Web Based Tools: Emerging Paradigms in the Field of Academic Research

Progress of every profession, academic discipline, and society at large rides on the back of research and development. Research generates new information and knowledge. It is a standardized process of identifying the problem, collecting data or evidence, tabulating data and its analysis, drawing inference and establishing new facts in the form of information. Therefore, research is a long process and a lot of time is required to complete research work. The information and communication technology, especially the internet and the www, descended from the cyberspace help researchers a lot in this regards. There are a lot of web-based programmes, tools, sites, and open source initiatives that help researchers to make the process more efficient and organized and thus save the time of the researchers too. The research domain of library and information science has witnessed a rapid increase in the use of web-based tools in recent years. This paper addresses some web-based tools, websites, open-source initiatives that would help academic community especially research scholars immensely to customize search engines, to search relevant documents of his/her subject interest, to organize and manage citations, to assemble topic related articles and other documents in one place, to get access to open access & other e-resources and many more.