25+ Dissertation & Thesis Writing Apps
Contributors: Derek Jansen (MBA), Kerryn Warren (PhD) & David Phair (PhD) | May 2024
Here, we’ll share with you a wide range of apps, software and services that will make your life a little easier throughout the research process. While these apps can save you a lot of time, remember that your dissertation or thesis needs to be your own work – no tool should be doing the writing on your behalf. Also, be sure to check your university’s policy regarding AI-based tools and support before using any apps, tools or software.
Overview: Dissertation & Thesis Apps
- Literature review
- Data collection
- Qualitative data analysis
- Quantitative data analysis
- Writing & Plagiarism
- Project management
- Reference management
- Honourable mentions
Literature Review & Search Apps
The following apps and tools can help you discover, analyse, and synthesise scholarly materials, significantly streamlining the literature review process.
Scite AI – Find & evaluate sources
The Scite AI app uses ‘Smart Citations’ to show how academic papers are discussed—i.e., supported, contradicted, or mentioned. This can help you fast-track the literature review process and source highly relevant papers quickly.
Petal – Chat with your literature
Petal is an AI-driven tool that revolutionises your interaction with documents by enabling direct, context-aware conversations. Upload an article and it will swiftly summarise its contents and allow you to ask questions about the specific study (or studies).
Consensus – ChatGPT for academia
The Consensus app uses a powerful AI engine to connect you to over 200 million scientific papers. It allows precise searches and efficiently summarises key research findings. PS – Get 40% off Consensus Premium by using the coupon code GRADCOACH40.
Litmaps – Visualise related papers
This app is great for quickly identifying relevant research. For any given keyword or resource, it will provide you with a visual citation network, showing how studies are interconnected. This reveals both direct and tangential connections to other research, highlighting gaps and key discussions within your field.
Connected Papers – An alternative
Similar to Litmaps, Connected Papers visually maps academic research, simplifying how you explore related studies. Just input a paper, and it charts connections, helping identify key literature and gaps. It’s ideal for staying updated on emerging research.
Elicit – An “AI research assistant”
Another AI-powered tool, Elicit automates the discovery, screening, and data extraction from academic papers efficiently. This makes it useful for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, as it allows you to focus on deeper analysis across various fields.
Data Collection & Preparation
These apps and tools can assist you in terms of collecting and organising both qualitative and quantitative data for your dissertation or thesis.
SurveyMonkey – Simple surveys
SurveyMonkey is a versatile tool for creating and distributing surveys. It simplifies collecting and analysing data, helping you craft surveys that generate reliable results. Well suited for the vast majority of postgraduate research projects.
Qualtrics – An alternative
Qualtrics is a comprehensive survey tool with advanced creation, distribution, and analysis capabilities. It supports complex survey designs and robust data analysis, making it ideal for gathering detailed insights and conducting high-quality research.
Otter – Easy draft transcription
Otter is an AI-powered transcription tool that converts spoken words into text. It captures and transcribes lectures, interviews, and meetings in real time. Naturally, it’s not 100% accurate (you’ll need to verify), but it can certainly save you some time.
Qualitative Data Analysis
These software packages can help you organise and analyse qualitative data for your dissertation, thesis or research project.
NVivo – All-in-one qual platform
NVivo is a powerful qualitative data analysis software that facilitates data organisation, coding, and analysis. It supports a wide range of data types and methodologies, enabling detailed analysis and helping you extract rich insights from your data.
MaxQDA – QDA simplified
MAXQDA is a robust qualitative data analysis software that helps you systematically organise, evaluate, and interpret complex datasets. A little easier to get started with than NVivo, it’s ideal for first-time dissertation and thesis writers.
ATLAS.ti – For large datasets
ATLAS.ti offers robust tools for organising, coding, and examining diverse materials such as text, graphics, and multimedia. It’s well-suited for researchers aiming to weave detailed, data-driven narratives as it streamlines complex analysis tasks efficiently.
Delve – An intuitive interface
Delve is an intuitive qualitative data analysis tool designed to streamline the qualitative analysis process. Ideal for dissertations, Delve simplifies the process from initial data organisation to in-depth analysis, helping you efficiently manage and interpret complex datasets for clearer insights.
Quantitative (Statistical) Data Analysis
These software packages can help you organise and analyse quantitative (statistical) data for your dissertation, thesis or research project.
Julius – Your “AI data analyst”
Julius is an AI-powered data analysis tool that simplifies the process of analysing and visualising data for academic research. It allows you to “chat” with your data, create graphs, build forecasting models, and generate comprehensive analyses.
IBM SPSS – The “old faithful”
The OG of statistical analysis software, SPSS is ideal for students handling quantitative data in their dissertations and theses. It simplifies complex statistical testing, data management, and graphical representation, helping you derive robust insights.
R Studio – For the data wizards
While admittedly a little intimidating at first, R is a versatile software for statistical computing. It’s well-suited for quantitative dissertations and theses, offering a wide range of packages and robust community support to streamline your work.
STATA – For the data scientists
Stata is yet another comprehensive statistical software widely used for data management, statistical analysis, and graphical representation. It can efficiently handle large datasets and perform advanced statistical analyses.
Writing Improvement & Plagiarism Tools
These apps and tools can help enhance your writing and proactively identify potential plagiarism issues.
Grammarly – Improve your writing
Grammarly is a writing assistant that can help enhance academic writing by checking for errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation in real time. It also features a plagiarism detection system, helping you to proactively avoid academic misconduct.
Jenni – An AI “writing assistant”
Jenni AI helps you draft, cite, and edit with ease, streamlining the writing process and tackling writer’s block. Well suited for ESL students and researchers, Jenni helps ensure that your work is both precise, clear and grammatically sound.
Quillbot – Paraphrasing simplified
Quillbot is yet another AI-powered writing tool that can help streamline the writing process. Specifically, it can assist with paraphrasing, correcting grammar, and improving clarity and flow. It also features a citation generator and plagiarism checker.
Quetext – Solid plagiarism checking
Quetext is a plagiarism detection tool that helps ensure the originality of your academic work. It cross-references your documents against extensive online databases to highlight potential plagiarism and generate detailed reports.
Project & Time Management
These apps can help you plan your research project and manage your time, so that you can work as efficiently as possible.
GanttPro – PM simplified
An intuitive project management tool, GanttPro simplifies planning and tracking for dissertations or theses. It offers detailed Gantt charts to visualise task timelines, dependencies, and progress, helping you ensure timely completion of each section.
Trello – Drag-and-drop PM
Trello is a versatile project management tool that helps you organise your dissertation or thesis process effectively. By creating boards for each chapter or section, you can track progress, set deadlines, and coordinate tasks efficiently.
Toggl – Make every minute count
A user-friendly time-tracking app that helps you manage your research project effectively. With Toggl, you can precisely track how much time you spend on specific tasks. This will help you avoid distractions and stay on track throughout your journey.
Reference Management
These apps and tools will help you keep your academic resources well organised and ensure that your citations and references are perfectly formatted, every time.
Mendeley – Your citations, sorted
Mendeley is your go-to reference management tool that simplifies academic writing by keeping your sources neatly organised. Perfect for dissertations and theses, it lets you easily store, search, and cite your resources directly in MS Word.
Zotero – Great for Google Docs
Zotero is a free-to-use reference manager that ensures your sources are well-organised and flawlessly cited. It helps you collect, organise, and cite your research sources seamlessly. A great alternative to Mendeley if you’re using Google Docs.
Endnote – A paid option
Yet another reference management option, Endnote is sometimes specifically required by universities. It efficiently organises and stores research materials, making citation and bibliography creation (largely) effortless.
Honourable Mentions
Now that we’ve covered the more “exciting” dissertation apps and tools, it’s worth quickly making one or two mundane but essential mentions before we wrap up.
You’ll need a reliable word processor.
In terms of word processors, Microsoft Word will likely be your go-to, but it’s not the only option. If you don’t have a license for Word, you can certainly consider using Google Docs, which is completely free. Zotero offers a direct integration with Google Docs, making it easy to manage your citations and references. If you want to go to the other extreme, you can consider LaTeX, a professional typesetting software often used in academic documents.
You’ll need cloud storage.
The number of times we’ve seen students lose hours, days or even weeks’ worth of hard work (and even miss the submission deadline) due to corrupted flash drives or hard drives, coffee-soaked laptops, or stolen computers is truly saddening. If you’re not using cloud storage to save your work, you’re running a major risk. Go sign up for any of the following cloud services (most offer a free version) and save your work there:
- Dropbox
- Google Drive
- OneDrive
- iCloud Drive
Not only will this ensure your work is always safely stored (remember to hit the Save button, though!), but it will make working on multiple devices easier, as your files will be automatically synchronised. No need to have multiple versions between your desktop, laptop, tablet, etc. Everything stays in one place. Safe, secure, happy files.
Key Takeaways: Dissertation & Thesis Apps
And there you have it – a hearty selection of apps, software and services that will undoubtedly make your life easier come dissertation time.
To recap, we’ve covered tools across a range of categories:
- Literature review
- Data collection
- Qualitative data analysis
- Quantitative data analysis
- Writing & Plagiarism
- Project management
- Reference management
- Honourable mentions
Remember, while these apps can help optimise your dissertation or thesis writing journey, you still need to put in the work. Be sure to carefully review your university’s rules and regulations regarding what apps and tools you can use – especially anything AI-related.
Have a suggestion? We’d love to hear your thoughts. Simply leave a comment below and we’ll consider adding your suggested app to the list.
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It seems some of the apps mentioned are not android capable. It would be nice if you mentioned items that everyone could use.
Thanks for the feedback, Gale!
Yet to explore some of your recommended apps. I am glad to commend on one app that I have started using, Mendeley. When it comes to referencing it really helps a lot.
Great to hear that, Maggie 🙂
Nice
I have got Mendeley and it is fantastic. I have equally downloaded Freemind but I am yet to really understand how to navigate through it.
Based on your YouTube lessons,my literature review and the entire research has been simplified and I am enjoying the flow now,more than ever before.
Thank you so much for your recommendations and guide.It’s working a great deal for me.
Remain blessed!
Thank you for all the amazing help and tutorials. I am in the dissertation research proposal stage having already defended the qualifying paper. I am going to implement some of your advice as I revise chapters 1 & 2 and expand chapter 3 for my research proposal. My question is about the writing– or specifically which software would you recommend. I know MS Word can get glitchy with larger documents. Do the “reference” apps you recommend work with other options such as LaTeX? I understand that for some programs the citations won’t be integrated or automated such as cite while you write etc.. I have a paid version of endnote, and free versions of mendeley and zotero. I have really only used endnote with any fidelity but I’m willing to adapt. What would you advise at this point?
Hi Mikael
Thanks for your comment and for the kind words – glad to hear that the info is useful.
Generally, Word works reasonably well for most research projects and is our first recommendation. As long as one keeps the document clean (i.e. doesn’t paste in loads of different styles, ultra high-res images, etc), it works fine. But I understand that it’s not perfect for absolutely huge projects.
Regarding referencing with Latex, this article covers how to use Mendeley with Latex – https://blog.mendeley.com/2011/10/25/howto-use-mendeley-to-create-citations-using-latex-and-bibtex/. Perhaps it will be useful. I hesitate to tell you to adopt software X or Y, or to move from Endnote, as each software has its strengths and weaknesses, and performs better in certain contexts. I’m not familiar with your context, so it’s not possible for me to advise responsibly. Mendeley works well for the vast majority of our students, but if there’s a very specific bit of functionality that draws you to Endnote, then it may be best to stick with it. My generic advice would be to give Mendeley a try with some sample references and see if it has the functionality you need.
I hope this helps! Best of luck with your research 🙂
Thank you for your amazing articles and tips. I have MAC laptop, so would Zotero be as good as Mendeley? Thank you
Derek would you share with me your email please, I need to talk to you urgently.
I need a free Turnitin tool for checking plagiarism as for the tools above
I have been going crazy trying to keep my work polished and thesis or dissertation friendly. My mind said there had to be a better way to do literature reviews. Thank God for these applications. Look out world I am on my way.
Thanks
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Thank you for sharing valuable information. It’s very helpful.