Software started in university aisles and, as such, a lot of software today is academic software. Software programs make researchers' work more efficient and competitive. Here are the five best software tools that can help academics especially in their data-based and authoring practices. Note that all these tools integrate with Authorea - the collaborative word processor for academics.
1. Github
Fourteen million software developers use Github to collaborate and maintain code repositories. Although originally designed for professional developers, Github has now
expanded to the classroom. Authorea is also
based on git, so integration between the two platforms is as easy as clicking a button. This feature allows researchers to work offline and provides access to version controls via Github.
Read more about Authorea Github Integration here: Syncing articles to GitHub2. Plotly
Academics and researchers use Plotly to analyze and to visualize plots and graphs. Plotly generates graphs in a variety of formats. Many of these also have interactive online capabilities. Authorea
integrated with Plotly so researchers can create and access interactive graphs.
3. Jupyter Notebooks (IPython notebooks)
Jupyter is a virtual lab environment that contains mathematics, plots, rich media, text, and code. Instructors across academia use Jupyter to conduct research and easily inspect rerun analyses. Authorea is
integrated with Jupyter notebooks so that collaborators can create data-rich manuscripts.
4. Authorea
Authorea itself is one of the best tools to write academic papers in collaboration. You may think of it as a Google Docs for academia. Google Docs is the most widely used collaborative editor in the world. Despite its prevalence, it lacks many features for citation management, math, LaTeX, and version control. Authorea makes it easy to import any Google Doc directly into Authorea by simply copying and pasting the URL of the document you wish to import.