Speaker 1: The first PhD essential you need is a reference manager. You've got two options. You've got Mendeley and you've got Zotero. Mendeley or Zotero, Mendeley or Zotero. Now, when I was doing my PhD, I was really sort of like in the Mendeley camp. But now that I've been doing loads of AI tool experimentation, I found that actually there is a lot more support for Zotero than there is Mendeley. So, if you are thinking about using a load of AI tools in your research, consider using Zotero because it has better support. But if that isn't important to you and you just enjoy good old-fashioned, useful software, Mendeley is a fantastic option for you. I used it all the way through my PhD. Both are fine, but Zotero at the moment, I think I'd lean to because of the AI support. The second PhD essential you need is an AI toolkit. I love AI tools. It wouldn't be a video on this channel without talking about AI tools, but I have a new course. This course, Become a Master Academic Writer with AI Apps, and it talks about producing an AI toolkit that is all about you, what you need, and I give you all of the options for each part of the AI toolkit. That AI toolkit includes something for searching, something for mapping, something for reading papers, something for multi-document chat, and something for writing and editing your thesis or papers, and just general AI advice about using AI in academia. But here's a speed run through all of the important sort of tools that I think I would use in this modern PhD environment. Once I've found some papers I'd like, I start mapping them in something like Litmaps. You can also use Research Rabbit or Connected Papers, but Litmaps is my favorite at the moment. You create a map from a seed paper and you can visualize how all of that comes together. I love it. Then I wanna chat with specific documents. I don't have time for reading from beginning to end everything that I've found, so I would use something like SySpace. I'd go to my library and I'd look in and see, look, look at all of these things that I've just found out about. Sex tips, yes please. Then if I want to talk to a load of different documents, I would use DocAnalyzer.ai. I've tested a load of them. This one is the best if you want to upload a load of PDFs and chat across all of them. Really love it. Go check it out. The last thing I would use is like an editor to make sure that all of my academic writing is tasty to the eyes. So here, writeful.com. It makes your writing better. Try it out. So that's how I speed run through all of the apps that you should use, but remember to go check out my course because it's got a deep dive into all of the different areas for building up an AI toolkit for academia and research. I think you'll love it. The link is in the description. Let's get old school for a moment. You need a notebook and a pen, and I think you need two types. First of all, you need the traditional massive big notebook that goes with you when you're at the university or in your office or you take it home with you. It's the big one that's like really annoying to sort of carry around, but it has all of your thoughts, all of your opinions, all of your sort of like understandings as you go through your PhD in the sciences. It's all of your results. It's all of the experiments you've done. It's your experimental notebook. It's all of the sort of like ideas that you have. It's all of the weird diagrams and sort of like scratchings of an insane person into paper, but there's another sort that I see people use, and I think it's just so powerful. I did it, and that is using something like PocketMod. It's really simple. All you do is print off a PocketMod, and you cut it up, and it fits into your wallet. Brilliant, and then when you're out and about and you have that sort of like amazing idea, don't rely on your brain to remember it. Trust me, I've been doing this for years. Do not rely on your brain for remembering stuff. It is there for creativity, and therefore, as soon as you have this creative idea, write it down quickly, and I carry with me this little collection of tools all the time, and on it, I have a little pen, pink, and this little pen here is what I use to capture those little tiny thoughts, and I write it down on a piece of paper, or even better, a little PocketMod that you print off, and then you can transfer those sort of like inspirational ideas that you've had while you've been out walking in the forest or whatever you do on a weekend, and then you can put it into your notebook or into a Notion file for those that are a little bit more up to date with the tech world. Put it into whatever note-taking thing that you've got, but having something immediately available to you for writing down that doesn't rely on the internet is just so powerful. I've seen really successful professors do it, and you should do it too. The fifth PhD essential is a mentor, a mentor that you can speak to. Now, this mentor does not have to be in your research field. In fact, I would argue that it's better that this mentor is outside your research field, and that's because you need to be able to go to them and not have them think about the research, but rather the over sort of arcing issues that you're having and how to solve them. If they're in the same research field, in my experience, they just go to the sort of like nitty gritty of the solution to a very specific thing, but if you have a mentor that's an academic, say outside of your field, that is closely related, I had one that was in the biomedical sciences, and I was a chemist, they were able to look at your experience and say, yes, this is normal in academia, this is what I did, or no, this is completely outrageous and you need to do something else, which is what someone told me once, one of the mentors. So, yeah, get yourself a mentor. A lot of universities do offer mentoring programs. I know Flinders University, where I was, had a mentoring program for early career researchers. If you don't have one, really pressure the research office for creating one because it is just such a valuable resource, and I gained a lot from it. Check out this little resource. I love the Academic Phrasebook, and it's by Manchester University. So it's phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk, and here we've got all of the words and phrases that you need to make sure that you're talking about your work in an academically appropriate manner. So here, homepage, at the top here, we've got introducing work, referring to sources, describing methods, reporting results, discussing findings, writing conclusions. So if you're having an issue and you're having a brain fart and you can't quite work out what to write down, go here, describing methods. Here you can see that you've got describing previous use research methods. I click here, and then you've got all of these word banks in here. One thing I love doing with this is taking these, for example, putting them into ChatGPT and say, hey, using some of these, or a combination of the phrases here, talk about my results in a better way. It's a great way of refining your academic writing, but also giving you the ability to have multiple drafts directed by this phrasebook. Super brilliant, and yeah, you've got everything you really need in here. So bookmark this page. I'll put the link in the description because if you're just not sure, head here, do it. Every researcher, I think, should be on a social platform for researchers. There's two of them that I recommend. ResearchGate, ResearchGate is just brilliant. Everyone that I know is on there. It allows you to discover research, connect with the scientific community, measure your impact, and everything else. Also, I love it that you can go on there and be like, hey, I need to find this paper, can you help me? Normally, people are like, yes, here is my paper, which I absolutely love. Another one is academia.edu. Academia.edu, I've not really used very much, but I know it's got a really great following. I know that you can get all of these PDFs. I know people love it. So either one of those is a fantastic resource to be on because let's face it, academia can be pretty lonely and pretty boring, and therefore, you should consider joining something like this where you can at least go on and sort of say, my supervisor is a massive pain in the ass, help me, and normally, people are very, very understanding because a PhD in research has its own sort of challenges that you have to have experienced to provide support, and that's what this is all about. Really love it. Cloud storage. I have heard so many horror stories of people losing their thesis, their papers, their posters, all of the important data because their computer died. Back up, back up, back up. I do not want to hear about any subscriber on this channel losing their stuff. So make sure you have not just one, but two, if not three places where you store your data. Do a regular backup. Make sure it's on your computer. Make sure it's on a laptop, on a hard drive, and on a cloud storage device. Back when I was doing my PhD, cloud storage devices weren't really a thing, or they were very expensive, but I heard of someone who had their hard drive sat next to their computer, and the IT guy came in and formatted that hard drive with their entire PhD on. That is terrifying to me. Do not let it happen to you. Back up, back up, back up. Why do universities love open plan offices? I absolutely despise them. And you know they're not very good because people in power don't have open plan offices. They have their own ones tucked away because that's what actually is conducive to proper work, deep thinking, and you collaborate in the tea room, in conferences, not in this noisy environment where someone in the corner is talking about what they did on the weekend. Oi, shut up. So, what you need is a good set of headphones. I don't care which ones. I'm not going to use an affiliate deal, but I just love having headphones, and I use mynoise.net to get white noise, and I, yeah, have really, really benefited in these open plan modern environments that are not conducive to deep work for using these, making sure I can block out noise with white noise. These and over the head earphones, I don't know if I've got them here, here they are. Really old pair, but I love them. So, make sure you get yourself a good set of earphones if you're in an open plan office because it is a nightmare. I don't know why they do it. Stop making open plan offices. If you like this video, I think you'll like this one. Go check out the 12 free AI tools that are absolutely essential for your research. Go check it out.