3. Scrivener

After all of your notes are captured and (maybe) organized, you’re probably going to have to do some writing. While most people will usually reach for Microsoft Word, I suggest trying out Scrivener, a much less expensive yet supremely more powerful option. Within a single Scrivener project you can keep as many documents as you like. You could keep multiple drafts of the same paper, or perhaps keep sections of a longer piece as separate documents. Through the app’s well thought out export functionality, you can then merge the documents later and save as Word. Scrivener contains powerful outlining features and a corkboard view to help lay out big ideas in a familiar environment. You can even load all of your research material (PDFs, webpages, photos, audio recordings, videos, etc.) for quick access while you’re doing work. Full-screen text editing option and hundreds of other options make it one of the best word processors around. At $45, this multi-functional application is a steal. Scrivener 2.1 is available only for the Mac, but there are currently public betas available on Windows and Linux for free.