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12 Jun 2018 | Joshua Pearce (/users/jmpearce) | 256 | 3 comments

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7 open source tools to make literature reviews easy | Opensource.com https://opensource.com/article/18/6/open-source-literature-review-tools

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A good literature review is critical for academic research in any field, whether it is
for a research article, a critical review for coursework, or a dissertation. In a
recent article, I presented detailed steps for doing a literature review using open
source software (http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=23&n=8).

The following is a brief summary of seven free and open source software tools
described in that article that will make your next literature review much easier.

Most literature reviews are accomplished by graduate students working in

research labs in universities. For absurd reasons, graduate students often have
the worst computers on campus. They are often old, slow, and clunky Windows
machines that have been discarded and recycled from the undergraduate
computer labs. Installing a flavor of GNU Linux (https://opensource.com/article
/18/1/new-linux-computers-classroom) will breathe new life into these outdated
PCs. There are more than 100 distributions (https://distrowatch.com/), all of
which can be downloaded and installed for free on computers. Most popular
Linux distributions come with a "try-before-you-buy" feature. For example, with
Ubuntu you can make a bootable USB stick (https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutorial
/tutorial-create-a-usb-stick-on-windows#0) that allows you to test-run the Ubuntu
desktop experience without interfering in any way with your PC configuration. If
you like the experience, you can use the stick to install Ubuntu on your machine
permanently.

Linux distributions generally come with a free web browser, and the most popular
is Firefox (https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/). Two Firefox plugins that
are particularly useful for literature reviews are Unpaywall and Zotero. Keep
reading to learn why.

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Often one of the hardest parts of a literature review is gaining access to the
papers you want to read for your review. The unintended consequence of
copyright restrictions and paywalls is it has narrowed access to the peer-
reviewed literature to the point that even Harvard University is challenged
(https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-
publishers-prices) to pay for it. Fortunately, there are a lot of open access articles
—about a third of the literature is free (and the percentage is growing).
Unpaywall (https://unpaywall.org/) is a Firefox plugin that enables researchers to
click a green tab on the side of the browser and skip the paywall on millions of
peer-reviewed journal articles. This makes finding accessible copies of articles
much faster that searching each database individually. Unpaywall is fast, free,
and legal, as it accesses many of the open access sites that I covered in my
paper on using open source in lit reviews (http://www.academia.edu/36709736
/How_to_Perform_a_Literature_Review_with_Free_and_Open_Source_Software).

Formatting references is the most tedious of academic tasks. Zotero

(https://www.zotero.org/) can save you from ever doing it again. It operates as an
Android app, desktop program, and a Firefox plugin (which I recommend). It is a
free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research. It
replaces the functionality of proprietary packages such as RefWorks, Endnote,
and Papers for zero cost. Zotero can auto-add bibliographic information directly
from websites. In addition, it can scrape bibliographic data from PDF files. Notes
can be easily added on each reference. Finally, and most importantly, it can
import and export the bibliography databases in all publishers' various formats.
With this feature, you can export bibliographic information to paste into a
document editor for a paper or thesis—or even to a wiki for dynamic collaborative
literature reviews (see tool #7 for more on the value of wikis in lit reviews).

Your thesis or academic article can be written conventionally with the free office
suite LibreOffice (https://www.libreoffice.org/), which operates similarly to

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Microsoft's Office products but respects your freedom. Zotero has a word
processor plugin to integrate directly with LibreOffice. LibreOffice is more than
adequate for the vast majority of academic paper writing.

If LibreOffice is not enough for your layout needs, you can take your paper
writing one step further with LaTeX (https://www.latex-project.org/), a high-quality
typesetting system specifically designed for producing technical and scientific
documentation. LaTeX is particularly useful if your writing has a lot of equations
in it. Also, Zotero libraries can be directly exported to BibTeX files for use with
LaTeX.

If you want to leverage the open source way to get help with your literature
review, you can facilitate a dynamic collaborative literature review
(https://www.academia.edu/1861756/Open_Source_Research_in_Sustainability).
A wiki is a website that allows anyone to add, delete, or revise content directly
using a web browser. MediaWiki (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki) is
free software that enables you to set up your own wikis.

Researchers can (in decreasing order of complexity): 1) set up their own

research group wiki with MediaWiki, 2) utilize wikis already established at their
universities (e.g., Aalto University (http://wiki.aalto.fi)), or 3) use wikis dedicated
to areas that they research. For example, several university research groups that
focus on sustainability (including mine (http://www.appropedia.org
/Category:MOST)) use Appropedia (http://www.appropedia.org
/Welcome_to_Appropedia), which is set up for collaborative solutions on
sustainability, appropriate technology, poverty reduction, and permaculture.

Using a wiki makes it easy for anyone in the group to keep track of the status of
and update literature reviews (both current and older or from other researchers).
It also enables multiple members of the group to easily collaborate on a literature

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review asynchronously. Most importantly, it enables people outside the research

group to help make a literature review more complete, accurate, and up-to-date.

Free and open source software can cover the entire lit review toolchain, meaning
there's no need for anyone to use proprietary solutions. Do you use other libre
tools for making literature reviews or other academic work easier? Please let us
know your favorites in the comments.

Topics : Tools (/tags/tools) Education (/tags/education)

Joshua Pearce
(/users Joshua Pearce - Dr. Joshua Pearce is cross appointed as a Professor in the
/jmpearce) Materials Science & Engineering and the Electrical & Computer Engineering at
Michigan Tech. He currently runs the Michigan Tech in Open Sustainability
Technology (MOST) group. He is the author of the Open Source Lab. His
research focuses on open and applied sustainability, which is the application of
science and innovation to ensure a better quality of life for all, now and into the
future, in a just and equitable manner, whilst...

• More about me (/users/jmpearce)

Family learning and Family learning and Person reading a book

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Greg P Greg Pittman (/users/greg-p) on 12 Jun 2018 1
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Troy Troy on 14 Jun 2018 0

I would also suggest taking a look at Hypothes.is. This is a web annotation tool. Great for
keeping track of annotations from a variety of sources. Also allows tagging. Plus, groups.

Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)

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