Thread by @hbar_universe

Tools & tricks I use to search for scientific information. 🧵 1/n

1. scholar.google.com is the main tool to search for keywords & connections. But it really shines with its browser extension ...⬇️

#AcademicTwitter #physics #Science #academia #PhDAdvice

1...Google Scholar Button automatically picks up the paper you read and provides info on it. That saves a TON of time over the day. Also, "Cite" allows to immediately export the citation in bibtex. Very convenient!

2. unpaywall.org/welcome finds open access copy..⬇️ 2/n

2...of a paper that is linked to the journal page you're currently on. Sometimes it's arXiv, sometimes -- some other open resources. Even when I'm not at the institute, I can always access the papers I need in one click.

⬇️3/n

3. refseek.com allows to search through academic literature. It's a pure search engine that only gives results from the academic sources. Like google, but all ads & smm bs removed. I use it when my query is more blurry than is useful for Scholar.

⬇️4/n

4. semanticscholar.org is an AI-powered search. It's really powerful for looking into new fields, where I don't see the connections between the topics myself. I still use it less often than Scholar, but I think they keep improving very rapidly.

⬇️5/n

5. arxiv-vanity.com renders arXiv as webpages. My to-go webpage for reading papers on my mobile phone. It actually gives very nice results. But on my laptop I still prefer PDFs (since I can download and mark them easily).

⬇️6/n

6. Google Images. I actually don't use google search to search for scientific information. But I do use image search. Some concepts I have only a very vague idea about and don't know how to look for. So I type keywords into google images and look for the setup or plot...⬇️7/n

6. ...that looks related to what I need. I then look for related images. That's incredibly efficient.

7. connectedpapers.com allows to explore connections between different papers. Sometimes I go there to browse through unexpected relations and get inspiration.

⬇️8/n

8. researchrabbit.ai similar to N7 on the list, but a bit more feature-reach. I've only tested it a few times, but it looks quite awesome. I have my own system for organizing papers & connections, but I can totally see the appeal of this tool.

⬇️9/n

9. metaphor.systems is another tool that I only played with, but it looks nice. You describe what you want to find in plain words, and ai looks for related papers (mostly arxiv). Seems like a cool thing to try when you're stuck at even phrasing the initial query.

▶️10/10