Research
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Each and every Researcher’s focus today, regardless of his/her research area, 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. In light of the above, the Librarians from the Central Library, AIIMS Kalyani curate a list of Research Tools, which are time-tested, evaluated, and reliable to the researchers.
FACILITIES PROVIDED BY THE CENTRAL LIBRARY TO RESEARCHERS
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The Central Library has purchased a perpetual license to 15 Modules of IBM® SPSS® Statistics, which is a powerful statistical software platform. It offers a user-friendly interface and a robust set of features that lets your organization quickly extract actionable insights from your data. Advanced statistical procedures help ensure high accuracy and quality decision-making. All facets of the analytics lifecycle are included, from data preparation and management to analysis and reporting. For access and technical support, please contact Dr. Tandra Ghosh, Convener, Central Library.
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The Central Library has subscribed to Turnitin Feedback Studio for Plagiarism Checking for assisting Students, Faculties, and Researchers in their research projects and writing research papers. For access and technical support, please contact Dr. Tandra Ghosh, Convener, Central Library.
RESEARCH TOOLS
VANCOUVER CITATION AND STYLE GUIDES
Vancouver is a numbered referencing style commonly used in medicine and science, and consists of:
Citations to someone else's work in the text, indicated by the use of a number A sequentially numbered reference list at the end of the document providing full details of the corresponding in-text references.
It follows rules established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, now maintained by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. It is also known as Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals.
This guide is modeled on Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (2nd edition). You may wish to consult this source directly for additional information or examples.
Printing this guide: Please note that printing directly from pages in this guide may alter the citation formatting display. A printable document is available below. Note that this document is adapted from this online guide and does not contain all information and examples. Please use it in conjunction with the online guide which is more regularly updated.
Reference list: General notes
Please check with your faculty for any specific referencing or formatting requirements
References are listed in numerical order, and in the same order in which they are cited in text. The reference list appears at the end of the paper.
Begin your reference list on a new page and title it 'References'.
The reference list should include all and only those references you have cited in the text.
(However, do not include unpublished items such as correspondence.)
Use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).
Abbreviate journal titles in the style used in the NLM Catalog.
Check the reference details against the actual source - you are indicating that you have read a source when you cite it.
Be consistent with your referencing style across the document.
Example of a reference list
References
- O'Campo P, Dunn JR, editors. Rethinking social epidemiology: towards a science of change. Dordrecht: Springer; 2012. 348 p.
- Schiraldi GR. Post-traumatic stress disorder sourcebook: a guide to healing, recovery, and growth [Internet]. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2000 [cited 2019 Nov 6]. 446 p. Available from:McGraw-Hill(click to access)
- Halpen-Felsher BL, Morrell HE. Preventing and reducing tobacco use. In: Berlan ED, Bravender T, editors. Adolescent medicine today: a guide to caring for the adolescent patient [Internet]. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co.; 2012 [cited 2019 Nov 3]. Chapter 18. Available from:World Scientific Publishing(click to access)
- Stockhausen L, Turale S. An explorative study of Australian nursing scholars and contemporary scholarship. J Nurs Scholarsh [Internet]. 2011 Mar [cited 2019 Feb 19];43(1):89-96. Available from:ProQuest(click to access)
- Kanneganti P, Harris JD, Brophy RH, Carey JL, Lattermann C, Flanigan DC. The effect of smoking on ligament and cartilage surgery in the knee: a systematic review. Am J Sports Med [Internet]. 2012 Dec [cited 2019 Feb 19];40(12):2872-8. Available from:
- Subbarao M. Tough cases in carotid stenting [DVD]. Woodbury (CT): Cine-Med, Inc.; 2003. 1 DVD: sound, colour, 4 3/4 in
- Stem cells in the brain [television broadcast]. Catalyst. Sydney: ABC; 2009 Jun 25.
Referencing Appendices
Referencing your own appendices in your own text: Your appendix does not need to be referenced. It is enough to signpost it in the body of your work, for example: (See Appendix A).
If you created your own appendix, and you've cited references, then number the references within the appendix consecutively in sequence with your written text and include them in your reference list.
Referencing appendices not written by you:
If the appendix was not written by you then place the numbered citation, in sequence with the rest of the text, at the end of the appendix and include the full reference in your reference list.
Vancouver condensed guide 2020
CITATION MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research. AIIMS, Kalyani Library recommends Zoterowhich can be downloaded and used free of charge, for most users.
is a free web and desktop reference management application maintained by Elsevier. Its basic purpose and functionality is similar to RefWorks, but instead of tracking your citations in a web database, it saves citations locally on your computer, and makes your citations available from any computer by syncing. Mendeley works with Mac, PC, Linux, and Ubuntu systems.
PubMed Single Citation Matcher
Use this tool to find specific known PubMed citations.
The Citation Builder is developed by NC State University Libraries The Citation Builder can create Citations for you is based on the following citation manuals:
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American Psychological Association 6th edition
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Modern Language Association 7th edition
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Modern Language Association 8th edition
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Chicago Manual of Style 16th edition
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Council of Science Editors
WRITING AND PUBLSIHING TOOLS
This tools help to compose bold, clear, mistake-free writing with new AI-powered desktop Windows app.
This tool has a free Grammar Checker online.
Hemingway App makes your writing bold and clear. The app highlights lengthy, complex sentences and common errors; if you see a yellow sentence, shorten or split it
Slick Write is a powerful, free application that makes it easy to check your writing for grammar errors, potential stylistic mistakes, and other features of interest. Whether you're a blogger, novelist, SEO professional, or student writing an essay for school, Slick Write can help take your writing to the next level
PDFescape is the original online Free PDF editor & form filler.
PDFsam Basic is a free and open source solution for casual users. Split, merge, mix, extract pages and rotate PDF files
TOOLS FOR ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
Many people think of plagiarism as copying another's work or borrowing someone else's original ideas. But terms like "copying" and "borrowing" can disguise the seriousness of the offense:
According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to "plagiarise" means:
In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward
The Central Library has subscribed to Turnitin Feedback Studio for Plagarism Checking for assisting the Students, Faculties and Researchers in their research projects and writing research papers. For access and technical support, please contact Dr. Tandra Ghosh, Convener, Central Library.
Please refer to “ACADEMIC INTEGRITY AND RESEARCH QUALITY” (UGC Guideline)
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to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
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to use (another's production) without crediting the source
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to commit literary theft
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to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
TOOLS FOR ADVANCED STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
SPSS
The Central Library has purchased perpetual license to 15 Modules of IBM® SPSS® Statistics, which is a powerful statistical software platform. It offers a user-friendly interface and a robust set of features that lets your organization quickly extract actionable insights from your data. Advanced statistical procedures help ensure high accuracy and quality decision making. All facets of the analytics lifecycle are included, from data preparation and management to analysis and reporting. For access and technical support, please contact Dr. Tandra Ghosh, Convener, Central Library.
R (The R Project for Statistical Computing)
R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS.
jamovi provides a complete suite of analyses for (not just) the social sciences; t-tests, ANOVAs, correlation and regression, non-parametric tests, contingency tables, reliability and factor analysis. jamovi is a fully functional spreadsheet, immediately familiar to anyone. Enter, copy/paste data, filter rows, compute new values, perform transforms across many columns at once – jamovi provides a streamlined spreadsheet experience, optimised for statistical data. jamovi is built on top of the R statistical language, giving you access to the best the statistics community has to offer. would you like the R code for your analyses? jamovi can provide that too. jamovi will always be free and open - that's one of our core values - because jamovi is made by the scientific community, for the scientific community.
PSPP is a statistical analysis tool developed to be a free, open-source alternative to SPSS (which is now developed by IBM). Although not identical, it is similar in many respects, and allows one to work with file formats common to SPSS. Users can freely download PSPP from GNU.ORG SOFTWARE. Unlike SPSS, PSPP does not limit the number of cases or variables which you are able to use, nor will it require you to purchase add-ons to gain access to more advanced functions. As a fully functional statistical analysis program, it is capable of performing descriptive statistics, y-tests, linear regression, as well as non-parametric tests. Included in its basic design is the ability to perform analyses as quickly as possible, regardless of the volume of data entered. In addition, you have the option of using the program through its graphical user interface (GUI), or through the more traditional method of utilizing syntax commands. A PSPP Tutorial may be found at Click to access Tutorial
DATA ANALYSIS AND DATA VISUALISATION TOOLS
Tableau helps you make databases and spreadsheets understandable to all.
SciDAVis is a free application for Scientific Data Analysis and Visualization.
SciDAVis is a free interactive application aimed at data analysis and publication-quality plotting. It combines a shallow learning curve and an intuitive, easy-to-use graphical user interface with powerful features such as scriptability and extensibility. SciDAVis runs on GNU/Linux, Windows and MacOS X; possibly also on other platforms like *BSD, although this is untested.
SciDAVis is similar in its field of application to proprietary Windows applications like Origin and SigmaPlot as well as free applications like QtiPlot, Labplot and Gnuplot.
What sets SciDAVis apart from the above is its emphasis on providing a friendly and open environment (in the software as well as the project) for new and experienced users alike. Particularly, this means that we will try to provide good documentation on all levels, ranging from user’s manual over tutorials down to and including documentation of the internal APIs
FREE, open source and cross-platform Data Visualization and Analysis software accessible to everyone
Features : High-quality data visualization and plotting with few clicks, Reliable and easy data analysis and statistics, no coding required, Intuitive and fast computing with interactive notebooks, Effortless data extraction from images, Smooth data import and export to and from multiple formats
Gnuplot is a portable command-line driven graphing utility for Linux, OS/2, MS Windows, OSX, VMS, and many other platforms. The source code is copyrighted but freely distributed (i.e., you don't have to pay for it). It was originally created to allow scientists and students to visualize mathematical functions and data interactively, but has grown to support many non-interactive uses such as web scripting. It is also used as a plotting engine by third-party applications like Octave. Gnuplot has been supported and under active development since 1986.
draw.io is a free tool for online diagramming which is built for speed and simplicity. It features integration with a variety of collaborative platforms including Google Docs/Apps.
Cmap software is a result of research conducted at the Florida Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC). It empowers users to construct, navigate, share and criticize knowledge models represented as concept maps.
GLO Maker is an authoring tool for creating rich, interactive learning resources. It builds on the extensive experience of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) in Reusable Learning Objects. It focuses on good learning design and it provides powerful features in an easy-to-use interface.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Trello is a web-based project management tool where you can organize projects in a dashboard view, containing one or more project-oriented boards. Useful for organized task management, delegation, communication, and collaboration across teams.
WorkFlowy is a document-based organizational tool to collaborate on large team projects, take notes, write research papers or keep a journal.
DMPTool is a free software that can help you create data management plans for specific funding agencies.
Open Science Framework is an open source tool that allows management of multiple projects and provides a workflow that connects the entire research cycle.
JOURNAL FINDER TOOLS
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.
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.
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.
SOCIAL NETWORKING TOOLS 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.
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.
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.
COLLABORATIVE PLATFORMS
COS (Centre for Open Science) When you start a research project, it is a good idea to choose a platform at the very beginning that will allow you to collaborate and organize your research as well as share your data and research outputs. COS is a free and open source project management tool that supports researchers throughout their entire project lifecycle.
As a collaboration tool, COS helps research teams work on projects privately or make the entire project publicly accessible for broad dissemination. COS enables connections to the many products researchers already use, like Google Drive or other reference management tools streamlining their process and increasing efficiency as a workflow system.
Once you start your researcher career, it is important to create a unique identifier for yourself through ORCID. Researchers can use ORCID iDs to be uniquely identified and connected to their activities and contributions in order to increase the discoverability and recognition of their research with ORCID. You can connect your iD with your professional information — affiliations, grants, publications, peer review, and more.
GRAPHIC DESIGN, IMAGE EDITING AND E-CONTENT CREATION TOOLS
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software; you can change its source code and distribute your changes. Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customisation options and 3rd party plugins.
Inkscape is a free and open-source vector graphics editor used to create vector images, primarily in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. Other formats can be imported and exported.
Inkscape can render primitive vector shapes (e.g. rectangles, ellipses, polygons, arcs, spirals, stars and 3D boxes) and text. These objects may be filled with solid colours, patterns, and radial or linear colour gradients, and their borders may be stroked with adjustable transparency.
Embedding and optional tracing of raster graphics are also supported, enabling the editor to create vector graphics from photos and other raster sources. Designed shapes can be further manipulated with transformations, such as moving, rotating, scaling and skewing.
Scribus is free, open-source desktop publishing (DTP) software for most desktop operating systems. It is designed for layout, typesetting, and preparation of files for professional-quality image-setting equipment. Scribus can also create animated and interactive PDF presentations and forms.
The Scribus 1.4 series are the current stable releases, and the 1.5 series, where developments are made available in preparation for the next regular release series, version 1.6.
DALL·E 2 can create original, realistic images and art from a text description. It can combine concepts, attributes, and styles through AI.
CleanUp.pictures is a web application that lets you cleanup photos with a quick & simple interface. This program can remove any unwanted objects, defect, people or text from your pictures.
A comprehensive graphic design tool and photo editor is just one click away. Streamlined professional tool with everything you need to paint, design, edit photos or images and capture your imagination. Fully web-based with an intuitive user experience.
Photopea : Advanced Photo Editor
Photopea is a free online image editor, that runs without plugins. It can both read and save PSD files. PP can work with layer styles, masks, smart objects, text layers and more.Photopea is an alternative to Photoshop.
CHEMICAL STRUCTURE DRAWING SOFTWARE
ChemDraw is a molecule editor first developed in 1985 by David A. Evans and Stewart Rubenstein. The company was sold to PerkinElmer in the year 2011. ChemDraw, along with Chem3D and ChemFinder, is part of the ChemOffice suite and is available for Macintosh and Microsoft Windows.
ChemDraw Professional is a tool that allows users to draw chemical structures, reactions, biological objects, and pathways.
Users can also use it to predict properties and spectra, convert chemical structures to IUPAC names, view 3D designs, etc.
BKChem is a free (as in free software :o) chemical drawing program. It was conceived and written by Beda Kosata and is currently maintained by Reinis Danne.
BKChem is written in Python, an interpreted and very nice programming language. This implies some of the program features:
platform independence - BKChem should run on any platform that Python does.
performance - as Python is interpreted language you should not expect the performance of a native code compiled application (in present days a very cheap tradeoff for platform independence). However BKChem should be pretty usable on all modern systems.
JChemPaint (or JCP for short here) is the editor and viewer for 2D chemical structures developed using the Chemistry Development Kit (CDK). JChemPaint is computer software, a molecule editor and file viewer for chemical structures using 2D computer graphics. Free and open-source software is released under a GNU Lesser General Public License. It is written in Java and can run on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Unix operating systems.
EXPLORATION OF STRUCTURES IN 3D TOOLS
RasMol is a program for molecular graphics visualisation originally developed by Roger Sayle. This site is provided for the convenience of users of RasMol and developers of open source versions of RasMol. The site itself is provided courtesy of Bernstein + Sons. Maintenance of RasMol, much of the development, and integration of modifications provided by the community is done at the ARCiB project at RIT. For the convenience of contributors to the RasMol project, an open source collaborative development site is used
Jmol is a free, open source viewer of molecular structures useful for students, educators and researchers in chemistry, biochemistry and other fields dealing with molecular structure. It is cross-platform, running on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux/Unix systems.
Avogadro is an open source advanced molecule editor and visualizer designed for cross-platform use in computational chemistry, molecular modeling, bioinformatics, materials science, and related areas. It offers flexible high quality rendering and a powerful plugin architecture.
ORGANISATION AND TASK MANAGEMENT TOOLS
This tools help to remember everything and tackle any project with your notes, tasks, and schedule all in one place.It has Web-clipping and connect with Google calendar.
Instapaper save all of the interesting articles, videos, cooking recipes, song lyrics, or whatever else you come across while browsing. With one click, Instapaper lets you save, read, and manage the things you find on the Internet. nstapaper syncs the articles and videos you save so that they’re waiting for you on all your devices - iPhone, iPad, Android, or Kindle. You can read anything you save, anywhere and anytime you want, even offline!
TO-DO LIST TOOLS
A Tools to organize your day-to-day activities.
Toodledo is a set of incredibly powerful tools to increase your productivity and organize your life. More than just a to-do list, Toodledo provides you with a place to write long notes, make custom lists, create structured outlines and track your habits. You can collaborate with friends, family or your co-workers, and we'll safely store and sync all your data to your devices.
RESEARCH & INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
VIDWAN (Expert Database and National Researcher Network)
VIDWAN is the premier database of profiles of scientists / researchers and other faculty members working at leading academic institutions and other R & D organisation involved in teaching and research in India. It provides important information about expert's background, contact address, experience, scholarly publications, skills and accomplishments, researcher identity, etc. The database developed and maintained by Information and Library Network Centre (INFLIBNET) with financial support from the National Mission on Education through ICT (NME-ICT). The database would be instrumental in selection of panels of experts for various committees, taskforce, established by the Ministries / Govt. establishments for monitoring and evaluation purposes.
EBM Calculators
This calculator can determine diagnostic test characteristics (sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios) and/or determine the post-test probability of disease given given the pre-test probability and test characteristics. Given sample sizes, confidence intervals are also computed.
Diagnostic Tests
The site is produced by the American Association for Clinical Chemistry.
Calculators
