Last week we discussed Papers, which is a well-known reference manager used by many academics. Today I am focusing on what might be the most well-known reference manager – EndNote. Thomson Reuters’ EndNote is often available free through Universities. And if you have this opportunity, you should definitely take advantage of it!  If you want [...]

In my last post on reference managers I discussed Mendeley, a well-established reference manager and the one I’m most familiar with. Today I am going to tell you about ReadCube, a more recent addition to the referencing software market brought to you from Labtiva. ReadCube was created by two Harvard students, Siniša Hrvatin and Robert [...]

My previous posts on reference mangers have discussed Mendeley and ReadCube. Today I will be discussing Papers, the reference manager I first encountered and the one favoured by many academics, including my PhD supervisor. For anyone who is a fan of Apple products, Papers is likely to be the software you are most familiar with. [...]

In this series of posts we are discussing the features of popular reference managers.  This post covers Mendeley, one of the most established reference managers.  I have a special fondness for Mendeley as it is the software that I used to organise all my literature during my PhD. Mendeley is a free reference manager program [...]

The internet has provided us with simpler and quicker access to the latest research published in science, allowing us to view and download articles to keep for future reference. But how do you manage to keep such a mountain of papers organised, ensuring that you can easily find that paper you read the other week [...]

You’ve carefully collected your samples, extracted nucleic acids and made your first set of next-generation sequencing libraries. How are you going to know if the data you get back is any good and whether it will be worth the effort in learning how to do the analysis? Who is to blame? Fortunately, there are several [...]

There is no such thing as “junk” DNA Until recently, vast areas of the genome had been denounced as “junk” DNA, because they do not encode proteins. However, it has become clear that these regions have a large diversity of other functions, from transcriptional and translational regulation to the protection of genes and genome integrity. [...]

Scientists publish with the expectation that others will take their work on board to discuss it, validate it and build upon it in future publications. Unfortunately, a common mindset is that once a paper is out the door and printed, the hard work is finally done. Only the hard work is actually just beginning. To [...]

Recently we’ve seen some great apps (here and here) that can be added to a scientist’s iPhone/iPad toolbox. In this next installment of iOS Apps for Scientists, let’s take a look at 5 free apps, including a couple which bring dozens of useful references under one “umbrella”, some tools to use while in the lab [...]

For those of you who read the previous post about LaTeX and are interested in giving it a go, but just don’t know where to start, this article should get you on your feet. I used LaTeX to write my thesis and was (mostly) self taught, so I know how scary it is to begin [...]