Back to school – how our tools can help your research

Grab your textbooks and charge up those laptops, because it’s time to get back to school!

For many members of our research community, a new term is accompanied by many other novel opportunities. Perhaps you’ll be teaching a new course. Maybe you will be starting a long-awaited new research project. Have you finally found the perfect excuse to buy that new notebook you’ve had your eye on? Of course you have. Treat yourself!

While some things have remained unchanged during this pandemic, many of our regular research, teaching and learning activities have become more challenging. We’ve navigated new virtual learning environments, tried not to break expensive, remotely accessible lab equipment, and attended conferences from home while simultaneously juggling life admin, often physically as well as metaphorically.

At Digital Science, we offer a range of solutions that help keep your research going during these interesting times, and even when we return to that long-awaited ‘normal’. As we head into a brand new term, here are just some of the many ways that we can support you, our research community, whether you’re returning to campus or labs, or whether you’re continuing to work from home.

We’ve got a whole page dedicated to our COVID-19 initiatives, all designed to help you navigate your way through the COVID-19 crisis. Use our free search for COVID-19 related research outputs in Dimensions to discover the latest research, host your lecture slides, notes, conference outputs and research data on Figshare, write up your results with your collaborators wherever they are in the world using Overleaf, plan your next research project using Symplectic’s Research Funding Solution, find books relevant to your research using Altmetric, or prepare for your next research role with Scismic.

In more recent developments, Writefull’s new Full Edit mode helps you to proofread your scientific texts. Full Edit mode delivers the best AI-based language feedback you’ll find – it is even tailored to scientific writing, so you know that your research outputs are going to be impactfully worded.

As a researcher, being able to quickly find relevant information is crucial. Dimensions provides free access to over 120 million publications and preprints to help you find exactly what you need, quickly and easily. Furthermore, its in-built analytical tools also help you gain actionable insights to help you guide your research in the right direction. Find out more in this introduction for researchers or dive right in using this search box:

Dive in to our comprehensive research database:

Dimensions

Dimensions is updated every 24 hours, and includes over 120 million publications, as well as datasets, grants, patents, clinical trials, and policy documents, helping you not only find the most relevant research information, but also understand the wider context within which your research sits.

ReadCube’s Papers App is your all-in-one literature management tool designed to keep the clutter off your desk so you can spend more time focusing on your research. Papers allows you to read and annotate your research literature, share your papers with collaborators, and cite your fundamental research quickly and easily in your own research publications.

What about when it comes to reporting on the outputs and impact of your research and teaching? Symplectic Elements helps you showcase all of your academic achievements and activities by collecting and curating research information in an easy-to-maintain search and discovery interface. Use Elements to demonstrate impact and expertise, discover internal and external collaboration, find mentorship opportunities, and easily dive into connections across institutional networks.

These are just some of the ways we are helping support our researcher community. If you want to know more about how our tools can help you, head to our website or get in touch with us by email or on Twitter. We’d love to hear about how we’re helping you make a difference.

We wish you a great start to the new term!