Apps & Tools
25+ Dissertation & Thesis Writing Apps
Everything you need to optimize your research journey
The 30-second summary
There’s no shortcut through a dissertation, but these 25+ apps take some of the grind out of it.
- Scite, Consensus, Litmaps and Elicit help you find papers and see how they connect.
- SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics for surveys; Otter for draft transcription you’ll check by hand.
- NVivo, MAXQDA and ATLAS.ti for qualitative work; SPSS, R and Stata for statistics.
- Grammarly and Quillbot for clarity, Quetext for plagiarism, Zotero for citations.
- GanttPro and Trello for planning, Toggl for tracking your hours.
The writing has to stay yours, and check your university’s AI policy. Whatever else you skip, use cloud storage.
Navigate
Completing your dissertation or thesis requires a hearty investment of time, effort and hard work. There’s no shortcut on the road to research success, but as with anything, there are ways to optimize the process and work smarter.
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.
Literature review & search apps
The following apps and tools can help you discover, analyze, and synthesize 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 relevant papers.
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Petal – chat with your literature
Petal is an AI-driven tool that revolutionizes your interaction with documents by enabling direct, context-aware conversations. Upload an article and it will swiftly summarize its contents and allow you to ask questions about the specific study (or studies).
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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 summarizes key research findings. PS – Get 40% off Consensus Premium by using the coupon code GRADCOACH40.
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Litmaps – visualize 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, directly and tangentially.
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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.
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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.
Access nowData collection & preparation
These apps and tools can assist you in terms of collecting and organizing 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 analyzing data, helping you craft surveys that generate reliable results. Well suited for the vast majority of postgraduate research projects.
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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.
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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.
Access nowQualitative data analysis
These software packages can help you organize and analyze 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 organization, 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.
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MaxQDA – QDA simplified
MAXQDA is a robust qualitative data analysis software that helps you systematically organize, evaluate, and interpret complex datasets. A little easier to get started with than NVivo, it’s ideal for first-time dissertation and thesis writers.
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ATLAS.ti – for large datasets
ATLAS.ti offers robust tools for organizing, 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.
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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 organization to in-depth analysis, helping you efficiently manage and interpret complex datasets for clearer insights.
Access nowQuantitative (statistical) data analysis
These software packages can help you organize and analyze 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 analyzing and visualizing data for academic research. It allows you to “chat” with your data, create graphs, build forecasting models, and generate comprehensive analyses.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Access nowWriting 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Access nowProject & 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 visualize task timelines, dependencies, and progress, helping you ensure timely completion of each section.
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Trello – drag-and-drop PM
Trello is a versatile project management tool that helps you organize your dissertation or thesis process effectively. By creating boards for each chapter or section, you can track progress, set deadlines, and coordinate tasks efficiently.
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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.
Access nowReference management
These apps and tools will help you keep your academic resources well organized 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 organized. Perfect for dissertations and theses, it lets you easily store, search, and cite your resources directly in MS Word.
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Zotero – great for Google Docs
Zotero is a free-to-use reference manager that ensures your sources are well-organized and flawlessly cited. It helps you collect, organize, and cite your research sources seamlessly. A great alternative to Mendeley if you’re using Google Docs.
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Endnote – a paid option
Yet another reference management option, Endnote is sometimes specifically required by universities. It efficiently organizes and stores research materials, making citation and bibliography creation (largely) effortless.
Access nowHonourable 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 synchronized. No need to have multiple versions between your desktop, laptop, tablet, etc. Everything stays in one place. Safe, secure, happy files.