise - custom pricing.

Free Market Research Kit

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• SWOT Analysis Template
• Survey Template
• Focus Group Template

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3. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo offers several highly useful tools that work best as a content research tool for mid-size businesses and up. If you need many ideas for a whole lot of content, BuzzSumo is likely a good fit for your company.

Their monitoring tools can alert you to new content that relates to your keywords of choice.

This is smart for writers, content strategists, and those who manage writers and content strategists to stay on top of trends in what consumers want to know more about within your industry — so you’re right there to provide it.

BuzzSumo also gives you access to reporting tools that stream various sources of information to your dashboard, making it easy to keep up with developments and build visual assets to communicate about them.

You can find major influencers — worldwide — through BuzzSumo that fit your brand to sponsor and collaborate with.

Unfortunately, BuzzSumo doesn’t integrate well with Instagram, so you’ll want to focus on influencers that use other social channels unless you’re willing to do IG work on the side.

What I like: Their Chrome extension is a nice addition to their offerings for companies that work with freelancers and remote workers to take the work on the move.

Pricing: Free 30-day trials are available. Content creation plans cost $199 per month; PR and comms plans cost $299 per month; suite plans cost $499 per month; and Enterprise plans cost $999 per month.

4. Answer the Public

Answer the Public is a sister product to UberSuggest, both being brainchildren of Neil Patel.

Answer: the Public watches what people are searching for and lets you keep track of how things change over time. By studying the changes, you can be at the front of trends — positive or negative — so you can respond to the changes quickly.

It’s billed as an excellent tool for public relations professionals to give them a heads-up on how their company is faring in the public eye.

If you fall on the wrong side of public sentiment, you can be right on top of salvaging the situation and making improvements to regain trust.

If you’re doing something right and see gains in positive engagement, you know to keep up what you’re doing and may even want to expand upon it.

Great examples of what organizations have done with information like this include Wendy’s ongoing roasts and savage clapbacks on social media.

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation’s hilarious insistence on not bringing mountain lions in the house also nabbed engagement by the truckloads (of corgis).

What I like: I like that Masterclass videos are available. They make sure to include lots of opportunities to learn how to best use their products and get maximum value from the suite.

Pricing: Individual plans cost $9 per month; pro plans cost $99 per month; expert plans cost $199 per month. Lifetime Pricing is available. Individual lifetime plans cost $99, pro lifetime plans cost $199; and expert lifetime plans cost $1,990.

5. GrowthBar SEO

GrowthBar SEO is all-in for AI. If your leadership wants a slice of the AI action at work in the company’s market research, this might be the tool to reach for.

It uses ChatGPT-4, and the peer-to-peer review site G2 ranked it the #1 AI writing tool for SEO in 2022 and 2023.

What sets it apart is that the AI writing assistant doesn’t just compile and give word to information it finds online.

It offers selections of relevant keywords, titles, headings, industry standard word counts, and link suggestions that you can choose from as you move through the outline.

They also include tools for keyword research, keyword ranking, and information about your keyword competitors. And because Google search is incorporated into the suite, you can do most, if not all, of your writing work on one screen.

Pro tip: As with all AI content, you’ll need a writer to bring the content to life by fact-checking information, adding unique or inside perspectives, meaningful quotes, and many other values that make the content rich to read.

GrowthBar SEO knows this, and you can source freelance writers there as well!

Pricing: A seven-day free trial is available. Standard plans cost $36 per month; pro plans cost $74.25 per month; and agency plans cost $149.25 per month.

6. Statista

Statista is a data visualization website that takes data from reputable reports across the web and makes them easy and digestible for researchers, marketers, and product creators just like you.

“Statista is like my market research sidekick, giving me all the data I need without the endless search. No more digging through the haystack. With Statista, I can spot trends and make informed decisions with ease," Icee Griffin , market researcher at HubSpot, told me.

One neat aspect of using Statista is that the same chart is updated as the years pass. Say that you want to allude to the value of the beauty market in your proposal.

If your investor accesses that same graph a year from now, it will reflect updated numbers. Statista finds the most recent research to update their visualizations.

Pro tip: Statista doesn’t carry out original research, but does have around 100 analysts who seek out gaps in their resources to provide ever more useful, trending data.

Pricing: Basic plans are free. Starter plans cost $199 per month, billed annually. Professional plans cost $959 per month, billed annually.

7. Think With Google Research Tools

Wish you had information on your product’s likelihood of success?

Think With Google’s marketing research tools offer interesting insights on whether anyone is looking for your product ( Google Trends ), which markets to launch to ( Market Finder ), and what retail categories rise as the months and seasons pass ( Rising Retail Categories ).

If you’d like to market your product through YouTube, the Find My Audience tool allows you to investigate what your potential viewers are interested in and what you should discuss on your brand’s YouTube channel.

What I like: Free and incredibly useful in my experience, small and newer businesses really benefit from having tools like this to conduct market research and get their growth rolling.

Pricing : Free

8. Census Bureau

The Census Bureau offers a free resource for searching U.S. census data.

You can filter by age, income, year, and location. You can also use some of its shortcuts to access visualizations of the data, allowing you to see potential target markets across the country.

If you’re considering a highly competitive product or service, you can easily find out where your target industry is most popular — or where the market has been oversaturated.

Another helpful tool is the Census Bureau Business and Economy data , where you can also target premade tables depending on your industry.

Pro tip: The text information on each screen can be overwhelming, so here’s a shortcut for you. One of the best ways to use this tool is by finding the NAICS code for your business.

Then, access the " Tables “ tool, click ”Filter" on the sidebar, and search for your industry.

9. Make My Persona

HubSpot’s Make My Persona tool allows you to create a buyer persona for your potential new product. In this tool, you pick a name for the persona, choose their age, identify their career characteristics, and identify their challenges.

This allows you to pinpoint both demographic and psychographic information.

Creating a buyer persona is an early step in the marketing process but an important one to avoid scope creep.

If you’re unsure about details like these and how to use market research tools for your business, let me recommend Hubspot’s Market Research Kit .

It’s completely free and helps you build a strong foundation for data-driven decision-making in your future marketing strategies.

Best for: Make My Persona is best suited to B2B product launches because you’ll be prompted to document your buyer persona’s career objectives and role-specific challenges.

Ideally, your product would solve a problem for them in the workplace or help their company achieve revenue goals.

10. Tableau

Tableau is a business intelligence suite of products that allows you to “connect to virtually any data source.” But the data isn’t presented in unreadable tables.

Rather, Tableau helps you visualize this data in a way that helps you glean insights, appeal to external stakeholders, and communicate the feasibility of your product to potential investors.

You can visualize data on anything from corn production in tropical climate zones to office product sales in North America. With Tableau’s tools, you can take as granular or as general a look you’d like into potential marketplaces and supplier regions.

What I like: Visual information for humans and pure data for the machines all in one. Tableau integrates well with spreadsheets and databases so that you can export Tableau data to Excel , back up records in Amazon Redshift, and more.

Pricing : Tableau Viewer plans cost $14 per user each month when billed annually. Tableau Explorer plans cost $42 per user each month when billed annually. Tableau Creator plans cost $75 per user each month when billed annually.

11. Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a web and social media monitoring tool that allows businesses to discover people's thoughts about their brands, campaigns, products, or services.  Users can create and customize reports and get data-driven insights that will help them make informed decisions. They can also filter results by language, location, and social media channel to personalize results.  Analyzing sentiment and emotion lets you easily understand what will work for your brand and industry and what you should avoid.  The Share of Voice report allows you to benchmark against your direct competitors and industry. You can also identify trends and discover influencers in your niche and area to boost your next steps.

Best for: Mentionlytics is great for competitor analysis and crisis detection. Their Social Intelligence Advisor (SIA) turns large volumes of data into understandable knowledge to offer custom advice on crisis detection and brand growth.

Pricing: A 14-day free trial is available for most plans. Basic plans cost $69 per month; Essential plans cost $139 per month; Advanced plans cost $249 per month; Pro plans cost $399 per month; Agency plans cost $599 per month; Enterprise plans cost $950 per month. Annual billing options offer discounts.

12. Meltwater

Meltwater’s Radarly consumer intelligence suite is a perfect market research tool as it provides continuous insights that keep you ahead of various market trends and your competitors. Radarly monitors a wide range of global data sources to uncover what people are discussing, their behaviors, and their sentiments toward particular brands. It helps businesses understand consumer preferences and market dynamics in real time, which makes it easier to make strategic decisions.

What we like: Meltwater provides the online Meltwater Academy, providing you with an extensive amount of tutorial videos tips, and tricks on how to get started using Radarly. 

Pricing: Custom, you will need to book a demo call with Meltwater to get a quote

13. SurveySparrow

SurveySparrow is a market research tool designed for researchers and businesses to create engaging surveys and gather concrete data. With an emphasis on a conversational, easy-to-use interface, you can create targeted surveys that provide detailed insights into your market and consumer preferences. 

This market survey software comes with 1000+ pre-designed, pre-loaded survey templates, allowing you to create the perfect study without external help. You can also integrate it with various other tools you use daily for a seamless workflow.

One of SurveySparrow’s standout features is its robust analytics and reporting tools. With real-time capture and advanced report filters, you can slice and dice the data - the way you like. 

Best for: The platform offers a unique recurring survey feature, which allows you to send surveys at regular intervals automatically. This is particularly useful for tracking changes in user sentiment over time.

Pricing: SurveySparrow offers a 14-day free trial. Basic plans start at $19 per month; the starter plan is priced at $39 per month; Enterprise plans are available upon request for custom pricing.

14. Paperform

A market research survey is an effective way to better understand your target audience and their needs by asking them directly.

This step is integral to understanding your dream customers’ problems, so you want to ensure the process is as interactive as possible and gathers objective, accurate responses.

With its free-text interface, Paperform is as simple as writing a Word document. You can make your survey stand out by customizing colors, fonts, layouts, and themes to create your unique look and feel.

There are 27+ question field types, such as ranking, matrix, or scale fields. Use several to create visually engaging surveys that collect more information and see higher completion stats.

If you’re unsure where to start, you can use one of their expertly-made questionnaires or market research survey templates to get you started.

Best for: In my experience, Paperform can efficiently incorporate multiple customer personas. It uses conditional logic to show or hide questions or whole sections of content to create fully personalized paths. These interactive forms lower drop-off rates and boost customer interaction.

Pricing:  Essentials plans cost $29 per month. Pro plans cost $59 per month. Business plans cost $199 per month. For enterprise pricing, contact Paperform’s sales team.

GWI is an on-demand consumer research platform that makes audience research a breeze. Powered by the world’s largest study on the online consumer base, GWI provides insights into the lives of over 2.8 billion consumers across 50+ markets.

With 250k+ profiling points, you can find your unique customers and learn everything you need to know about who they are, what’s on their minds, and what they’re up to.

One user-friendly platform makes it quick and easy to become an expert on your audience and capture the answers you need to succeed.

Pro tip: GWI even has features to compare markets and create customized and shareable charts in seconds, helping you distribute critical information as quickly as you find it.

Pricing: Explore Interactive Demo for free; Flexible and custom pricing with discounts available.

16. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a powerful tool for creating in-depth market research surveys that will help you understand your market and consumer preferences.

With this tool, you can create targeted, uber-specific surveys that help you collect answers that pertain specifically to your product.

While using a data source can give you a general overview of your target audience and market, SurveyMonkey can help you get more granular insights from real consumers.

SurveyMonkey offers dedicated market research solutions and services and a reporting dashboard option that allows you to easily parse through the results.

What I like: I like that SurveyMonkey is a good fit for exploring markets beyond your shores. It includes a global survey panel and survey translation service for international research.

• Individual plans: Advantage annual plans cost $39 per month. Premier annual plans cost $119 a month. Monthly plans cost $99 per month.
• Team plans: Team advantage plans cost $29 per person each month. Team premier plans cost $75 per person each month.
• Enterprise pricing is available upon request.

17. Typeform

Like SurveyMonkey, Typeform allows you to run research surveys to get direct answers from your target consumers. It’s an easy-to-use, mobile-optimized form-builder that’s great for market research.

Typeform’s distinguishing factor is that it shows viewers one form field at a time. In its templates, Typeform encourages a more conversational, casual approach (like in its market research survey template ).

You can create a wide range of question types, and other features include the ability to recall answers from previous questions and create logic jumps.

In a survey, you’d want to collect both demographic and psychographic information on your customers to understand their purchasing behaviors and the problems they encounter.

The goal is to find out if your product is the solution to one of those problems — and whether, before launching, you should add more features or rethink your product positioning strategy .

Best for: I think Typeform is best for product launches that target a younger demographic.

If you’re targeting C-suite executives at established firms, consider a more formal option, such as SurveyMonkey, or keeping your tone more formal in your questions.

Pricing: Free plans are available. Basic plans cost $29 per month. Plus plans cost $59 per month. Business plans cost $99 per month. Enterprise plans are available upon request.

18. PureSpectrum Insights (Previously Upwave Instant Insights )

PureSpectrum acquired Upwave Instant Insights in 2021 and rebranded as PureSpectrum Insights.

As before, this platform is primarily a consumer research tool. While it isn’t advertised as a survey creation tool, it allows you to launch market research surveys specifically to get consumer insights.

PureSpectrum allows you to perform customer and market segmentation and also to visualize your data for easy scanning by key stakeholders and investors. They’ve grown to include A/B testing, brand tracking, and customer sentiment.

Pro tip: PureSpectrum distributes your survey to real people. Take a look at their marketplace profile to get a sense of where and from whom you can collect valuable data.

Pricing: Schedule a demo for more information.

19. Claritas MyBestSegment

Claritas MyBestSegment provides product researchers with tools to understand a specific area’s demographic information as well as the lifestyle habits of those who live there.

Their audience segments give you information gleaned from tens of thousands of data points, giving you insight into much more than just household income, employment, and education levels.

By finding out what a segment of the population does — without having to go out and survey them — you can find out which areas would be most receptive to a campaign or launch.

You can also discover which competitors are located nearby and which lifestyle trends have shifted or are on the rise.

What I like: I like that they are able to do some of the leg work for you. Syndicated Audiences is a tool available from Claritas for finding an organized audience of consumers who are more likely to be interested in your products or services.

Pricing: Pricing is available upon request.

Loop11 is a user experience testing platform that allows you to test the usability of your website, study user intent, test the information architecture of your site, and examine how the user experience changes based on the device they’re using.

Loop11 tests your site on any device by making users perform tasks. They then complete a short question about how easy or difficult the task was to complete.

Your product may be phenomenal, but unless consumers can actually buy it through your site, your launch won’t be successful.

You can use Loop11’s participants for niche demographics or bring in your own to learn more about your current customers.

Best for: Market research for your site development. You can find out whether your target consumers find your site easy to navigate and also identify snags that prevent conversions.

Pricing: Rapid Insights plans cost $199 monthly or $179 per month, billed annually. Pro plans cost $399 per month or $358 per month, billed annually. Enterprise plans cost $599 per month or $533 per month, billed annually.

21. Userlytics

Like Loop11, Userlytics allows you to test the usability of your website, mobile app, and site prototype. You can target different devices, define a buyer persona, and disqualify participants based on screening questions.

Testing is based on tasks that your test-takers carry out. They then answer a simple question about the difficulty of the task. You can structure the question in various ways:

You can leave it open-ended, provide multiple choices, or ask for a rating. Other formats you can use include System Usability Scale (SUS) questions, Net Promoter Score (NPS) questions, and Single Ease Questions (SEQ).

What I like: Userlytics performs both a webcam and a screen recording. You can compare the user’s answers with their reactions on video to understand how they feel when they’re interacting with your assets.

Pricing: Schedule a free demo for more information.

Sometimes, you need a no-frills test to take the pulse of consumers. Temper allows you to create a question and pop it onto your website, into your emails, etc.

The smiley face, “meh” face, and frowny face make it easy for viewers to share their feelings — and for you to read their minds.

You can also add it to a product page or a landing page, tailoring the questions to fit your offerings.

As for what you see, there are three options for receiving the feedback: in a tab on each page you are monitoring, embedded in the web page itself to narrow in on aspects within the page, or at the bottom of emails so you can get real-time information as the interaction unfolds.

Pro tip: One great way I’ve seen this used is by adding it to a blog post announcing the launch of a new product. You can find out general sentiment toward the product before it even launches!

Pricing: Hobby plans cost $12 per month. Pro plans cost $49 per month. Business plans cost $89 per month. White label plans cost $199 per month.

23. NielsenIQ (NIQ)

NielsenIQ (NIQ) is a retail and consumer intelligence consultant that works with you to collect consumer insights, identify the best distribution channels for your product, and create a range of products to address the needs of your target buyers.

This service helps you look at your product launch from all angles, delivering forecasting data that predicts how your sales will perform upon launch. NielsenIQ can also run consumer insights surveys on their list of panelists and partners.

NIQ now offers a service called Byzzer to help small businesses with fewer resources. It opens a door for market research reporting, in-person events, and consulting at a lower cost than the full NIQ suite.

Best for: I think Byzzer can be a helpful and affordable option for smaller businesses, but because NielsenIQ operates like a consultant and not as a self-service software, it is a better option for established firms with a bigger product launch budget.

Pricing: Pricing is available on request.

24. Ubersuggest

Don’t be intimidated by the visually text-heavy Ubersuggest. It really is an easy tool for doing keyword and content research. You just input a phrase, and it’ll create a list of keyword suggestions.

You can also see top-performing articles and pages to better understand the types of content that rank for those keywords.

This tool is useful for market research because you can see who your top competitors are, how often your product is searched for, and whether there’s enough space in the market for the type of product you’re launching.

You can also find out the questions your target audience asks in relation to the product. Each of these questions can be turned into an informative blog post that can guide your audience, increase your brand authority, and drive conversions.

Pro tip: If you want a quick look at the results you can get, head to their website and do a search — just know that you only get one glimpse before they make you register. Alternatives to Ubersuggest include Moz , Ahrefs , and SEMRush .

Pricing: Free seven-day trials are available for all three tiers. Individual plans cost $29 per month. Business plans cost $49 per month. Enterprise and agency plans cost $99 per month. Add-ons are available at $5 each. Lifetime memberships are also available.

25. Pew Research Center

From economic conditions to political attitudes, social media usage to food science, the Pew Research Center website has loads of free research that you can use to better understand your target markets.

Be careful with your curiosity, though. It’s a gorgeous trap of interesting information that can drain your day away — but so happily.

I that Pew Research Center integrates visual data directly into the text — and we’re not talking about a chart or image spliced in.

The site has hundreds of interactive articles that allow you to filter and sift through the data for more granular, targeted insights while also making dense information easier to understand.

Their research topic selection is delightfully vast. Click the top left tab for “ Research Topics.” Then, there is a link to their “ Full Topic List .” Once there, each topic cluster has a “ More ” option.

What I like: As a writer in digital marketing, I am always on the hunt for targeted and nutritious quotes and insights. I love that you have access to what research participants actually had to say below the Pew Research articles.

It’s a stellar feature for building compelling presentations. The quotes are tagged, too, so you can sort quotes more specifically on various concepts or groups related to the research.

Here’s an example article — scroll to the In Their Own Words section at the bottom to check it out.

26. SocialMention (Part of BrandMentions)

SocialMention is a part of BrandMentions focused on social media monitoring. The platform helps you understand what your prospective customers are buzzing about online.

Search for a keyword, and SocialMentions will show you recent social posts that contain that keyword, along with the context of its usage.

After subscribing to the platform, you’ll also get other metrics such as Reach (how many people view the keyword per day), Performance (how many people engage with the keyword per day), and Mentions by Weekday (when people mention the keyword).

One way to use this tool for market research is by finding out what time of day or night people are looking for your product on social media sites.

Let’s say you’ve developed a sleeping aid app and learn through SocialMention that most people look for sleeping aid apps at 2:00 AM. When you start announcing your product, you will need to schedule your post around 2:00 AM.

Pro tip: Another useful tool you’ll have access to is sentiment analysis on your keywords. It allows you to find out how people are generally feeling about the type of product you’re launching.

That way, you can refine the tone of your campaigns.

Pricing: Growing business plans cost $79 per month. Company plans cost $249 per month. Enterprise and agency plans cost $399 per month. All prices are billed annually.

27. Qualtrics Market Research Panels

Qualtrics takes away the hassle of finding respondents for your market research surveys. They provide an online sample service so you can access real, live human thoughts without having to actually manage any humans.

It’s an introverted marketer’s dream come true!

Once you’ve identified your target audience, head on over to Qualtrics and sign up to access a representative sample.

You can then use Qualtrics’ built-in platform to start gathering insights and information from the people whose pain points you might be able to help solve.

Pro tip: You can actually choose between Qualtrics’ built-in platform or using your own chosen survey software . Sometimes, you’re already familiar and comfy with one system or need to hustle with a program you know — Qualtrics lets you pick.

28. ProProfs Qualaroo

Qualaroo is an advanced user and market research tool that helps you understand your specific market with targeted surveys.

You can run surveys on over six channels at once — such as website, app, product, social media, and email — to get a 360-degree view of your existing and potential customers.

It comes packed with features like question branching, 12+ answer types, automatic survey language translation, in-depth audience targeting, pre-built survey templates, and an extensive repository of professionally designed questions.

You can create various market research surveys in minutes to collect data on the demographic, psychographic, and behavioral traits of your target audience.

It can help you map customers’ expectations and preferences, create customer personas, and perform audience segmentation.

Qualaroo also promotes quick feedback analysis. Its in-built AI-based sentiment analysis and text analytics engine automatically categorizes the responses based on user moods.

It also highlights the key phrases and words in real time, saving hours of manual work.

What we like: In my experience, you can get an awful lot done with just this one source for conducting market research. I like it for its rare combination of tool inclusivity and affordable pricing — it’s definitely a solid source to start with.

Pricing: Omni channel plans for up to 50 responses are free. Omni channel plans for businesses up to 100 responses cost $19.99 per month, billed annually. Email surveys up to 50 responses are free.

Email surveys for businesses up to 100 responses cost $9.99 per month, billed annually.

Conduct Market Research for a Successful Product Launch

Conducting market research is essential to a successful product launch to market.

With the tools I’ve just introduced you to, you can find out who’s looking for your product, why they need it, and how you can better market whatever you’re looking to launch.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2016 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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New computational tool accurately assesses health through gut microbiome analysis

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A team of Mayo Clinic researchers has developed an innovative computational tool that analyzes the gut microbiome , a complex ecosystem of trillions of bacteria, fungi, viruses and other microorganisms within the digestive system, to provide insights into overall well-being.

In a new study published in Nature Communications , the tool demonstrated at least 80% accuracy in differentiating healthy individuals from those with any disease. The tool was developed by analyzing stool gut microbiome profiles from more than 8,000 samples representing various diseases, geographic regions and demographic groups.

The tool, called Gut Microbiome Wellness Index 2, could detect even subtle changes in gut health, identifying whether a person may be progressing toward or recovering from a disease. The researchers used bioinformatics and machine learning methods to analyze gut microbiome profiles in stool samples gathered from 54 published studies spanning 26 countries and six continents. This approach produced a diverse and comprehensive dataset.

This capability addresses longstanding challenges in human microbiome research, including defining what constitutes a "healthy" microbiome and identifying early indicators of potential health issues. It also fills a significant gap in existing measurement tools of health and wellness.

The gut microbiome plays a crucial role in digestion, metabolism and immune function, and researchers are finding an imbalance in the gut microbiome can be linked to various chronic diseases.

Finally, we have a standardized index to quantitatively measure how 'healthy' a person's gut microbiome is." Jaeyun Sung, Ph.D., the senior author and computational biologist at Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine's Microbiomics Program

"Our tool is not intended to diagnose specific diseases but rather to serve as a proactive health indicator," he adds. "By identifying adverse changes in gut health before serious symptoms arise, the tool could potentially inform dietary or lifestyle modifications to prevent mild issues from escalating into more severe health conditions, or prompt further diagnostic testing. By being able to answer whether a person's gut is healthy or trending toward a diseased state, we ultimately aim to empower individuals to take proactive steps in managing their own health."

The tool development process involved identifying microbial species, carefully selecting the most relevant features and optimizing the machine learning model.

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The end result is an index that screens a gut microbiome sample and quantifies how much it resembles a healthy (disease-free) or non-healthy (diseased) individual.

The study team first tested the index on a training set of more than 8,000 microbiome samples, and then validated its work on a new cohort of 1,140 samples.

The team also tested its tool across various clinical scenarios, including people who had undergone fecal microbiota transplantation, as well as people who made changes in dietary fiber intake or who had antibiotic exposure, to demonstrate its ability to detect shifts in gut health.

The Gut Microbiome Wellness Index 2 builds upon the team's original tool by incorporating a wider range of data and using refined computational methods. The team hopes this new version enhances precision in assessing gut health and monitoring changes in the gut microbiome.

Dr. Sung and his team plan to further develop the Gut Microbiome Health Index 2 by expanding its dataset to include a broader range of microbiome samples from diverse populations, and by adding more advanced artificial intelligence techniques to enhance the tool's predictive accuracy and adaptability.

Mayo Clinic

Chang, D., et al . (2024). Gut Microbiome Wellness Index 2 enhances health status prediction from gut microbiome taxonomic profiles.  Nature Communications . doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51651-9 .

Posted in: Device / Technology News | Medical Science News

Tags: Antibiotic , Artificial Intelligence , Bacteria , Bioinformatics , Chronic , Diagnostic , Digestion , Digestive System , Education , Fecal Microbiota Transplantation , fungi , Machine Learning , Medicine , Metabolism , Microbiome , pH , Research

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More From Forbes

The “hidden” ai tools that are driving educational gains.

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There’s more to AI than ChatGPT and bot-generated worksheets.

Recently I watched a focus group of seven education policy professionals discuss their views on schools and artificial intelligence. They were smart, engaged people, and their politics ranged from extremely conservative to very liberal. But when it came to AI, they all held similar views: very cautious optimism tempered with a heavy dose of skepticism.

One participant’s opinion seemed to encapsulate the group’s thinking overall: “Why can’t we just stick with the Socratic method? It’s been around for 2,000 years. Do we need to replace that with something else? I don't know.”

After listening to this group for more than an hour, I came away with two big takeaways: First, nobody wanted AI to replace teachers. This group understood – as do I – that authentic teacher-to-student interaction is where real learning occurs, and they did not like the idea of AI replacing human-to-human contact. Rather, they were open to AI-driven tools that could make teaching easier and learning more individualized.

Second, few of the participants could envision what such an AI tool might look like. Nor could they concretely describe how AI would support educators in the ways they imagined. It was all fuzzy to them.

I suspect this is also true of most parents, who, according to a recent survey , overwhelmingly think that AI is a valuable educational tool despite only 40 percent of them having used it with their kids.

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So, there seems to be an information void among a lot of parents and even among those who work in education – they recognize the potential of AI to improve learning — but they don’t know what that means, or looks like, in practice.

I think I can help with a real-life example: the high-impact tutoring provided by Saga Education .

For many, tutoring can seem relatively easy, but it's actually quite difficult – and expensive – at scale. Some estimates put the cost of intensive high-impact tutoring at $1,500 to $2,500 per student . So if a school has 250 students who would benefit from tutoring, it could cost upwards of $500,000 to service them.

For most schools, that kind of price tag is simply out of reach, despite convincing research showing that tutoring is one of the most effective ways to improve student achievement. The thing is, tutoring only works if the tutors know the content and are good at what they do. Pairing kids up with adults who aren't trained tutors, or with adults who have little knowledge about how students learn, often doesn't lead to learning gains. But when the tutor is skilled and adept at working with students, the gains can be extraordinary.

And that’s where Saga comes in. It is well-known in education circles, and its high-impact tutoring model is heavily researched .

Saga recently began using an AI-powered platform to help train tutors to be more effective. The platform was co-developed by researchers at the University of Colorado who are part of the Learning Engineering Virtual Institute – a seven-team effort across multiple organizations to drastically improve math outcomes in U.S. middle schools. I’m familiar with Saga because my organization, The Learning Agency , helps administer the virtual institute.

Research has shown that how tutors talk and interact with students significantly affects whether the students improve. There are a number of key “talk moves” tutors can make to maximize their impact with kids.

One technique is called “pressing for accuracy,” which simply means having the tutor ask the student to explain the concept or idea they just discussed. In other words, did the tutor check to make sure the student “got it”? Another successful tactic is called “pressing for reasoning” – prompting students to share their thinking behind an answer.

For example, a tutor might ask a question that gets the student to contribute to the conversation, such as “Can you give me an example of …?” Or, they might ask the student to explain their thinking, “Why did you use this approach to solve this problem?”

Tutors who use techniques like these get better results than tutors who don’t. With that in mind, here’s how AI works to help tutors be better.

After tutors work with students on the Saga platform, the AI analyzes the conversations that took place. The AI notes who did the talking, what they said, the quality of the conversations based on the various talk moves, and the questions that were asked (and how they were answered). Then, the platform creates several visualizations of its analysis, creating a timeline of when “talk moves” occurred, charts showing the frequency of the different “talk moves,” and other data points, like who did most of the talking – the student or the tutor – or whether the tutor allowed the student to give mostly one-word answers.

These AI-generated reports give tutors direct and specific feedback on how they can improve. It would take a coach or teacher about an hour and a half to watch and annotate a 30-minute tutoring session to provide the same level of constructive feedback. The Saga platform allows them to do it in about 30 minutes.

The efficiencies gained by using the platform allow one coach or teacher to supervise many tutors effectively, thereby increasing the number of students receiving high-dose, high-quality tutoring while simultaneously controlling costs.

This is the real promise of AI in education – giving educators the data, analysis, and tools they need to be the best teachers they can be. It’s also a technology that most parents would never see, even though their children might be benefiting from it tremendously.

So the next time you see an article or a report expressing skepticism or doubt about the role of AI in education, remind yourself that there’s more to AI than ChatGPT and bot-generated worksheets. In many ways, the “hidden” tools are the real future of AI in schools.

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• A <select> element that will have four drop-down options, namely; freehand, circle, rectangle and eraser
• An <input type="color"> which will define a color picker.
• A   <canvas> element which will be  draw with JavaScript.

Here is the HTML structure (as ever, to simplify the process) using Bootstrap.

For the canvas, we are setting a custom width and height with <canvas width="600" height="450"></canvas> .

The custom setting defines the size and will also ensure that the drawing area is appropriately scaled and allows for precise control over the dimensions of the canvas.

Styling with CSS

Add the following custom styles:

The custom styles feature a custom Google font, a border,  a border radius to the canvas element, and a white background color.

JavaScript functionality

Start by getting the canvas element

Next, create a 2D context object which will allow us to draw in the canvas. The 2D context object contains methods for drawing on the canvas.

Define some initial variables:

• isDrawing : this variable will keep track of when the canvas is being drawn on.
• startX is the initial point on the X axis on the canvas where any drawing will start.
• startY is the initial point on the y axis  on the canvas where any drawing will start.
• initialImageData is used to keep a copy of how the canvas looked before any drawing begins. It's also useful for preventing trails when new shapes are drawn.

Add event listeners to get the selected color and tool:

Next, add an event listener to the canvas on the mousedown event. The mousedown event will invoke the startDrawing() function.

Create the called startDrawing() function which will  look like this:

In the code above, on the mousedown event , we will use the linewidth() method provided by the 2D context object to set a custom size for the drawing line width in pixels.

• isDrawing = true; sets the IsDrawing value to true to signify that the drawing has started.
• startX = e.offsetX ; will set the value of startX to the x-coordinate of the mouse pointer.
• startY = e.offsetY; will set the value of startY to the y-cordinate of the mouse pointer.
• ctx.beginPath(); beginPath () is a 2D context method which begins a new path. In this case, a new path will be started at the intersection of startX and startY .
• ctx.fillStyle = color; will set the color used to fill the drawing
• ctx.strokeStyle = color; sets the selected color as the stroke color.

Next, add an event listener to the canvas on the mousemove event. The mousemove event will invoke the Drawing() function.

When the user moves the mouse, create a function called drawing which will first check for the isDrawing condition, if its not true, the function will exit.

If the isDrawing condition is happening, we will use conditions to check the current selected tool and update appropriately.  We will create case switch statements for each of the following tools: 

For the freehand tool, update the function as shown below:

When the freehand tool is selected, we will do the following:

• ctx.moveTo(startX, startY);  will move the drawing cursor to the starting point
• ctx.lineTo(e.offsetX, e.offsetY); will add a line from the starting point to the current mouse position
• ctx.stroke(); will draw the line path with the selected color.
• startX = e.offsetX;  and startY = e.offsetY; will reset the starting points.

When the rectangle is selected, update the function as follows:

• const width = e.offsetX - startX; The width is obtained by the difference between  the start position, represented by startX and the currrent x-cordinate of the mouse pointer. 
• const height = e.offsetY - startY; To get the height, we get the difference between the start position, represented by startY and the currrent y-cordinate of the mouse pointer. 
• ctx.fillRect(startX, startY, width, height);  the fillRect() method will draw a filled rectangle. This method takes in parameters in the order provided.

To draw a circle, we first need to get the circle's radius, we will  then use the .arc() method to draw a curve to the specified path. The .arc() method has the following syntax.

• x and y are the x and y-coordinate of the center of the circle
• r is the radius of the circle , which is calculated by the distance from the center to any point in the circumference of the circle. To get the radius of the circle, we will use the Pythagoras theorem
• startAngle is the angle at which the path starts, measured in radians. In the context of a circle, this is typically set to 0, indicating the starting point of the path
• endAngle is the angle at which the path ends in radians. It is obtained by 2*PI (corresponds to 360 degrees)

Let’s get the radius using the Pythagoras theorem.

Now if we substitute our values in the .arc() method, the code for drawing a circle will look like this:

Finally, for the eraser tool, update the function as follows:

The erase functionality is similar to the freehand tool, except that it uses the color white to cover any previous colors.

The last functionality is the stopDrawing() function  which happens on mouseup event which will look like this;

On the mouseup event, drawing should stop and the current path should be closed. This is to ensure that no further drawing operations occur until a new mousedown event occurs.

The ctx.closePath() method is used to close the current path, ensuring that the shape being drawn is finalized.

Let’s remind ourselves what we have built! Here is the demo: