By Fábio Hech Dominski and Bruno Hech Dominski

APP REVIEW

 

NAME OF MOBILE APPLICATION

Researcher

CATEGORY OF THE MOBILE APPLICATION

Several areas, including medical and health sciences.

PLATFORM

Requires iOS 10.0 or later (compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch) and Android 5.0 or later.

COST

Free

ABOUT THE APP

Researcher is an app developed by Blenheim Chalcot company (UK). Similar to a newsreader, the app brings together the latest publications from more than 12,000 journals from ten research areas (Arts & Humanities; Business & Management; Chemistry & Materials Science; Earth Sciences & Geography; Economics & Finance; Engineering & Computer Science; Life Sciences & Biology; Medical & Health Sciences; Physics & Mathematics; and Social Sciences & Psychology) and more than 200 subjects. It now has more than 1 million downloads.

The app has five sections:

1. Article feed,
2. Journals available,
3. Trending topics,
4. Bookmarks, and
5. User profile (user data about app usage) (Figure 1).

The user can follow specific journals of choice, or can save search strings based on keywords. It is also possible to login to a personal account with ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) or use an institutional account.

USE IN CLINICAL PRACTICE

Considering the Medical & Health Sciences area, the Researcher app is useful for researchers, school teachers, physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, sports science and exercise professionals, those involved in public policy, and the general public. The app lists journals including the the British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM), the most relevant journal of sports medicine (Impact Factor 11.645).

Decision-making in health needs to be based on scientific principles¹. The Researcher app is a tool to keep updated on journals or topics of interest, being easy to access and efficient, provides the user with the latest research published.

PROS

• Free, and gives access to the latest science and evidence-based practice in several fields.
• Simple, easy to use and user-friendly interface.
• Allows user to share chosen papers with other apps.
• The app provides a news stream about journals, with the option to allow for push notifications (including when journals critical to your work have published new papers).
• The diversity of research areas that the app covers, with high applicability and specificity of different sub-areas of knowledge which can be tracked by favouriting journals and keywords related to the researcher area.
• 12,000 journals and 200 subject areas are available on the app.

CONS

• The app is only available in English. Adding other languages would increase comprehensively the applicability of the app.
• It is not possible to view unpublished but accepted articles (in press).
• Metrics: there is no available information on the impact factor of the journals and individual article metrics are also not available.

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References

1. de Araújo Moraes SDT. Scientific method and research in health: orientation for professional practice. Journal of Human Growth and Development2019, 29(1), 5-9.

Competing interests

None to declare

Fábio Hech Dominski is a Brazilian physical education professor and PhD student. He lives in Florianopolis and works in Joinville. When not studying in the Laboratory of Sport and Exercise Psychology at the Santa Catarina State University in Brazil, he lifts weights at the gym.

E-mail: fabio.dominski@udesc.br and Instagram: @fabiodominski

Bruno Hech Dominski is a Brazilian biologist and master’s student. He lives and studies in Florianopolis. When not doing his research at the Laboratory of Bacterial Molecular Genetics in Brazil, Bruno reads a good book.

E-mail: brunodominski7@gmail.com and Instagram: @brunodominski