best way to read research papers on ipad

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Using the iPad Pro as a tool for science

By DUY PHAN | November 3, 2016

BRETT JORDAN/CC-BY-2.0 The iPad Pro can be a great way to keep track of lab notes and papers.

Nevertheless, given that Brainwave is a science-focused column, I will review the iPad Pro not so much as an entertainment or educational device but rather as a device for academic scientists.

First, let me get some of the obvious negatives out right away. You are not going to use your iPad Pro to do your heaviest scientific computing. Again, the iPad Pro is not a laptop replacement. I still felt way more comfortable using my computer to store figures, write papers and analyze pictures. Simply put, the iPad will not replace a computer for doing research.

On the other hand, one of the greatest achievements of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is that it has finally made it worthwhile to read a paper using a tablet. The screen is absolutely gorgeous. I have tried to use other iPads in the past to read and take notes, but I always found the screen way too small.

Having a gigantic screen dramatically improved my reading experience, particularly when coupled with the fantastic Apple Pencil to take digital notes. Gone are the days of printing out stacks of paper that pile up on my desk. Now, all of the papers with their digital notes are saved on my iPad, which can be seamlessly synchronized to my MacBook Pro and iPhone via iCloud.

Speaking of notes, the Notability app and the iPad Pro are the perfect marriage. They were made for each other.

Having the Notability app on my iPad revolutionized the lab notebook experience. Often, it is very difficult to organize a lab notebook so that it is easy to go back and trace the sequence of experiments, especially if the experiments went on for weeks and months.

The iPad Pro and Notability changed all of that. Writing on the spacious iPad screen felt amazing. Notability allowed me to neatly organize my notes in a way that was very easy to keep track of what I was doing. For example, I can create different folders in Notability. Each folder contains experiments pertinent to one specific project.

Now, every project involves multiple experiments. So, each new “note” in a folder is a specific experiment. For each new day that I start a new step in the experiment, I simply just continue writing on the same note. And of course, all of these notes can be synchronized across my Apple devices, and they can be shared electronically for others in the lab to access my notes.

In short, the iPad Pro won’t be able to generate or analyze raw data. But what it can do is provide a very good experience for reading scientific papers and will make it easier to keep an organized lab notebook.

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• GoodReader Robust PDF reader with advanced annotating capabilities, excellent file manager, text file reader and editor, audio/video player, Safari-like viewer for MS Office and iWorks files. Syncs with Google Docs, Dropbox and more.
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How to highlight and annotate pdfs on your ipad.

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I get automatic notifications when web pages change: here's how and why i do it, you need this shortcut on your iphone in case it gets stolen, quick links, getting started with pdf expert 7 for ipad, alternative pdf apps for ipad.

The iPad is a great way to read PDFs, but what if you want to highlight parts of it, take notes, or add some text? Here's how you can do this using the free PDF Expert 7 app.

You'll find a plethora of PDF viewer and annotation apps on the App Store. We tested a handful of them before recommending PDF Expert 7. The app strikes the right balance between simplicity and functionality. The interface is easy to understand, and you can pick up the features quite easily.

PDF Expert 7 is Readdle's free PDF editor app for iPhone and iPad. The free version of the app lets you highlight, annotate, and take notes on the iPad. If you want to edit the PDF text or the pages themselves, you can pay for the $49.99/year PDF Expert Pro subscription.

Once you download the PDF Expert 7 app, open it and look around. You can use its sample PDF to learn how to use the app as well.

Now, go to the app where you've saved the PDF that you want to highlight. This can be the Files app, Books app, or even Safari . After opening the PDF, tap on the "Share" button.

Here, from the Apps section, tap on the "More" button.

Then, choose the "Copy to PDF Expert" option. If you're using iPadOS 13 or higher, you'll also find the "Copy to PDF Expert" option at the bottom of the Share sheet in the Actions section.

Related: How to Customize the Share Sheet on Your iPhone or iPad

This action will directly open the PDF Expert 7 app, with the PDF imported and ready to go.

At the top of the app, you'll find the tab interface. Here, make sure that the "Annotate" tab is selected. Below it, you'll see buttons for highlighting text, adding text, using a highlighter tool and the pen tool, and a lot more.

The first tool is the "Highlight" tool. Tap on it to select it. If you want to change the color, you can tap on the color palette icon next to it.

Next, tap on the text you want to highlight and swipe until you reach the end. Lift your finger or your Apple Pencil, and the app will highlight the text for you in a neat and orderly fashion.

If you want to underline text instead of highlighting, you can use the "A" icon with an underline.

You can also first select the text and then take action on it. For instance, select some text where you want to add a note and then from the popup menu, tap on the "Note" button.

The app will show you a notes area. Type out the note and then tap on the "Done" button to go back.

If you simply want to take notes in the blank area of a page, or you want to highlight words manually, tap on the "Pen" icon from the top (or the "Marker" icon).

Then use your Apple Pencil or your finger to doodle or highlight the page.

If your handwriting isn't quite as good, you can tap on the "T" button from the toolbar to create a text box. Here, you can write anything you want on the PDF (and you can customize the font, font size, and the color as well).

Once you're done highlighting and annotating the PDF, you'll want to share it with someone, or you might want to save it to an external drive using the Files app .

To do this, tap on the three-dot menu button in the top-right corner, then choose the "Share" option.

The app will now give you three options, all of which will carry over your annotations. You can share the Original Document (with editable annotations, signatures, and form fields), share a Flattened Copy (protecting your annotations and forms from editing), or you can just share the Annotated Pages.

Once you've made your selection, tap on the "Share" button.

This will bring up the familiar Share sheet. You can choose the app you want to share it with (like Apple Books, Mail, and so on).

If you don't like PDF Expert 7, take a look at some of the options that we considered during our research for this guide.

Apple Books

If you simply want to highlight PDFs, you can use the built-in Apple Books app, but we found the app a bit too cumbersome to use. Highlighting with Apple Pencil is not seamless, plus you can only add notes to parts that you highlight. There's no freeform doodle feature either.

GoodNotes 5

GoodNotes 5 is considered the most powerful note-taking app on iPad but only a few of the features translate to highlighting and annotating PDFs. While GoodNotes 5 has a feature-rich Pen and Marker tool, the highlight tool is missing altogether (and the Draw in Straight Line option isn't a good alternative). If you already use GoodNotes 5 for handwritten notes, you can try using it for annotating PDFs as well.

This is the big-daddy of PDF viewing and editing apps. The app has a unique interface where you can select text from the PDF and drag it to the research area. You can take notes, make drawings, then link them to a particular part of the PDF. If you need to make your way through a 100-page research document on your iPad Pro, LiquidText will feel like a godsend. But for everyone else, PDF Expert 7 is a better option.

Apple Pencil isn't the only input method that you can use on your iPad. Starting with iPadOS 13, you can now pair and use a mouse with your iPad .

Related: How to Use a Mouse With Your iPad or iPhone

• iPhone & iPad

Papers by ReadCube 17+

Digital science & research solutions inc., designed for ipad.

• 3.7 • 512 Ratings

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Description.

Papers by ReadCube is the simplest way to read, manage and discover research literature. Papers on your iPhone and iPad are the perfect companions to the Papers desktop software, enabling you to access your papers anywhere – read on the go, organize your library, and annotate PDFs with notes and highlights. Enhanced PDF: • Tap-able inline citations, reference lists, and author names so you can quickly find cited articles and related information • Supplements are automatically attached where available • Fullscreen or double-page PDF viewing plus multi-touch zoom/navigation for an optimal reading experience • Multi-color highlighting and note taking tools Easily find new papers: • Search the Papers databases within the app • Quickly download new articles with a single tap when you’re on campus or with your institutional proxy • Import directly from Safari, email attachments, and other apps • In your preferred browser, use any search engine to find article PDFs • Use the “Open In…” option from the browser or any app to add PDFs to your Papers library • Metadata is automatically resolved - no more guessing with cryptic file names Personalized Recommendations: • Discover relevant new papers based on your library or lists – you’ll never miss another important paper again! Stay organized: • Create custom lists and sort articles into one or multiple lists • Quickly search your entire library (and all annotations) • Add any number of #tags to further customize your library organization • Sync everything – papers, notes, highlights – between the Papers desktop and web apps or your other mobile devices Simplify your research life – try Papers for free on your iPhone, iPad, and computer. We love feedback from our users - please email [email protected] with any suggestions or issues. Thanks for using Papers!

Version 3.42

Added search menu item collapse option. Improved application full text and author search. Improved PDF undo and redo annotation operations. Improved menu and overall UI responsivity. Various other small improvements and bug fixes.

Ratings and Reviews

512 Ratings

So far, so good.

I used Papers for years as an academic; I loved the ability to paste reference place holders in plain text, and use that feature collaboratively with members of my team. But over the past few years it got buggy and crash-prone. When Readcube started, the rate of improvement was slow and I stayed away. After testing the other options, I finally tried the new Papers again, and it’s much better. No crashes, search works well, and it integrates with Google Scholar on Firefox (althought NOT with Safari). I’ve finally subscribed and stopped using the old Papers. It’s not perfect; Search has some quirks that take getting used to (like diacritical marks are required) and I haven’t tried shared libraries yet. But overall, a solid program with a good UI and integration with MS Word.

Best app for mobile users

There are several good citation managers that allow importing and annotating article PDFs from a PC. My work flow is that I like to add citations wherever I learn about them, and that means entering my iPhone, while reading and making notes on my iPad. I was a happy user of Mendeley until they terminated the iOS mobile app. Papers is outstanding for this use. I can add references and PDFs instantly from a pc browser add on or directly from the app. While reading an article, it’s easy to highlight, annotate, take notes. A side bar instantly grabs any cited papers that I might want, and another tab finds related articles. It’s easy to organize my library by tags and hierarchical lists. I’m sure there are other fine features but I’ve been too busy doing great research to find about them.

Needs work, but I’m subscribing when my trial expires

As of 2.70, it’s pretty ok, with lots of room for improvement. Papers 3 was significantly better all around, but since ReadCube owns them now, I expect ReadCube Papers will be importing more and more of their features. The most important features for me are there though, and import/search especially are working well enough for now. The reader view UI needs work: The carrier, clock, and battery icons aren’t hidden but merely white in full-screen. Highlighting and annotations are flaky, and there’s no undo button (you have to delete an entire highlight/annotation at once as an object, so small mistakes mean you have to redraw entirely.) Highlighting and annotation also just sometimes just stop working, and I’ll need to exit the pdf to get it back. Export only includes highlights and annotations on the first two pages for some reason. There aren’t options for switching from horizontal paging to vertical scrolling.

App Privacy

The developer, Digital Science & Research Solutions Inc. , indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .

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Using This Guide

This guide will cover apps that I find useful for research, ebook reading,  and organizing references and notes.

iPhone/iPad Apps

• Evernote Create text, photo and audio notes ● Auto-synchronize your notes to your Mac, PC, and Web ● Magically makes text within snapshots searchable ● All notes include geo-location information for mapping and search
• Dropbox Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily.
• QR Reader Barcode and QR code scanning app.

Android Apps

• Xodo PDF Reader & Editor Xodo is an all-in-one PDF reader and PDF editor. With Xodo, you can read, annotate, sign, and share PDFs and fill in PDF forms, open .docx/.pptx as PDFs, plus sync with Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive.
• QR Droid Code Scanner Barcode and QR code scanning app
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• Last Updated: Jan 18, 2023 12:47 PM
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6 Of The Best Research Apps For iOS & Android

Discover the top research apps for iPad and Android devices, from PDF annotation with iAnnotate to seamless note-taking with Notability.

6 Of The Best Research Apps For iPad & Android

by TeachThought Staff

For educators, research is a powerful tool for refining teaching methods, adapting curriculum to meet student needs, and staying informed about field advancements.

By engaging with research, teachers can discover innovative strategies to effectively enhance student learning experiences and address diverse learning styles. Moreover, integrating research findings into classroom practices empowers teachers to continually evolve and create impactful educational environments that inspire curiosity and foster academic growth.

Integrating technology, including research apps, simplifies the research process for educators by providing efficient tools for data collection, analysis, and organization. These digital resources streamline tasks such as literature review, citation management, and collaborative research, saving time and enhancing productivity. By leveraging technology, educators can access vast repositories of scholarly materials, collaborate seamlessly with colleagues, and empower students to engage in research projects with confidence and proficiency.

Below are 6 of the best research apps for iOS and Android to get you–and them–started.

6 Of The Best Research Apps

Description : iAnnotate is a versatile PDF annotation app designed for iOS devices. It allows users to read, annotate, and manage PDF documents easily. The app offers annotation tools such as highlighting, underlining, and adding notes, making it suitable for students, professionals, and anyone who frequently works with PDF files. Additionally, iAnnotate supports cloud storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive, enabling seamless document access across different devices.

Price : $9.99

Description : Pocket is an app that allows users to save articles, videos, and web pages to view later. It provides a convenient way to collect exciting content from the web and read or watch it offline later. With features like tagging and organization, Pocket helps users easily manage their saved content. It’s handy for staying informed and entertained on the go, whether commuting, traveling, or simply taking a break.

Price : Free

iOS , Android

See Also 12 of The Best Education Apps For Android

Academia.edu.

Description : Academia.edu is a platform that connects researchers, academics, and students worldwide. The app allows users to share and access scholarly papers, articles, and research findings. Users can follow specific topics, authors, or institutions to stay updated on the latest developments in their fields of interest. Additionally, Academia.edu offers features such as peer review, discussion forums, and analytics tools to facilitate collaboration and engagement within the academic community.

Description : Notability is a powerful note-taking app available for iOS devices. It allows users to create, annotate, and organize handwritten and typed notes, sketches, PDFs, and other multimedia content. With a wide range of annotation tools, including highlighting, drawing, and audio recording, Notability is versatile for various tasks such as lectures, meetings, and brainstorming sessions. The app also supports iCloud syncing and integration with other platforms like Dropbox and Google Drive, enabling seamless access to notes across devices.

See Also 10 Of The Best iPhone Apps For Language Translation

Description : Evernote is a comprehensive note-taking and organization app across various platforms. It allows users to capture, organize, and share notes, documents, images, and web clippings in one centralized location. With features like text recognition, tagging, and syncing across devices, Evernote helps users stay organized and productive. It’s suitable for personal and professional use, offering tools for task management, collaboration, and research.

Description : Paperpile is a reference management app designed for researchers, academics, and students. It simplifies the process of organizing and citing academic papers and articles. With features like cloud-based storage, seamless integration with Google Docs, and automatic citation generation, Paperpile streamlines the research workflow. It’s a convenient tool for collecting, annotating, and citing sources, making it easier to create scholarly documents and manuscripts.

TeachThought is an organization dedicated to innovation in education through the growth of outstanding teachers.

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7 Ways to Use an iPad for Studying & Research The iPad is a great tool for learning and taking beautiful and visually appealing notes. Let us explore different methods you can use the device for studying. 

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The idea of technology was conceived out of the desire to ease life and daily struggles. True to its design, Apple’s iPad is fast becoming an indispensable tool for students. The device allows you to read textbooks, organize tasks, and access the Internet anywhere. It is basically a learning aid and a document carrier. Besides studying, you can use it to watch movies and play video games. An iPad condenses the daily struggles of a student into one biomechanically-friendly and transportable device. If you’re considering buying one, let us show you how to use an iPad to study and improve your education efficiently.

Taking notes 

Most students take notes in books and pieces of paper. But when it’s time to read, they discover the paper is missing or forgot the book at home. The conventional form of writing in books adds to the weight of your backpack. You also need to track every book and worry about smudging your notes. 

This is especially convenient when preparing for an important exam or writing a research paper. An organized system makes a whole difference in such a process. You can prepare everything for yourself or get  help by Papersowl , and it will be easy to send all of your notes via the internet. You will pay someone to write your research paper based on your own findings and thoughts.

iPads present a simple and flexible way to take notes. The design allows you to use the Apple Pencil, Magic keyboard, or Bluetooth keyboard for note-taking and retrieval. It serves as a single collection for storing all class notes instead of using multiple notebooks. Unlike physical books, you can leverage cloud services to access your writings from anywhere. 

Podcasts & audiobooks

Backpacks are cumbersome, while iPads are compact. The size is perfect for convenient transport and uses anywhere. The top educational apps for iPad consist of over 200,000 applications that facilitate modern education. Examples include Photomath and StudyBlue. You can read from your device instead of writing in books. Not only this, but you can also listen to audiobooks while you focus on other tasks. Your iPad doubles as a reading device and you don’t need to spend money on subscriptions or wait weeks for your book to arrive.

Recording notes 

The recording function is not exclusive to iPads. However, it is a feature worth mentioning. Recording your lecture notes is a handy learning method when you can’t make sense of anything your tutor is saying. If the school allows, download a voice recorder application that lets you record lectures and take notes at the same time. 

Watching lectures online 

Students watch lectures on their iPads regardless of where they are. Thanks to a split screen feature, you can watch and take notes. Built-in iSight or Facetime cameras allow undergraduates to chat with teachers and classmates using Skype or the FaceTime app. The camera is handy for taking high-resolution pictures, recording a 1080p high-definition video, and studying with your buddies from your home. 

Draw, design, scan, & edit 

Art students will find an iPad a handy tool for drawing and designing. Professional artists prefer it for digital art to most high-end drawing tablets. Besides artistic designs, you can make and edit videos, photos, and audio. Some apps like iMovie are default applications that come with the device. Nonetheless, you can download other design apps to create impressive artwork. You can also sign paper documents directly from your device without the need to use a scanner or download it on your computer. Furthermore, students use the device to create professional presentations. 

Personal planner 

The iPad is an amazing tool for planning your academic day or week. Instead of physical planners, you can write and edit with ease. A reminder feature also sends notifications to keep you up-to-date with your plans. 

Entertainment 

iPads are useful for unwinding when you don’t feel like studying. You can watch movies, read comics, or play games. But be careful so that it does not become a trap that distracts you from learning.

Hacks to make learning with iPad easy 

Split screen with app dock

The app dock is vital for multitasking and is available on iOS 11 and other iPadOS. Press down on the app for the jiggle effect and drag icons to the dock. You can use it to hold up to 12 folders of the app. Open an app by tapping its icon and swipe up from the bottom of the screen to restore it to the dock. 

Use the files app to arrange your assignment

The file app allows you to sort all your files in a single location. It applies to in-app files, cloud, and third-party services.

Apple Pencil

The Apple Pencil feature allows you to sign documents, annotate PDFs, and draw or write alongside texts in your notes. Users can also search texts for easy tracking and location. 

Maps apps help you navigate your environment. The iPad has a “nearby” feature you can use to search for the nearest coffee house or preferred destination. 

iPad is popular amongst students for education and managing schedules. Although more expensive than books, the investment is worth it. There are various powerful apps and tools you can explore to use the device to its full potential. Since most college students don’t have money to throw around, we recommend you check out Apple’s special deals and financing for students on iPads. These plans allow you to pay in monthly installments.

Textbooks cost thousands of dollars each year. Plus, you must carry them everywhere, every day. Take advantage of the digital offerings of an iPad to read, write, and compute with ease. iPads provide a customized classroom experience. The device is easy to use and transport, and it encourages creativity. It also increases participation, reduces the need for paper, and saves money.

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Educational resources and simple solutions for your research journey

5 Best Apps for Researchers: Apps that Every Researcher Should Know About

Today, one need not physically visit a library and take down notes on sheaves of paper (which are apt to fly about or clutter one’s workspace!). Various online tools and software applications (apps) have made our lives easier, especially the many helpful apps for researchers.

The use of apps to ease workload, manage time, or spark creativity are rapidly becoming de rigueur in all areas of work. In academia too, several apps for researchers are designed to help with daily activities, such as collecting and organizing resources, managing collaborative projects, maintaining daily and longer-term schedules, searching for and reading articles, and staying updated on multidisciplinary topics related to a study domain.

Here, I describe some of the best apps for researchers that can are available for free and can simplify both day-to-day tasks and research-related activities.

• Trello: Streamline individual and collaborative projects

Researchers need to keep track of various activities to optimize their productivity. A useful app for researchers, Trello  is a user-friendly app wherein one can create work boards for different projects and populate them with tasks. The user can assign deadlines and keep updating ongoing progress. Work boards can be shared with all team members, thereby smoothening collaborative working.

Trello offers tools to coordinate tasks among members working remotely or disparately, say, team members on the field and those in the lab. This is a particularly useful app for researchers involved in large projects, working with researchers situated across the globe. With this app you can track team projects and monitor in detail the progress of tasks under way. This can be counted among the best apps for researchers as it enables the visualization of workflows, providing team members with a comprehensive overview of a project from beginning to end. Integration with other applications allows users to access features in Gmail or other apps directly from Trello.

Key features

• Easy to use app for researchers
• Flexible and versatile
• Helps manage collaborative projects
• Evernote: Organize your thoughts and ideas

Are you still relying on Post-its and notepads? Do you jot down sudden ideas on a napkin in a coffee shop or on a scrap of paper while working in the lab? Note-taking apps like  Evernote  can help you make lists and take notes and never lose them. A handy app for researchers, Evernote helps you store all your ideas and thoughts, to-do lists, notes, and research links in one place. You can keep all these bits and bobs organized by creating separate tags and folders for different purposes.

The  Evernote web clipper  is a useful feature for saving articles, web pages, or screen grabs from the internet. You can save a page or highlights to your Evernote notebook along with any notes you want to make about that page. It allows you to sync your notes to all your devices, enabling you to organize your notes across multiple platforms. Further, this is one of the best apps for researchers because its multimedia features let you annotate images, embed files and pictures in your notes, and even record audio and video notes.

• Maintains notes, articles, and other content in one place
• Facilitates content clipping from the web
• Auto-sync across devices with this app for researchers
• R Discovery: Search Less, Read More

Researchers spend a large part of their time wading through a sea of literature, sifting out the relevant from the irrelevant.  R Discovery  is a free literature discovery app and is a great platform that lets you identify the most relevant academic research papers from top journals and publishers. This reading app for research papers covers all major disciplines in the arts and sciences.

R Discovery offers customized research reading, that is, once you set up your areas of interest, the app for research papers finds the top 3 reads and presents them in the form of a daily feed for you. Powered by AI, it learns your reading interests and finds matching relevant papers. It even provides on-the-go updates on recently published articles through notifications and email alerts making it one of the best apps for researchers. R Discovery offers a weekly roundup of the 5 latest articles and summaries of research articles from trending topics. With this intuitive app for research papers, you need not worry about a crucial article slipping through the cracks when you weren’t looking!

When you feed in key terms, the app “deep-dives” into the topics and offers articles, which you can sort by recency or relevance. It even helps you look for similar papers and bookmark important research papers. Mobile and web integration lets you read your bookmarked articles on the  R Discovery  website. What’s more, to customize your feed, you can even import your reading library from Mendeley and Zotero making this a must have app for researchers.

R Discovery can be considered a literature search and reading app for researchers everywhere that steers you in the right direction during your academic voyage!

• Curates 96+ million research articles, including over 24 million open access articles
• Intuitively provides key highlights, summaries, and roundups of research relevant to one’s field
• Integration with reference managers enables the R Discovery app for researchers to make better recommendations.

• Mendeley: Handle reference lists without getting bogged down

The thought of sorting and drawing up a reference list and formatting the in-text citations and references can make the most seasoned scholars break out into a sweat. However, useful apps for researchers like  Mendeley  take the load off these painstaking tasks and offer much more. Mendeley is a free reference management app that automatically generates bibliographies as you write. You don’t need to manually type references; Mendeley imports and organizes them in a systematic manner. The app for researchers allows you to insert citations and create reference lists in different journal formats rapidly and seamlessly. These features free up lot of time, which can be used to focus on paper or thesis writing.

Mendeley is available in both mobile and desktop formats, and researchers can conveniently read content on the go and even highlight text that they might want to return to. Researchers can export papers from the R Discovery app to Mendeley and Zotero. Once exported, they can find these papers in their libraries on ref managers. They can also connect their Mendeley and Zotero accounts with R Discovery (when they are setting up preferences on R Discovery). This will allow for this smart app for researchers to suggest topics based on the Mendeley or Zotero reading list.

• Helps annotate and organize documents
• Can be used across platforms seamlessly
• Integrates with literature discovery apps for researchers like R Discovery.
• Calm: Prevent burnout and focus on self-care

Researchers work for long hours, juggling multiple research tasks, securing funding, and dealing with stressors like dealing with harsh peer reviewer comments and article rejection. These factors can add up and affect a researcher’s mental well-being and motivation. Some  indicators can point to one’s need to focus on self-care , such as altered sleep patterns. A stressed researcher will constantly feel tired and be less efficient at work.

Calm  is a popular app for researchers looking to help reduce stress and anxiety, improve sleep quality, and aid in relaxation and self-improvement. The app provides sessions for guided meditation and breathing and masterclasses for managing stress, enhancing creativity, and much more. The use of such apps can even improve concentration and mindfulness. This is a great app for researchers to use to remain calm in the face of high work pressure, roadblocks in your experiments, and creative blocks when writing papers. A few minutes a day on such an app can help you break negative patterns. After all, a happy researcher is a productive researcher!

• Tracks a user’s basic statistics, e.g., minutes of meditation
• Sends meditation reminders
• Offers masterclasses taught by experts in the field of wellness.

Don’t worry, be “appy”!

Technological innovations like AI are constantly improving apps in terms of functions and user experience. While some apps for researchers help to ease the workload or aid in multitasking, others help in self-improvement and time management to let researchers focus better on core tasks. When possible, one should use some of these best apps for researchers to become savvier and more efficient, getting the most out of their time and effort.

R Discovery is a literature search and research reading platform that accelerates your research discovery journey by keeping you updated on the latest, most relevant scholarly content. With 250M+ research articles sourced from trusted aggregators like CrossRef, Unpaywall, PubMed, PubMed Central, Open Alex and top publishing houses like Springer Nature, JAMA, IOP, Taylor & Francis, NEJM, BMJ, Karger, SAGE, Emerald Publishing and more, R Discovery puts a world of research at your fingertips.  

Try R Discovery Prime FREE for 1 week or upgrade at just US$72 a year to access premium features that let you listen to research on the go, read in your language, collaborate with peers, auto sync with reference managers, and much more. Choose a simpler, smarter way to find and read research – Download the app and start your free 7-day trial today !  

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9 Best Tablets For Research That Any Academic Should Have

Last Updated January 4, 2023

Are you looking for some of the best tablets for research?

If yes, then look no further than this article. In this article, I will provide the complete list of tablets that will surely help in your research if you are a researcher or even a research student.

When talking about academicians or researchers, one begins to visualize a person drowning in papers, books, and journals all around them.

Saying this with my experience, as I am a researcher myself, due to the number of papers I have to read, analyze and critically evaluate, the paper load sometimes gets pretty hectic, and bookmarking everything here and it is very tiresome for me. It is for this reason that tablets make professional’s lives easier in this day and age.

My guide to the best tablet for researchers like you and me outlines the features that make them ideal for academic papers.

Using the right tablet for your work is beneficial to your research and career, thus you simply need to choose one that best suits your work style, and presto, so that your workflow is faster, more efficient, and more productive.

Taking notes, sketching , reading , and bookmarking on tablets are easier than on paper. Even if you use it for 4 or 5 years, the cost spread out over that period doesn’t even amount to much.

Now, without any further delays, let’s get directly into the best tablets for researchers that will be perfect for you.

Table of Contents

List of Best Tablets That Are Great For Research And Academic papers:-

To help researchers and academicians choose the best tablets for their work, I have assembled this list. Now let’s look at each one in more detail:

1. Apple iPad Air

In Apple’s tablet lineup, the iPad Air is the newest model. I would recommend you go for the iPad Air if you want the latest offering from Apple.

This tablet has the A14 Bionic chipset under the hood. In my opinion with the updated design, it now looks more like an iPad Pro, but it’s a little lighter and thinner so it’s easier for researchers and research students to carry around in a backpack.

Taking the tablet out of the box I found that the iPad Air has a 10.9-inch display, which is an upgrade over its predecessors’ 9.7-inch display and I appreciate that.

The Liquid Retina display has TrueTone and a P3 wide color gamut, which ensured that colors were rich and vibrant when I was watching a movie or a TV show.

It has excellent brightness and gives me the right amount of brightness in dark and daylight conditions. The Apple Pencil is supported and works very smoothly, which makes note-taking very convenient.

Now I must speak about its performance and in that regard, the iPad Air houses Apple’s latest A14 Bionic, giving me plenty of horsepower for my daily tasks.

Regardless of whether I was doing a basic task or something heavier like editing videos, it had the power I needed. The tablet never lagged and appeared to be able to handle any task I threw at it, so yes, it is a powerful tablet for modern computing.

• Elegant thin and light design.
• Bright, colorful and sharp display.
• Excellent webcam.
• Magic Keyboard.
• No face id.
• No headphone jack.
• Expensive accessories.

Apple ditched Touch ID in favor of Face ID, which proved to be a very bad move. As a result, Apple reintroduced Touch ID in the iPad Air, but on the side this time. This model finally comes with a USB C port for charging and accessories, which is fantastic.

Besides that, the iPad Air comes with the latest Wi-Fi 6 so it will be easier, faster, and more secure to connect to wireless networks.

Overall, the iPad Air is a great tablet for anyone who is looking to use it for his or her research purposes.

2. Microsoft Surface Pro 7

Since it was launched in the global market, the Surface Pro 7 has earned global awards and has been adorned with numerous awards. The device’s powerful specifications combined with its compact and ergonomic form factor have made it a global pioneer in the field of convertibles.

Let me talk about the specifications, it is powered by the 10th Gen Intel Core i5 processor and also available with an Intel i7 processor on higher-end variants.

The tablet comes with 8GB of RAM for multitasking, which is more than sufficient for researchers like me, however, there is an option for 16 GB RAM if one needs more flexibility.

I really like the fact that the device has 128 GB of SSD storage, which is faster and more efficient than the previous generation. In terms of software, the tablet runs on Windows 10 Home, which in my opinion is the most productive operating system ever created.

Researchers like me and research students would appreciate the fact that the tablet has a convertible form factor and can be used as a powerful desktop replacement.

With the 12.3-inch PixelSense screen, the tablet also features extremely high contrast and low glare so that research students can work throughout the day without straining their eyes. There is also a long list of compatible peripherals available, including Type covers, surface docks, wireless display adapters, and more.

• A keyboard is included in the package.
• All PC apps are supported.
• The display is bright and vivid.
• Batteries that last longer.
• Processor with high performance.
• The quality of the camera is poor.
• Very expensive.

Lastly, the device provides 10.5 hours of continuous use on a single charge, making it an ideal device for researchers, students, and anyone who needs to be productive on the go.

Overall, I feel that the Microsoft Surface Pro 7 is a great tablet for research students who want to have a device that is portable and versatile, much like a laptop.

3. Microsoft Surface Go 2

The Microsoft Surface Go 2 is an excellent budget-friendly tablet making it a perfect choice for research students.

By offering Surface Pro features at a much lower price, the company hopes to attract a broader audience and in my opinion, this is a clever step by Microsoft. In terms of performance and productivity, the Surface Go 2 has never let me down in my daily usage for research work.

The front of the tablet consists of a bright and colorful 10.5-inch screen and if you like to draw digital sketches and paintings, you can take notes and draw with the Surface Pen, but the only downside I feel is that the pen must be purchased separately.

This Surface Go 2 has a kickstand on the back, so it works great with S-Pen, allowing for a comfortable, hands-free position for taking notes or browsing the web.

In terms of battery life, I would like to state that the Surface Go 2 has one of the best capabilities in its segment. When I was taking notes and working on documents, it lasted for 10 hours on a single charge.

Despite the budget price, performance is still good, better than its predecessor and 64% faster than the Surface Pro. This is what makes the tablet an absolute value-for-money product in my eyes.

Surface Go 2 is also highly portable, lightweight, and can easily fit inside a small sleeve, making it ideal for those who need to carry their tablets on vacations.

In addition to its keyboard cover, the tablet weighs only 544 grams, which is significantly less than the weight of an iPad with the Apple Smart Keyboard .

Because the Microsoft Surface Go 2 comes with a USB Type-C port, it is future-proof and compatible with many accessories. There is a front-facing HD camera on the tablet, so video chatting and attending lectures felt effortless to me.

So let me talk about the verdict for this device. Can research students benefit greatly from buying the Microsoft Surface Go 2?

• Bigger screen.
• Core M3 processor option.
• Runs any Windows app.
• Very low performance ceiling.
• Battery Life.
• Keyboard Flex.

Well, it’s a good device for the price, and with a lightweight design and a Windows-based operating system built in, I feel it’s one of the best tablets for research students on a budget and

I can definitely recommend this one to you without any hesitation. If you wanted to know more about this device, you can check out its comprehensive article .

4. Samsung Galaxy Tab S7

I would recommend the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 as it is the best tablet for researchers and is yet another keyboard attachable tablet I reviewed that has a long list of features and specifications.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 has an 11-inch IPS LCD display which felt amazing to my eyes. With a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, the tablet’s display provides cinematic vividness, detailed gradations, and deep contrast from a very small form factor.

From the perspective of intensive multitasking and intensive app handling, I faced no problems as the device is powered by a Snapdragon 865+ Octa-Core Processor coupled with 6GB / 8GB of RAM.

With the device’s internal storage of up to 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB, microSD cards can be inserted up to 1TB of storage space. Running on Android 11, the tablet runs the latest and most commonly used mobile operating system.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 comes with a 13-megapixel primary rear camera and in my opinion, it is also among the best tablets for editing photographs and taking photos , as it can capture moments with outstanding details when I took photos with it.

On one charge, the tablet gets fully charged in just over two hours and provides approximately fifteen hours of backup time according to my usage.

• Powerful Processor
• Storage space
• Updated S pen stylus.
• Keyboard need to buy seperately

There are several other productivity features included on the tablet, including multitasking mode, seamless Samsung connectivity, and DeX , which transformed my tablet into a PC.

In conclusion, the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 is a great tablet regardless of the age or major of the research student, thus making it one of the best tablets for note-taking in 2022.

You can also find out more about this tablet’s other features and its pro model’s specifications in our other article.

5. Apple iPad Pro 11″

In the world of tablets, Apple iPads need no introduction. Apple iPads run on the most advanced, cleanest, and most sophisticated operating systems ever created.

This iPad tablet runs on the iPad OS and comes with a large 11-inch Retina display with a resolution of 2388 x 1668 pixels. In my daily usage, I felt that the display offers the brightest and least reflective screen because it uses Apple’s most advanced display technology with a 120Hz refresh rate.

Apple claims that the new iPad Pro is faster than 92% of portable notebooks sold within the last year, which is insane considering the form factor of the device, and all that’s possible due to the A12Z Bionic chip , which is hidden under the hood of the iPad Pro.

I would also like to mention that the new iPad Pro provides incredible responsiveness and is powerful enough to handle multitasking and complex actions like editing 4K video.

With 6GB of RAM and a huge 1TB of storage space, the device is another huge plus for researchers who easily run out of storage space.

There is a single USB Type C port, and it comes with a lot of Apple’s proprietary features including FaceID. If you opt for the cellular version, it also includes a SIM card slot or choose some with SIM cards and LTE support tablets.

As a result, the tablet made it to my list of best tablets for research students with a wide selection of apps for all productivity and entertainment purposes.

With regard to note-taking, the iPad Pro supports the 2nd Generation Apple Pencil , which is more practical and easier to use than the previous generation.

In comparison with its predecessor, the 2nd Gen Pencil sticks to the side of the iPad and charges wirelessly when placed there. Apple Pencil now seamlessly switches between pen and eraser with just a tap on the Apple Pencil, so you don’t have to constantly reach for the eraser tool.

• Trackpad Support.
• Gorgeous Display.
• Faster Chipset.
• Better Cameras.
• LiDAR Scanner.
• Processor Is Not A Major Upgrade.

Now it is time for me to speak the truth, that is if you have $700 on hand to spend then you cannot find a tablet that even comes close in terms of performance and usability to the new iPad Pro. The best tablet for taking notes for research in 2022 goes to this one for sure. Apple iPad 10.2″

The Apple iPad 10.2” is a smaller, more compact, and cheaper alternative to the mentioned Apple iPad Pro and iPad Air in this list. This tablet comes with a 10.2-inch Retina Display with a resolution of 2160 x 1620 pixels that felt quite refreshing to my eyes.

As the tablet has a smaller screen size, the display has a vivid and bright viewing angle and generates very accurate colors which is a boon when you want to watch a movie after a tiring day of research and studies.

In terms of the iPad’s internals, it comes with Apple’s A13 Bionic chipset with Quad Core graphics and 3GB of RAM which helped me to multitask and handled my apps with ease.

There are also a pair of excellent cameras included with the tablet. An 8MP iSight primary camera can record 1080p Full HD video, and a 12MP secondary front-facing camera can record video in 720p.

You can choose storage options ranging from 32GB to 128GB. When I held the tablet in my hands it felt just so right thanks to its great ergonomics and pleasing aesthetics making it ideal for everyday use for research students as they can carry it around in their hands easily.

A final selling point of the iPad is its battery, which lasted me for 10 hours with continuous usage on a single charge.

In conclusion, the latest iPad is a great alternative to the iPad Pro for research students if they are not willing to burn a hole in their pockets.

Check out its other review done by our experts.

6. Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite

The Galaxy Tab A7 Lite is Samsung’s latest offering, and it’s an excellent cheap tablet for students looking for a tablet without spending a lot.

On the front of the device, there is an 8.7-inch HD screen that seems spacious and big enough. At this price point, it’s excellent to have an LCD screen .

Samsung has not yet announced its stylus support for this tablet, but research students can use an aftermarket one to take notes.

The metal design gives the tablet a premium feel in my hand, and it has a boxy form factor. As a result of the tablet’s lightweight design and slim profile, it was easy for me to slip it into a bag or sleeve, and carry it around without feeling burdened.

On the base model of the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite, I found an octa-core processor and 3GB RAM that power the tablet and are capable of running all the multitasking tasks I had on my mind.

Despite being excellent, the base variant has relatively low power output. My recommendation for researchers would be to go for the 4 GB RAM model because most of you need to deal with multiple documents while taking notes at the same time.

Overall, the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite is a great tablet for research students on a budget since it has a big screen, a nice build, and a long-lasting battery. It receives a green flag from my side.

7. Samsung Galaxy Tab A7

Located in the budget tablet category, the Samsung Tab A7 is the manufacturer’s newest product. For entertainment purposes, the Tab A7 is a great choice because it comes at an affordable price and has a gorgeous 10” screen and Dolby speakers.

I would recommend this tablet to research students who want a 10-inch tablet but don’t want to spend too much. We have sorted the best 10-inch tablets for research as well. It features a Snapdragon 662 processor along with 3GB of RAM, offering decent performance for light users, according to my usage ratings.

The tablet doesn’t come with a stylus, although one can buy it separately if they plan on taking notes.

• Vibrant, colorful display.
• Great-sounding speakers.
• Reliable battery life.
• Build quality.
• Limited RAM.
• Camera quality.

In spite of being a budget tablet, the Tab A7 offers a microSD card slot, and the storage can be expanded up to 1TB, so running out of storage is not an issue.

This tablet is a made-in-heaven choice for professional gamers. However, you can also check some other tablets that are good for XCloud gaming.

Coming to the conclusion, I think that the Tab A7 is one of the best cheap tablets for researchers like me, who are looking for a large tablet without spending a lot of money.

8. Fire HD 10

Amazon’s Kindle is famous for its feature-rich and affordable performance-based tablets, but this time the brand has introduced a much stronger and more versatile line of tablets under the Fire series.

One such offering from the company is the Fire HD 10, one of the best tablets in Amazon’s Fire line. Its soft-touch finish and decent build make it a good tablet in my opinion.

On top of the 10-inch HD IPS LCD, the Fire HD 10 has an anti-glare coating which helped me because I used this tablet to read under direct sunlight. I feel that the 1920×1200 pixel Full HD screen of this tablet makes it stand out from most other tablets in its class.

Depending on the model, the tablet can be connected to either 32GB or 64GB of storage, but microSD cards can be added up to 512GB. Because Fire OS 5 comes pre-loaded on it, it’s perfect for research students both for everyday use and for reading.

• Multitasking.
• Eye-friendly screen.
• Some time size may be an issue.
• RAM is just 3GB.

The customizable voice assistant under Alexa lets users ask questions and give commands via voice for quick and accurate answers.

It is also known for being one of the best tablets for web surfing. However, if you want to know more about tablets that are good for web surfing, you can check out our other article which is primarily based on this. 

As a whole, I would rate the Fire HD 10 as one of the best tablets for research students who are temporarily looking for a tablet for notes and E-reading, along with binge-viewing the Amazon Prime video library.

9. Lenovo Chromebook Duet

Students and research people who need to carry their daily driver to class or lectures can benefit from the Lenovo Chromebook Duet.

Moreover, it houses a detachable keyboard design that allows this tablet to double as a laptop. The keyboard connects with the tablet using a magnetic mechanism, so whenever you need to type anything, you connect it with the tablet for laptop-like functionality.

You get 10 hours of screen time, so yes the battery life needs to last. It’s built for productivity, so yes, the battery life has to last.

Design-wise, it is sleek and minimal as you would expect from a device that is intended for productivity. It looks quite similar to the iPad Pro because the bezels are thin and the corners are rounded.

As for the back, it’s unique seeing as it’s got a dual-tone design that’s made of aluminum alloy, so it does evoke a feeling of luxury.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet is designed to perform light workloads such as presentations, spreadsheets, internet browsing, and entertainment without experiencing any lag. The machine serves its purpose perfectly, and it has all the right specifications to make it a great tool for researchers and students.

• Cheaper device.
• Weight may be an issue.

The computer boots up within a few seconds and seems to be ready whenever you need it. A Google One membership for one year, inclusive of 100GB of storage, is also included with the Lenovo Chromebook Duet.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What tablet is best for studying?

The Surface Pro 7 is a great option to check out. With a very thin laptop design and a detachable keyboard, it feels more like a laptop when you are typing on it than a tablet when you are holding it in your lap.

It has a much more powerful processor, so you can run your applications much more quickly. With its 12.3-inch display and full Windows 10 operating system, the Surface Pro 7 is a very powerful tablet.

Other tablets do not come with CPU options like the Core M3, Core i5, or Core i7 for the Surface Pro 7. Also, it has up to 32GB DDR4x RAM in comparison to other tablets with only 8GB or less.

• What is the best way to study on a tablet?

Here are a few ways to maximize your tablet’s capabilities for studying :

1. Take a look at some apps, such as the free BrainPop and the paid Crash Course, to learn more about what you are studying. In Seymour’s Science Adventure, I particularly like the interactive nature of the game.

2. It’s one of the coolest things about tablets that they have cameras that let you film yourself and then upload your videos for everyone to see. If it is a new technology for your parents as well, you can ask them to teach you.

3. Tablets are great for when you would like to do something different but still want easy access to your studies

• What is the best tablet to use every day?

The best tablet for everyday use is the iPad Air because it has many useful features that one would want to be able to do on their tablet, such as watching movies, sending emails, and playing games.

Watching shows or movies on the iPad Air is also possible thanks to its big screen. Moreover, the iPad Air has a high-resolution screen, so the movies or shows you are watching will have a lot of visual clarity..

• How do you choose between a laptop and a tablet for studying?

A laptop is best for studying because of its larger screen, which means your eyes won’t be strained.

A laptop also comes with a keyboard, so typing information on it is easier. Because a laptop display is larger than a tablet, you won’t need to strain your eyes when studying with one.

• What is the benefit of using a tablet over keeping physical notes and books?

There are a lot of messy and cumbersome things about books and papers. It can also be quite a tedious and stressful experience to carry them all day long. Over time it will cause distress to your shoulders and even worse, it may affect your career if anything goes missing.

With tablets, you can organize your entire research life into a slim, lightweight device that will store all your notes, books, and other documents in one single location. With cloud technology, you can also check them from any other device.

Giant backpacks and broken backs are a thing of the past. At least, as long as you make sure you don’t damage the tablet or let it go missing.

• What is the ideal amount of storage space for a tablet?

I have emphasized above that it really comes down to what you need. Although this is true, you should note that some tablets with less storage space are far more affordable.

If you are planning to use an external storage device or cloud storage, then you will have the opportunity to save money (apart from any subscription fees).

It should be fine to choose something like a 32GB device. For those planning not to use anything extra, I recommend you to go for the most storage space you can. Presentations, notes, and lectures have a tendency to pile up.

When you consider how research programs can last anywhere from three to five years on average, you can be sure that your devices will be clogged with data sooner or later.

Congratulations! You have reached the end of my review. I have now provided you with the best options for making your research working days as effortless and pleasant as possible for you.

Now that you know what would work best for you, it’s up to you which one would fit your needs the best. I hope you choose the best tablet according to your needs and reach the very heights of your career.

Ben Scott is a prominent technology journalist and reviewer, specializing in tablet devices. He is known for his comprehensive and unbiased reviews of tablets from various manufacturers. With a deep understanding of tablet technology, including hardware components, operating systems, and software applications, Scott provides clear and informative reviews accessible to readers of all levels of technical expertise. His attention to detail and in-depth analysis have earned him a loyal following of readers.

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My favorite tools for managing, organizing, and reading research papers

So that you do not get lost in the sea of papers..

Parul Pandey

Towards Data Science

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants — Isaac Newton.

The above quote first made its appearance in a letter that Newton wrote to Robert Hooke in 1675…

Written by Parul Pandey

Principal Data Scientist @H2O.ai | Author of Machine Learning for High-Risk Applications

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• Event Website Publish a modern and mobile friendly event website.
• Registration & Payments Collect registrations & online payments for your event.
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Top 11 Apps for Researchers in 2023

Published on 01 May 2022

The evolution of new technologies has caused a digital transformation in almost every industry and field of interest, including academia. Technology has changed the way that academics conduct research, document findings, and collaborate with peers. 

Academics can now rely on new avenues of collaboration that didn’t even exist when they launched their careers. Networks like SSRN and Mendeley provide opportunities for researchers to share their work for increased collaboration, and abstract management tools streamline the peer review process required by legitimate academic conferences and journals. 

As this digital transformation accelerates, researchers can now access a vast array of apps aimed at simplifying their workflows and facilitating information sharing. While these apps have the potential to improve the way scientists conduct and share their research, the selection can be overwhelming. 

Based on our experience and extensive research, here are the 11 best apps available for researchers in 2023.

1. Fourwaves 

Fourwaves is a conference management software for researchers. Their free web application allows you to create a complete event website, manage abstract submissions, peer reviews, host virtual poster sessions , manage registrations and more. 

It’s the easiest way to organize scientific events as the tool was crafted with researchers in mind every step of the way. 

Fourwaves can be used not only for in-person events but also for hybrid and virtual conferences . They offer a complete virtual venue to access live streams, chat or call other participants and attend virtual poster sessions.

You can go as far as mass email your attendees, automatically generate your event schedule or even print out your name tags; everything you need for your event is in one place.

Most interesting features:

• Ready-to-go event website ; all you have to do is enter your event’s content and you’re ready to publish. 
• Abstract management & Peer review tool ; you can easily collect submissions, review them according to your criterias, email authors and publish your material and the full conference schedule online.
• Registration and payment management ; attendees can easily register to your event and pay online on your Fourwaves event website. 

2. R Discovery: Academic Research

R Discovery is a free app that empowers researchers to save time wading through a sea of academic research papers by finding the articles that are most relevant to your work and delivering them to you each day. It curates over 96 million research articles which includes over 24 million open access articles. 

The app is mobile-only, available for download on the Google Play App Store and the Apple App store for mobile use on your Android device, iPhone or iPad. The app scans papers from all major disciplines in the arts and sciences. 

• As soon as you sign up and submit your areas of interest, R Discovery will serve you the top three related articles in a news feed each day.
• R Discovery uses AI to learn your reading interests over time and populate your news feed with content increasingly tailored to your specific interests.
• The app provides export functions for easy integration with reference managers to organize your citations.

3. LabArchives  

LabArchives is a web-based application that acts as a digital lab notebook, helping researchers keep their work and notes organized to improve productivity in their labs. Users can access LabArchives to make notes, store images and data, and use the search feature for simple access to all of their material. 

There are also Android and iOS versions of this app available in the Apple App Store and Google Play App Store that allow users to access their digital notebooks from their Android devices, iPhones and iPads and have instant access to all of their data, from anywhere. While there are Premium and Enterprise versions of the platform for more advanced use and collaboration, individuals and small teams can access a free version that still includes unlimited notebooks and 1GB of storage. 

Most interesting features: 

• Makes it easy to store and share data between your team members, with user-friendly search functions. You can even share DNA sequence files in over 30 formats! 
• Access information from your desktop or your phone, thanks to the free iOS app for your iPhone or iPad. There is also an Android app available in the Google Play store, but based on reviews it appears that functionality is limited. 
• Data security that lets you determine file access and sharing limitations, so you know exactly who is viewing your files and when.

Typeset is a web-based application that was created to help researchers write, collaborate, format and submit research papers for publication. Typeset allows you to upload your work to their platform, and use their AI to reformat your research and submissions to meet the publication requirements of various journal and conference organizers. 

Typeset works seamlessly with reference management software like Mendeley, Zotero, Paperpile and more. It allows users to choose from over 45,000 verified journal formats and export your work to Word, LaTex and PDF formats. 

Typeset does not offer mobile apps for Apple or Android devices. There are a variety of subscription levels available with pricing ranging from free to $20 per month. 

• Editing features that increase the chances of being published.
• Integrations that enable you to submit research for publication directly from the app.
• Plagiarism and grammar checker for increased quality and peace of mind.

5. BenchSci

The BenchSci platform was built to use advanced biomedical AI to help source the materials that scientific researchers need to move forward with their work. 

Once the app user enters their protein target into the BenchSci platform, the app will sift through thousands of reliable information sources like websites and scientific publications, delivering options that will help determine the antibody or reagent needed. BenchSci is a web-based application that is not available for Android or iOS. It is used by more than 48,000 individual scientists and over 4,000 institutions. BenchSci boasts that their tools can accelerate projects through their AI-powered reagent and antibody selection process, cutting the selection time from 12 weeks to 30 seconds. By empowering researchers to find the antibodies and reagents they need easier and faster, BenchSci reduces the number of materials they need to purchase and experiment with, therefore reducing costs. 

• AI-Assisted Reagent Selection, which uses AI and automation to reduce the errors and inefficiencies in the reagent and model system selection for scientists. 
• AI-Assisted Antibody Selection, which follows the same principle as the reagent selection but focuses on antibodies. This feature is free for you to use if you are a student or researcher at an academic, government, or nonprofit institution. 
• Things change quickly, so the platform is constantly updated to add new antibody and reagent products to ensure that users can access everything available.

6. eLabJournal

There are many Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs) available on the market, but the eLabJournal takes the concept of ELNs to the next step. eLabJournal was designed to increase productivity and efficiency in your research lab and simplify the process of organizing and locating data, collaborating with peers, and exporting files into a variety of formats. 

This is a web-based application with mobile versions available on the Google Play and Apple App Stores. Academics can purchase a subscription to the eLabJournal for $15.55 per month, while Industry users are charged $41.95 per month. 

• This ELN uses a simple, intuitive interface that was specifically designed to meet the needs of those in the life science research and development field. 
• Facilitates the ability to link data with functionality to upload images (via the Android and iPhone apps) and a wide range of file types. 
• Seamlessly integrates with eLab’s other products through their SDK and APIs, providing extensive customization opportunities to meet the specific needs of your lab.

7. Connected Papers

Connected Papers is a web-based application that provides a uniquely visual representation of the published research available in a certain field. This helps researchers and scientists browse the information available related to their field of study and ensure that nothing is being missed as they prepare their work for submission. 

The app works when a scientist enters their research topic into the search bar. Within seconds, Connected Papers reviews tens of thousands of papers related to that topic, and creates a visual map showcasing all of the work available for the scientist to review and consider in their research. Connected Papers is currently not available on the Apple App Store or Google Play App Store. It is completely free to use. 

• The visual maps create an easy-to-follow pathway that showcases how closely related particular sources are to the work you’re conducting.
• The app creates clusters that groups papers based on their level of similarities, and pushes less relevant papers away.
• Connected works scans the citations used by various sources and classified papers to be closely related based on how many citations overlap. 

8. Papership

The Papership app allows you to store, annotate, manage and share research papers from anywhere. Available on your Mac, iPhone, and iPad, Papership syncs with popular web-based platforms Zotero and Mendeley to allow app users to access their curated research libraries stored in their Zotero and Mendeley accounts conveniently and remotely. 

• You can choose a free version of the app which can integrate with annotation apps like Evernote, or purchase the annotation function of Papership for $9.99 per month.
• Documents annotated through Papership can be shared via email, SMS, iMessage, Facebook and Twitter. 
• Papership provides quantitative measurements of the significance of a publication to alert the reader as to the legitimacy of the research. It measures both peer-reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. 

9. GanttPRO

Ganttpro is a web-based project management application that helps research teams plan and organize projects through the use of collaborative Gantt charts. By providing the ability to create interactive Gantt charts online, GanttPRO makes it possible to plan and control many projects at the same time. It empowers researchers to organize and schedule tasks, set deadlines, identify dependencies and manage resources, all while making this information readily available to all collaborators. GanttPRO is available in a mobile version that can be downloaded for your Android and Apple mobile devices. The company offers a free trial and once that is complete different app packages are available that range from $7.99 to $19.99 per month. 

• Drag and drop capabilities to make it simple to organize and reorganize as inputs, outputs and priorities change
• Allows for the creation of multiple workspaces to separate personal tasks from overall team projects
• Collaborative functions make it easy to track the progress of each team member and step in to help whenever needed. 

Trello is an app that can be used by academics, researchers, marketers, computer scientists and basically any other student, professor or business person interested in seamlessly collaborating and managing projects on-the-go. Trello is organized in boards, lists and cards that are customizable and expandable as the project and team grows. Trello easily integrates with other popular apps like Dropbox, Slack, Chrome, Teams and more. It is available for Android and Apple mobile devices on the App Store and Google Play App Store. 

• Timelines that allow all team members to stay on track and be held accountable to deadlines
• Table views that connect work across a variety of related Trello boards
• A handy Dashboard that highlights usage and engagement stats for all of your boards.

11. Researcher

The Researcher app was built to make it easier for researchers to find academic articles relevant to their work. By aggregating over 19,000 sources that include peer-reviewed academic journals, blogs, podcasts and recordings from live events, Researcher helps scientists stay up-to-date on emerging trends and information related to any given field of study or interest. The creators of Researcher claim that their app is “like social media, but better.” The Researcher app is free to use and is available for download on the Apple App Store, the Google Play App Store and the AppInChina App Store. 

• Filter options that allow you to sift through tens of thousands of sources in seconds
• Notification options to ensure that any time a new source is published that relates to your stated interests, you’ll find out about it right away.
• Bookmarks that make it easy for you to come back to an interesting piece when the time is right, without having to search.

Conclusion 

The apps listed above can help you be more efficient, collaborate better with your colleagues, and get more organized. We hope one or more of them considerably help you with your research. Let us know if we missed any! 

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Reading academic papers on the iPhone

I frequently want to read academic papers while on the go. They're usually in PDF format, so I sync them to my iPhone with iBooks.

The problem is that most of the papers I want to read are in a two-column format that's extremely difficult to read on the phone's screen - I have to zoom in on a column, scroll down, then scroll up to the top of the next column and repeat.

Is there any software that will "flatten" out the PDF? I love Instapaper for web-based information; something that could turn a two-column PDF into a long stream of text and images would be great.

• Hope dropbox will get this feature soon enough! :P –  cregox Commented Feb 15, 2011 at 11:03
• Did you ever find a good solution? –  Nic Cottrell Commented Sep 10, 2018 at 19:57
• No, unfortunately not –  Bill Commented Sep 10, 2018 at 21:41

4 Answers 4

Goodreader for the iphone extracts text and images and fits them to your iphone screen and can be customized to your liking.

Calibre can be used to manage eBook libraries including PDF, and has the tools to transform them to other formats, including re-flow of text.

For academic papers I would recommend Papers by Mekentosj.

The app is available for iOS and Mac, so you can read, annotate or mark your papers on the go and have all papers in sync with your Mac. At home you can easily work with your papers, because Papers is also reference management software and gives the ability to directly search within your papers and cite within Word, Pages and several other editors.

I have the iOS and the Mac app and I love it.

I agree heartily with the answers about GoodReader and (somewhat less heartily) Calibre. This is not the answer you’re looking for, but for academic articles, especially with LaTeX’s wide margins, my iPad is much, much better than my iPhone—usually the entire non-empty part of the page can fit onscreen in portrait mode. (For everything else I use landscape mode.) For reviewing my own LaTeX articles, GoodReader is much better than iBooks, since you can annotate. One gotcha: Apple’s Preview doesn’t display all annotations, so I (reluctantly) use Adobe for this.

• Agreed. I use my iPad whenever I can but sometimes I'm not in a position to carry it around. –  Bill Commented Feb 14, 2011 at 20:30

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The best note-taking apps for iPad: Digitize your notes

Did you upgrade from a spiral notebook to an iPad? For many of us, an iPad is the perfect work, school, or personal tech companion to a laptop to level up daily productivity. If you love the tactile feeling of writing notes on paper, or it's your preferred study method, you won't have to sacrifice. The iPad is equipped with a native Notes app, and third-party developers offer tons of specialized, detailed, and upgraded app experiences for taking notes on your Apple tablet. 

Also: The best iPad stylus for your iPad  

But with hundreds of notebook-style apps on the market, it's hard to know which are worth your time or fit your needs. No one wants to waste time testing different apps and jumping ship until finding what works best. That's why we went hands-on with over a dozen note-taking apps for the iPad, keeping in mind cost, functionality, practicality, and design while focusing on apps that level up the hand-written note-taking experience. 

Also: The best digital notebooks you can buy  

What's the best note-taking app right now? 

Our pick for the best note-taking app overall goes to Notability for its tiered plan offerings, multiple pen styles, added format and design tools, and easy-to-use interface. But tons of apps are available for note-taking on your iPad, and some are suited to different wants and needs. See how Notability compares to our other top note-taking apps for studying, tool variability, and more. 

The best note-taking apps for iPad in 2024

Best ipad note-taking app overall.

• Supports multiple formats and pen styles
• Good free version
• Templates available
• PDF editing
• Tiered subscription options, but no one-time purchase option
• Limited stylus compatibility for use of Ink
• iCloud sync for subscribers only

Notability is widely regarded as one of the best note-taking apps for iPad, thanks to a simple interface matched by powerful capability. Notes are no longer just notes when you can add different forms of multimedia, like audio and video. 

Also: The best iPad models you can buy

It melds several different types of note-taking apps for iPad, offering the ability to take notes, create a journal, or utilize special tools like ink and highlighter. It allows not only note-taking but also PDF annotation. This is a convenient additional feature for students and professionals who spend time reviewing and working with PDF documents. 

Francois Gouelo uses Notability to help him in his role as owner of Enso Connect . "I've found Notability to be an invaluable tool in managing my business and helping us take our guest hosting game to the next level," he says, adding that it has significantly streamlined his workflow. "This versatility has been a game-changer in terms of productivity."

When I tested Notability, I immediately preferred it over other options because it was so easy to use. The app is arranged thoughtfully, and all the essential tools needed while jotting down notes are conveniently at the top of the screen. Plus, I appreciated the ability to use templates right away (even with just the free version). It brings the notebook experience to life and makes it fun. 

You can also upload your document or slide to begin. The app is specifically compatible with Apple Pencil or Logitech Crayon for specific tools like ink (I tested using the Apple Pencil 2nd Gen). When you first create an account, you'll be limited to the free plan, which offers a decent amount for free, but your note edits are still limited until you subscribe to a paid option if you want access to extended features. While there are several tiered subscription options, though there isn't a one-time payment option, which is a downside compared to alternatives like Goodnotes 6. 

Several users on Reddit said they recommended Notability for note-taking, with one user emphasizing the all-in-one nature of the app. "Notability is better if you will be using the notes app for anything besides just writing (drawings, diagrams, math). The dotted line tool sealed the deal for me; as an engineering student, I use it quite often," one Redditor said. 

As an editor, notes are primarily notes to me, but Notability's multifunctions greatly set it apart from other users. My closest friend is an AP statistics teacher in New Jersey, and she says there's nothing better than making answer keys and worksheets for her classes. She swears by Notability for in-class demonstrations on her projector while student teaching. 

Notability key features:  Price: $5/month or $15/year (other plans available) | Available app for Mac, iPhone, iPad | Templates | Customize notes with images, text, audio, and more | Import and mark-up PDFs and other docs | Store and organize notes | Math Conversion technology

Best iPad note-taking and productivity duo app

• Efficient workflow and notes app in one
• Numerous tiered subscription plans
• Multi-platform capabilities
• Good basic note-taking
• Limited storage under the free plan
• More costly than other subscription options
• No focus on handwritten notes, rather overall productivity

Evernote is a fully loaded powerhouse for the serious note-taker. You can create notebooks to organize your notes and add content like PDFs, sketches, and other multimedia like photos and audio. You can sync your account to your Google calendar, offering full scheduling capability beyond your note-taking abilities. 

You can make to-do lists, create tasks, and clip your favorite sites with Evernote's Web Clipper tool. In addition, you can scan your own handwritten or printed notes with your camera. 

You can sync all your devices with the number of devices determined by your subscription plan. Your plan also controls the number of monthly uploads you can make and the size of your notes.  

"I've come to like Evernote," says Tina Grant, quality assessor for Aerospheres with 17 years in the aviation industry. "The fact that it's a multiplatform tool helps, as I use a Windows computer at work. This means I can take notes on my iPad and then later access them directly in my browser on the PC. The fact that there is a built-in organization system that allows you to set up categories and tags also really helps to keep things in order."

I previously used Evernote as a high school student and was familiar with its overall interface, but it's gotten a lovely facelift in the last few years. Evernote is easy to use and helps keep your notes, ideas, and thoughts more organized, especially if you need help to be the neat. 

That said, I found it to be more useful as a productivity tool than the best option for note-taking. If you're looking for more detailed tools, color options, and note-taking templates and are less concerned about overall workflow productivity, another app option on this list may better suit your needs. Plus, the accessible version of Evernote is pretty limiting in terms of overall storage, note size, and more. 

Many Redditors said they like Evernote's features, organization, and workflow. Still, recently, some users said they ditched the platform for more simple, decluttered productivity apps and to escape "annoying" ads or pop-ups. 

Evernote f eatures: Price:  Starting at $15/month or starting at $130/year | Supports text, docs, PDFs, sketches, photos, audio, web clippings, and more | Camera scan to add and organize documents | Sync with Google Calendar | Create separate notebooks | Sync across devices 

Goodnotes 6

Best alternative ipad note-taking app.

• Supports file storage on several platforms
• Templates included
• Several paid plan options
• PDF note-taking supported
• Can purchase outright
• If purchased outright, you don't get the latest upgrades as they come out
• No monthly or 3-month plan

While embarking on this journey to test note-taking apps, I've discovered that the Goodnotes vs. Notability lure runs deep. Much like you're either Team Edward or Team Jacob from Twilight, you're either Team Notability or Team Goodnotes. 

The pitting of the two against each other is for good reason. They offer many of the same features, have cult followings, and are Apple Editors' Choice-awarded apps. 

GoodNotes also syncs across your devices for easy access, no matter where or what device you use. You can adjust and change your handwriting or use different colored inks with included tools, like Shape, Lasso, and Elements, that allow you to import photos and diagrams. Plus, it's perfect to use in conjunction with the Apple Pencil. You also have the option to work with PDFs and document outlines, housing them in an unlimited number of folders and subfolders for better organization. From handwritten notes to typed ones, your notes, files, and folders are all easily searchable. 

When I tested Goodnotes 6, I liked the three notebooks provided while using the free tier. I found the app easy to use, intuitive, and similar to the Notability experience. Ultimately, the deciding factor between the two came down to the subscription options. While Goodnotes can be purchased outright and Notability can't, the latter offers monthly and quarterly subscription options, which is excellent for students or those who know they will only use the app periodically or for one semester. A subscription model ensures that you'll always have access to the most up-to-date app version. 

Several Redditors said they would recommend Goodnotes 6 over Notability or other apps, with many saying it's well worth the cost to upgrade to the paid plan. Some said the one-time purchase option of Goodnotes makes it more cost-effective than other note-taking apps. However, other Redditors said that purchasing the software outright limits any future upgrades without having to pay and that the developer never lets customers know when a new version will be available.

"Only the current version you buy is forever, so if you buy GoodNotes 6, you will continue to benefit from it 100%, but once they release GoodNotes 7, you will have to buy that to stay up to date. If you don't, your current version will not continue to receive updates, and they will bombard you with ads telling you to move to the next version," one Redditor wrote. 

Goodnotes 6 key features: Price: $10/year or a one-time fee of $30 | Free starter plan with three notebooks (paid plans include unlimited notebooks) | Compatible with Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and iCloud | Paper Templates and customizable sizes for notes | Add, create, or import stickers | Supports audio notes | AI support

Best iPad note-taking app for handwriting recognition

• More affordable
• Great handwriting recognition
• Easy to use
• Useful tool panel for control while writing
• Lacks some features competitors have
• No subscriptions

Nebo offers full stylus support when you have an Apple Pencil you are itching to use on your new note-taking app for iPad. It uses leading AI technology to provide the option of handwritten notes, or you can annotate where you see fit. Nebo works with 66 languages, converting your scrappy hand-scribbled notes into lovely notes. 

Also, How to take notes on your iPad with an Apple Pencil 

If you pick up where you left off, you can import a file because the app is compatible with PDF, Word, and PowerPoint. Regardless of your choice, you can easily transition from handwriting to text to dictation, even in the same word, to make transcription a breeze, regardless of your preferred method. It can even handle math equations and diagrams, available as LaTeX or image.

Nebo also offers a companion app called Nebo Viewer, which allows you to access read-only versions of your notes anytime on your iPhone. Before seeing your notes, you must create a free MyScript account and access cloud sync.

"I operate in a sphere where time is precious, and managing day-to-day operations can be a Herculean task," explains Athina Zisi, Chief Operations Officer of Energy Casino . "This is where Nebo comes in with its meticulously designed features. Whether I'm jotting down notes during a high-stakes meeting or capturing action points during an operations review, Nebo handles it with aplomb."

Plus, Nebo's latest AI updates up the ante. Now, Nebo AI can be utilized for PDFs, empowering users to summarize content, clarify complex concepts, engage in quizzes, or interact with an AI assistant directly within their PDF documents. English users can enjoy improved quiz questions with Nebo's AI Quiz tool. 

When I tested Nebo, my favorite features were the lasso tool and the handy toolbar, which made it easy to switch colors and writing tools, change size and weight, and customize my note-taking. It's also easy to teach yourself the Nebo interface, which makes it a good pick for a beginner or student. 

Redditors said that they liked Nebo's handwriting-to-text feature, which some emphasized was better and more practical than that of Goodnote 6. Users said it has some of the best handwriting recognition across the note-taking app space but lacks some features of other competitors, like synching and audio notes. 

Nebo key f eatures:  Price: $9 for full version |  Artificial intelligence technology | Compatible with PDFs | Freeform canvas for unique note-taking control | Writing to text conversion | Lasso tool for maximum control | Add photos, sketches, and math | Create and edit structured notes | Solve simple math 

Apple Notes

Best native ipad note-taking app.

• Free to use
• Automatic save feature
• Already built into your iPad
• Rather basic features
• No fancy extras
• Only syncs on other Apple devices

A handy addition to any iPad, the Notes app is Apple's signature note-taking app. Its straightforward functionality makes it our best basic note-taking app for iPads. If you own an iPad, you probably already have the Apple Notes app installed on your home screen. 

It is one of the easiest ways to take notes, but the app can be used for more than note-taking. It can also handle other media types, like images, checklists, and sketches. 

"I freely admit to Notes being a complete lifesaver for me on more than one occasion," shares Troy Portillo, Director of Operations of Studypool . "In business, you can have unexpected conversations and need to be able to remember pertinent information. Having Notes has helped me save important information easily during those unexpected conversations."

I use the Apple Notes app for many things, from checklists to grocery lists to to-do lists. I wouldn't recommend trying to complete detailed educational notes on this app because there are much better options for in-depth note-taking, but the app is great for everyday jotting and reminders. 

It also works with handwritten notes or scanned documents that you need to keep at the ready. You can lock your notes with passwords or scan paper documents using the built-in scanner. The app is based on iCloud, so you can access your notes on any of your Apple devices. 

"It's easy to use, save, and already included on your iPhone," says Portillo. "Wins all around."

Apple Notes key features:  Price: Free | Simple to use | Share notes with others | Native to Apple ecosystem | Already installed on your iPad

Best note-taking app for annotating PDFs

• Ultimate research review and annotating capabilities
• Multi-platform sync
• Student discounts available
• Shareable files
• Several subscription options
• Limited traditional notebook experience
• More catered to PDF and document annotating

LiquidText was named the "Most Innovative iPad App of the Year" by the Apple App Store, and it's not for nothing. LiquidText offers a quick and easy way to review, gather, and organize information across tons of documents and web pages and then apply your findings to writing, studying, prepping, and more. You can pull out key facts and connect them, squeeze a document to compare sections, draw a line to connect ideas in different documents, comment on multiple pages, build upon your thoughts, and more.

When I tested LiquidText, I was impressed with its capabilities and was honestly quite mad that this was the first time I had found something like it before graduating from college. This would have been the perfect tool to have on hand throughout my graduate studies because it makes it so easy to take and connect ideas through files like PDFs, which traditionally are pesky to work with, especially when dealing with scanned copies of class readings, etc. This would've been great while writing my master's thesis, but lucky for you, I'm telling you about it now in this list. 

If you're looking for a solid note-taking app specifically for research, PDFs, and detailed annotating, LiquidText is a good pick. LiquidText users on Reddit said they liked the layout, app structure, and easy editing and note-taking on documents and files. Some said they would prefer something other than the subscription offerings or the synching capabilities. Still, many Redditors found it a better option than other note-taking apps for seamlessly annotating things like PDFs. 

LiquidText key features:  Price: Starts at $10/month | Easily organizes research | Review and annotate PDFs | Import from email, Dropbox, and more | Cross-platform synching | Backup on cloud | Share files easily 

What is the best note-taking app?

The best note-taking app for iPad is Notability and for several reasons. It works with the different types of media that you want to add to your notes, plus you can organize all of your notes into neat notebooks that are easy to access. Notability is also free to use, but you can upgrade for a minimal fee should you want access to the bonus features. 

Below is a look at the standout features and rating of the best note-taking apps we chose:

Which note-taking app is right for you?

Finding the best note-taking app is personal. It really depends on what you're looking for and what features are most important to you. So many iPad apps offer a lot of the same capabilities, so here's a breakdown of the standout features and our recommended best use case for each app we've rated to help you make the right note app choice for your iPad. But remember, it's going to come down to your personal preferences, and perhaps even some trial and error. 

Factors to consider when choosing a note-taking app for iPad:

If you're on the hunt for a good note-taking app, here's a few key features we think would be good to consider when searching for an app that fits your needs: 

• Interface: We looked for note apps that offer a clean, streamlined interface that is not too cluttered or distracting from your work. It's going to be key to decide what overall interface and design style suits your lifestyle, skills, and needs -- you're not going to want to take notes on an app that you struggle to find the tools on. 
• Tools: When it comes time to write, you want to be sure that there are the right tools to help you get the job done. We looked at features like the type of writing, dictation, presentation, and editing tools available with each of the best note-taking apps. Be sure to consider if you need a multitude of writing tool types, fonts, colors, and more artistic features, or if you just need the basics. 
• Continuity : If you want to be able to take notes on your iPad, but pick up where you left off on your Mac, you're going to need to look for apps which offer continuity between your device ecosystem. Most apps make it incredibly easy to access your notes from another device, but keep in mind that some apps may require a subscription or fee to do so. 
• Use: Narrowing down your use case for an iPad note-taking app will make it easier to find the perfect app for you. Do you need an app that can handle educational notes, to-do lists, reminders, and more? Will this app just be for school or work notes? Consider what you'll be using the app for the most and go from there. 
• Note-taking style : While all note-taking apps are designed to take notes, some are catered to different styles of note-taking. If you're looking to type your notes, or are looking to have your written text turn into text, you may need to pay closer attention to app descriptions before downloading tons of apps. Most "note-taking" apps on iPad are optimized for written notes using a stylus. 
• Cost: Budget is critical, so we considered how much each app costs and what each purchase gives you, and think you should too. 

How did we test these note-taking apps for iPad?

ZDNET went hands-on with every note-taking app recommended on this list, using a 2022 iPad Air. I spent time during using this app during my own daily activities to test out tool options, design or layouts, continuity and security, ease of use, user appeal, and most importantly, writing capabilities -- not just for a day or two, but over the course of a few weeks to really get a feel for an app's add-in value. That is, can you "add-in" this product into your life and benefit from its presence, or is it just another fad product that's too good to be true or collects dust after the buzz wears off? 

We know buying anything in the current economy is not just for your whims, and that's why this list, as well as our other advice, is tailored to your needs, wants, and your budget, and why our picks are expert-tested and expert-vetted. 

Why should I use a note-taking app for iPad?

Note-taking apps offer far more than you may expect. In addition to storing your notes and bright ideas, they also can offer many other support features, including converting handwriting to digital notes, templates to choose from, and even adding different forms of media like video and audio. 

And they're great for organizing ideas on the go. Whether you're scribbling your own ideas or collaborating with friends or colleagues, you'll have a central hub to access your notes easily. 

What can I use to take notes on my iPad?

If you plan on using a keyboard to type out your notes on your iPad like on a computer, you won't need to worry about a stylus. However, if you want a true pen-and-paper-like experience on your iPad, a stylus will be the best way to replicate that. ZDNET's top pick for an iPad stylus is the Apple Pencil (2nd Gen) -- especially if you can grab it while it's on sale, or the Apple Pencil Pro, depending on what iPad model you own. We also have tested and liked options from Zagg, Logitech, and more. 

Also: The best iPad stylus you can buy

And if you're really committed to the notebook bit, there are even paper-like screen protectors designed for various iPad models to offer users a similar tactile experience to real paper. 

Also: The best iPad screen protectors of 2024

Apple Pencil (2nd Gen)

Logitech crayon, paperlike 2.1 screen protector for ipad 10.9-inch, apple pencil pro, what is the highest-rated note-taking app for ipad.

Many of our picks for best note-taking apps have high App Store ratings. Goodnotes 6, OneNote, Notability all have a 4.7/5 star rating. Few apps, like CollaNote and " Old Notepad ", have an even higher rating of 4.8/5. 

Does iPad have a free note-taking app?

It is possible to use a free note-taking app for iPad. The best free iPad note-taking app is Apple Notes, since it comes pre-installed and could not be easier to use. However, there are other options available to you, too. 

What's the difference between a smart notebook and a note-taking app?

A smart notebook (often called a digital notebook) is essentially a digital version of a traditional notebook, designed specifically for note taking and writing tasks. They often offer cloud services, storage, and different upload options. An iPad, like other tablets, runs on an operating system and can offer a wider range of function such as browsing the web, multimedia, gaming, and other tasks. With an iPad, you can download specific applications designed for note taking to provide a notebook experience, while also using it for a multitude of other things. A smart notebook is only designed for note-taking, and not for other activities. 

Also: The best digital notebooks you can buy

Where are my notes stored when I use a note-taking app?

Where your notes are housed will ultimately differ from app to app, but most offer options to additionally export files to alternative storage places or automatically update to the cloud. This makes your notes easy to share and find, no matter what device you choose to access them on. Of course, you can access your notes directly from each app, too. If you plan on taking many digital notes, we recommend ensuring you have ample storage space and a proper cloud system . Nothing is worse than losing notes you worked hard on before a big test or meeting. 

Also: The best cloud storage services for secure file keeping

Do I need a stylus to take notes on my iPad?

No, you don't absolutely need a stylus to take notes on your iPad. Some note-taking apps are designed to better suit typing your notes, so a stylus wouldn't be required. But if you're looking to replicate the feel of paper and pen, a stylus is the easiest way to do so and works much better than your fingers. The Apple Pencil (2nd Gen), Apple Pencil Pro, and Logitech Crayon are some great stylus options , though we've tested others you can consider, too. 

Also: The best stylus for your iPad

Other note-taking apps we've tested:

While searching for the best note-taking apps, we came across other apps that may work for your needs. Here are a few other note-taking apps to look into. 

ZDNET Recommends

The best note-taking tablets: expert tested, the best smart notebooks you can buy: expert tested, the best tablets for students going back to school: expert tested.

State of the Consumer 2024: What’s now and what’s next

If you think you know consumer behavior, think again. Middle-income consumers are feeling the squeeze and worrying about inflation but aren’t holding back on splurges. Rather than sticking to tight budgets in retirement, aging consumers are splurging too. Speaking of older shoppers, it turns out that the brand loyalty they’ve long been known for is a thing of the past. And young consumers in Asia and the Middle East are more likely than those in Western markets to switch to higher-priced brands.

These are just some of the large-scale shifts taking place in the global consumer landscape. Consumers have continued to defy expectations and behave in atypical ways , keeping consumer goods manufacturers and retailers on their toes. More than ever, companies that cultivate a detailed, up-to-date understanding of today’s and tomorrow’s consumers—who they are, what they want, and where and how they shop—will be best positioned to succeed.

You’re invited

Join us for a discussion of our report, Rescuing the decade: A dual agenda for the consumer goods industry , on June 26 at 10:00 a.m. ET | 4:00 p.m. CET.

In this article, we draw on our ConsumerWise  research to delve into nine trends shaping the global consumer sector and four imperatives to help consumer businesses move from “now” to “next.”

Nine trends defining the global consumer market

To forecast where the global consumer landscape is heading, we surveyed more than 15,000 consumers in 18 markets that together make up 90 percent of global GDP. Their answers revealed surprising nuances about demographic groups, seemingly contradictory consumer behaviors, and categories poised for growth.

Who is the future consumer?

Consumers no longer fit into traditional archetypes. Some of the most influential consumers of tomorrow are currently underserved.

1. Young people in emerging markets. By 2030, 75 percent of consumers in emerging markets will be between the ages of 15 and 34. Our data indicates these consumers may be optimistic about the economy and willing to spend.

Among this group, young consumers aged 18 to 24 in Asian and Middle Eastern nations, such as India and Saudi Arabia, will be particularly important to consumer businesses, given their pent-up demand and willingness to spend. These consumers indicate a strong desire to spend on premium products, so much so that they are up to two times more likely to trade up—meaning opt for higher-priced brands and retailers—than young consumers in advanced economies. They are also up to three times more optimistic about their respective economies (Exhibit 1). This optimism could translate into higher levels of future consumption. It’s worth noting that young consumers in Latin America are actually less likely to trade up than young consumers in other emerging economies.

2. Retired and ready to spend. Longer life expectancies and declining birth rates, particularly in advanced economies, are pushing the global population of people older than 65 to increase at a quicker rate than the population of people younger than that age. 1 “Ageing,” United Nations, accessed May 29, 2024. Yet for all the data relating to aging populations, older consumers are often misunderstood.

Despite the financial constraints that may accompany retirement, aging consumers across all income levels are willing to spend on discretionary items. In experiential categories such as travel, older consumers’ intent to splurge is even higher than that of millennials, who have historically been big travel spenders. High-income baby boomer and Silent Generation consumers (those whose household incomes exceed $100,000) are a sizable cohort in the United States, making up 30 percent of the market—and they’re more likely to spend on discretionary purchases, such as home improvement and gardening, compared with lower-income consumers their age.

In emerging markets, it’s not just younger consumers who are ready to spend but their parents, too. Wealthy aging consumers in emerging markets are more optimistic, expect to spend more on discretionary items, and plan on treating themselves more than wealthy aging consumers in advanced markets. In one of the starkest examples, 42 percent of wealthy aging consumers in emerging markets 2 Forty-two percent of consumers in Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia. said they expect to spend more on entertainment, compared with 7 percent of comparable consumers in Europe 3 Throughout this article, we will refer to “Europe” to indicate France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. and 11 percent in the United States. We see a similar willingness to spend in categories such as home improvement, airline flights, and hotel stays. Consumer businesses that market exclusively to younger consumers are thus missing out; they ignore wealthy aging consumers at their own risk.

3. The squeezed-but-splurging middle. We expect that cost-of-living increases in advanced economies will continue to put pressure on middle-income consumers. While conventional wisdom would suggest that these consumers will clamp down on discretionary spending as a result, our data reveals something different: instead, middle-income consumers in Europe and the United States say they plan to splurge on discretionary items at a rate that is comparable with that of high-income consumers.

This intent to splurge appears across various categories, including experience-based categories such as travel and dining out, as well as groceries and discretionary goods. Middle-income consumers might typically be expected to delay purchases during economically challenging times, but our research shows that they’re only slightly more inclined to delay purchases than wealthier consumers. They’re also not much more likely to trade down than higher-income consumers.

What will consumers want?

What consumers want is changing too. Weakened brand loyalty, affordability over sustainability, and heightened interest in wellness products and services reflect the preferences and priorities of consumers across ages and geographies.

4. Brand exploration. When they couldn’t find exactly what they needed because of pandemic-era supply chain disruptions, roughly half of consumers  switched products or brands. That behavioral change has proved quite sticky: consumers continue to be open to exploring alternatives, and brand loyalty is fading across demographic groups.

In advanced markets, over a third of consumers have tried different brands, and approximately 40 percent have switched retailers in search of better prices and discounts (Exhibit 2). Inflation and economic uncertainty are almost certainly inducing this behavior.

This weakening of brand loyalty is not limited to a specific age group. In the past, older consumers remained consistently loyal to their preferred brands, but today, they’re just as likely to embrace new brands and retailers. In Europe and the United States, Gen Zers and millennials are only slightly more likely than older consumers to trade down to lower-priced brands and retailers.

One beneficiary of this rampant downtrading is private labels. Thirty-six percent of consumers plan to purchase private-label products more frequently, and 60 percent believe private brands offer equal or better quality.

5. Sustainability: Value upstages values. In recent years, young consumers in our survey data said they prioritized sustainability considerations when making purchases. It wasn’t all talk: in the United States, sales of products with sustainability-related claims  outpaced sales of products without such claims.

While young consumers still say they care about sustainability, they are now making clear trade-offs in the face of economic uncertainty and inflation. In Europe and the United States, fewer Gen Zers and millennials ranked sustainability claims as an important purchasing factor at the beginning of 2024 than in 2023 (Exhibit 3).

Younger consumers aren’t just deprioritizing sustainability in their purchase decisions; they’ve also become less willing to pay a premium for sustainable products. In Europe and the United States, the percentage of young consumers willing to pay a premium for products with sustainability claims declined by up to four percentage points across product categories. Among these consumers, only a very small percentage were willing to pay a premium for personal care and apparel products with sustainability claims.

6. The worldwide wellness wave. We estimate the global wellness market to be worth more than $1.8 trillion , growing 5 to 10 percent annually. 4 “ The trends defining the $1.8 trillion global wellness market in 2024 ,” McKinsey, January 16, 2024. In advanced economies, health and wellness products and services have been in high demand over the past several years. Today, these categories are also growing quickly in emerging markets, and in some cases, growth in intent to spend on health and wellness products in emerging markets is outpacing growth in advanced markets.

In emerging markets such as China, India, and the Middle East, the percentage of consumers who intend to increase their spending on wellness products and services is two to three times higher than in advanced markets such as Canada and the United States (Exhibit 4).

It’s not only Gen Zers and millennials who are propelling growth in this space, but also Gen Xers and baby boomers. To be sure, regional variations appear. According to our research, for example, 63 percent of baby boomers in China intend to spend more on fitness in the near future, while only 4 percent of the same cohort in India plan to do so.

Weight management products and services, in particular, could help induce growth in the wellness sector over the next several years.

By 2035, just over half of the world’s population is projected to be overweight or obese. At the same time, the availability of weight management drugs is expected to grow as more health plans approve coverage, doctors are able to prescribe them for more uses, and doses are made available in pill form. Adoption of these drugs, compared with other weight management solutions (such as dieting or exercise), will depend on cultural norms and beliefs, too. Less than 30 percent of Chinese and UK consumers consider weight loss drugs to be very effective . 5 “ The trends defining the $1.8 trillion global wellness market in 2024 ,” McKinsey, January 16, 2024.

7. Wellness for women. Investments in women’s wellness are also growing . Consumers in both advanced and emerging markets are indicating a greater interest in spending on women’s wellness products and services, as well as on adjacent personal-care categories. We estimate that closing the women’s health gap could be worth $1 trillion annually  by 2040. 6 Kweilin Ellingrud, Lucy Pérez, Anouk Petersen, and Valentina Sartori, Closing the women’s health gap: A $1 trillion opportunity to improve lives and economies , McKinsey Health Institute, January 17, 2024.

A higher percentage of women in emerging markets (48 percent), in fact, indicate an intent to splurge on beauty and personal-care products and fitness, compared with women in advanced markets (27 percent). And young women are especially interested in wellness: Gen Z women across both emerging and advanced markets said they expect to spend more on personal-care goods and services, compared with Gen Xers and baby boomers. As innovation in women’s health continues to push the sector forward, we expect spending to increase as well.

Where will consumers shop?

Knowing what consumers want means little if businesses do not meet consumers where they are. Global migration patterns—both to and from major urban hubs—are changing where consumers spend their time and money in the physical world, while growth in social commerce accounts for new movement in the digital world.

8. The new urban hot spots. In both advanced and emerging markets, people are moving to seek out new opportunities and a better quality of life. In advanced markets like the United States, consumers are moving away from larger cities in the Pacific Northwest and the Northeast to “secondary cities,” or those with populations between 50,000 and 500,000 people. Two-thirds of the fastest-growing US cities are in the South and West. In these cities, the cost of living is lower than in larger cities, and remote work opportunities are plentiful. Millennials, Gen Xers, and boomers are propelling this trend.

Just because US consumers are moving to scaled-down versions of metropolises does not mean they are curtailing their spending: just as many consumers in secondary cities say they plan to splurge as do consumers in the largest American cities. Meanwhile, 1.3 times more consumers in secondary cities say they plan to splurge, compared with US consumers in rural areas.

Emerging markets will continue to see urban-population growth in both megacities and secondary cities as consumers move in search of better economic opportunities and improved well-being. By 2035, for example, 43 percent of the Indian population may reside in urban areas, up from 35 percent in 2018. In China, the percentage of middle-class households is expected to increase in both tier-one and tier-two cities as well as in tier-three and tier-four cities by 2030. And by 2040, there will be 537 million people in African urban centers, making the African urban population the largest in the world.

9. Social commerce takes flight. For several years, China has led the world in the adoption of social commerce, in which consumers browse and buy directly through social media and content creation platforms. Today, social-commerce markets in both China and India continue to mature, while those in other emerging-market countries—such as Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—are close behind (Exhibit 5). Consumers in these countries consistently spend more on purchases made through social media platforms, compared with consumers in Europe and the United States.

Attempts to grow the social-commerce market  in the West have had limited success. Companies simply may have been too early to embrace this opportunity. We expect social commerce in the United States to expand to $145 billion by 2027, up from $67 billion today. 7 “ Social commerce: The future of how consumers interact with brands ,” McKinsey, October 19, 2022. Gen Zers and millennials are propelling this growth: they make purchases on social media four times more often than older generations do. More than a third of Gen Z and millennial survey respondents said they had made a purchase on social media in the prior three months.

Four imperatives to win the consumer of the future

In light of these nine forward-looking themes, what should consumer companies do? The most successful ones will be those that act on four imperatives:

Build microtargeting capabilities

About quantumblack, ai by mckinsey.

QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm, helps companies transform using the power of technology, technical expertise, and industry experts. With thousands of practitioners at QuantumBlack (data engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and software engineers) and McKinsey (industry and domain experts), we are working to solve the world’s most important AI challenges. QuantumBlack Labs is our center of technology development and client innovation, which has been driving cutting-edge advancements and developments in AI through locations across the globe.

Rather than putting consumers in predefined—and often outdated—boxes, companies should focus on microtargeting to build a richer understanding of consumer preferences. This involves taking a “smart reach” approach , whereby consumer businesses use their consumer data to target specific microsegments of consumers who may demonstrate particular shopping behaviors or preferences. Generative AI can help consumer businesses reach these microsegments  at scale by increasing creative output and automating marketing outreach. Through microtargeting, companies can engage high-potential consumer groups—for example, younger people in emerging markets or wealthy aging individuals—and provide personalized experiences that build brand love and loyalty and propel future purchases.

Invest in wellness

A rise in both consumer interest and purchasing power presents tremendous opportunities in the $1.8 trillion global-consumer-wellness space. Consumer goods leaders have a chance to reevaluate their product development road maps and consider whether they have more opportunities to introduce personalized-wellness products to priority consumer groups. Consumers across the globe want data- and science-backed health and wellness solutions. Best-in-class companies should evaluate opportunities to lean into these offerings and other wellness growth areas (such as women’s health and healthy aging).

Propel the social–digital experience

Companies should take steps to engage with consumers on social media and other digital platforms. This involves identifying the right channels and platforms, creating attractive content, and tailoring strategies to meet evolving consumer needs. This is especially important as industry lines blur (for example, as consumer companies enter the healthcare space and vice versa) and as ecosystems (networks or partnerships that cut across different industries)  become more important.

We see innovative, international companies testing new approaches to social commerce to connect with consumers on a local level. Some are mobilizing local key opinion leaders to precisely target consumers and create viral digital campaigns that resonate with them. Social media and private chats through platforms such as WeChat help to continually engage consumers.

Offer premium products where they matter

Offering premium products in relevant categories can help improve brand loyalty. Consumer brands should identify which categories are ripe for this, such as experiential travel—where splurge activity is common even across middle-income and aging consumers. Conversely, some categories are more suitable for value plays based on trade-down behavior or frequent brand exploration. Integrating loyalty and pricing strategies , instituting pricing tiers, and tailoring product assortments at the local and channel levels are ways that consumer businesses can provide value to consumers, while also managing economic pressures.

In this consumer landscape—one in which standards, complexity, and stakes are all higher—leaders should understand the new nuances that define who the “next” shoppers are, what they care about, and how they shop. These insights, which should then inform strategic category and channel investments, can lead to long-term, profitable growth and sustained competitive advantage.

The authors wish to thank Cait Pearson, Heather Gouinlock, and Keir Sullivan for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Alexandra Mondalek, an editor in the New York office.

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A smarter way to streamline drug discovery

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The use of AI to streamline drug discovery is exploding. Researchers are deploying machine-learning models to help them identify molecules, among billions of options, that might have the properties they are seeking to develop new medicines.

But there are so many variables to consider — from the price of materials to the risk of something going wrong — that even when scientists use AI, weighing the costs of synthesizing the best candidates is no easy task.

The myriad challenges involved in identifying the best and most cost-efficient molecules to test is one reason new medicines take so long to develop, as well as a key driver of high prescription drug prices.

To help scientists make cost-aware choices, MIT researchers developed an algorithmic framework to automatically identify optimal molecular candidates, which minimizes synthetic cost while maximizing the likelihood candidates have desired properties. The algorithm also identifies the materials and experimental steps needed to synthesize these molecules.

Their quantitative framework, known as Synthesis Planning and Rewards-based Route Optimization Workflow (SPARROW), considers the costs of synthesizing a batch of molecules at once, since multiple candidates can often be derived from some of the same chemical compounds.

Moreover, this unified approach captures key information on molecular design, property prediction, and synthesis planning from online repositories and widely used AI tools.

Beyond helping pharmaceutical companies discover new drugs more efficiently, SPARROW could be used in applications like the invention of new agrichemicals or the discovery of specialized materials for organic electronics.

“The selection of compounds is very much an art at the moment — and at times it is a very successful art. But because we have all these other models and predictive tools that give us information on how molecules might perform and how they might be synthesized, we can and should be using that information to guide the decisions we make,” says Connor Coley, the Class of 1957 Career Development Assistant Professor in the MIT departments of Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and senior author of a paper on SPARROW.

Coley is joined on the paper by lead author Jenna Fromer SM ’24. The research appears today in Nature Computational Science .

Complex cost considerations

In a sense, whether a scientist should synthesize and test a certain molecule boils down to a question of the synthetic cost versus the value of the experiment. However, determining cost or value are tough problems on their own.

For instance, an experiment might require expensive materials or it could have a high risk of failure. On the value side, one might consider how useful it would be to know the properties of this molecule or whether those predictions carry a high level of uncertainty.

At the same time, pharmaceutical companies increasingly use batch synthesis to improve efficiency. Instead of testing molecules one at a time, they use combinations of chemical building blocks to test multiple candidates at once. However, this means the chemical reactions must all require the same experimental conditions. This makes estimating cost and value even more challenging.

SPARROW tackles this challenge by considering the shared intermediary compounds involved in synthesizing molecules and incorporating that information into its cost-versus-value function.

“When you think about this optimization game of designing a batch of molecules, the cost of adding on a new structure depends on the molecules you have already chosen,” Coley says.

The framework also considers things like the costs of starting materials, the number of reactions that are involved in each synthetic route, and the likelihood those reactions will be successful on the first try.

To utilize SPARROW, a scientist provides a set of molecular compounds they are thinking of testing and a definition of the properties they are hoping to find.

From there, SPARROW collects information on the molecules and their synthetic pathways and then weighs the value of each one against the cost of synthesizing a batch of candidates. It automatically selects the best subset of candidates that meet the user’s criteria and finds the most cost-effective synthetic routes for those compounds.

“It does all this optimization in one step, so it can really capture all of these competing objectives simultaneously,” Fromer says.

A versatile framework

SPARROW is unique because it can incorporate molecular structures that have been hand-designed by humans, those that exist in virtual catalogs, or never-before-seen molecules that have been invented by generative AI models.

“We have all these different sources of ideas. Part of the appeal of SPARROW is that you can take all these ideas and put them on a level playing field,” Coley adds.

The researchers evaluated SPARROW by applying it in three case studies. The case studies, based on real-world problems faced by chemists, were designed to test SPARROW’s ability to find cost-efficient synthesis plans while working with a wide range of input molecules.

They found that SPARROW effectively captured the marginal costs of batch synthesis and identified common experimental steps and intermediate chemicals. In addition, it could scale up to handle hundreds of potential molecular candidates.

“In the machine-learning-for-chemistry community, there are so many models that work well for retrosynthesis or molecular property prediction, for example, but how do we actually use them? Our framework aims to bring out the value of this prior work. By creating SPARROW, hopefully we can guide other researchers to think about compound downselection using their own cost and utility functions,” Fromer says.

In the future, the researchers want to incorporate additional complexity into SPARROW. For instance, they’d like to enable the algorithm to consider that the value of testing one compound may not always be constant. They also want to include more elements of parallel chemistry in its cost-versus-value function.

“The work by Fromer and Coley better aligns algorithmic decision making to the practical realities of chemical synthesis. When existing computational design algorithms are used, the work of determining how to best synthesize the set of designs is left to the medicinal chemist, resulting in less optimal choices and extra work for the medicinal chemist,” says Patrick Riley, senior vice president of artificial intelligence at Relay Therapeutics, who was not involved with this research. “This paper shows a principled path to include consideration of joint synthesis, which I expect to result in higher quality and more accepted algorithmic designs.”

“Identifying which compounds to synthesize in a way that carefully balances time, cost, and the potential for making progress toward goals while providing useful new information is one of the most challenging tasks for drug discovery teams. The SPARROW approach from Fromer and Coley does this in an effective and automated way, providing a useful tool for human medicinal chemistry teams and taking important steps toward fully autonomous approaches to drug discovery,” adds John Chodera, a computational chemist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who was not involved with this work.

This research was supported, in part, by the DARPA Accelerated Molecular Discovery Program, the Office of Naval Research, and the National Science Foundation.

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