Clean Research

Having trouble finding a specific publication among all the PDF files in your database stored in a folder structure? This app aims to help researchers to keep track of and organise PDF publication files. The publications (PDF files) can be organised with respect to (1) a user tag, (2) author, (3) year, (4) user rank, (5) journal. Files can also be tagged as favorites, which will make it easier to find files amongst a large database. Search also allows the user to quickly find files.

The app also allows you to organise other research-related files and has the following categories: Publications, Manuscripts, Books, Conference proceedings, Supervision, Courses, Economy, Presentation, Proposals, Teaching, Patents, Work documents, Travel, Meetings, Notes, Reviewing and Miscellaneous. These categories are coupled to folders created in iCloud Drive. Notes can be made in all PDF files, while other files can be previewed from within the app.

When the app is executed the first time (note that the user needs to be logged into their Apple account with iCloud Drive enabled!) required folders are created in the users iCloud Drive folder. The user then adds the PDF files in the appropriate folder. Each time the app is loaded, it detects the PDF files and presents them and the user can add annotations/notes to the files.

Place your PDFs directly into the Publications/Economy/Books folder. However, to make best use of the other categories, place your PDFs into subfolders and they will be displayed as different sections in the app. In other words, organise your files almost like you are used to (in a 2 level folder system) and the app lets you quickly overview your content without having to search through folder after folder.

All recently viewed files will be displayed at the top category, sorted either as viewed within the hour, within the last 8 hours, last day, last week or last month. This means that you can easily work with several documents that are placed into different folders. Keep you files tidy on your computer but access them easily.

- To make a blank note, use the "Notes" category and "+".
- Economy has three different views: Project (overview of the economy), Invoices and Funds (add funding organisations you intend to apply for funds from).
- Publications has five different views: Tags, Author, Journal, Year and Rank. This information is added through the notes-button.
- The "+" button is used for Publications (add tag), Books (add tag) and Economy (add Project or Fund).
- The "edit" button (looks like a pen) is used to remove a certain publication/book from a certain user-created tag. It is also used to remove Memos.
- Download local copies of the files if you want to make sure to always have access to the file.
- The list of categories auto-updates so that the ones you use most often end up at the top. "Recently" always at the top though.
- To make use of the "Hiring" tab under "Work documents", place your job announcements as folders under the automatically created Hiring-folder (in Work documents) and then make a subfolder for each applicant there. If you name the applicants' files as "CV.pdf", "PL.pdf", "Grades.pdf" and "LoR.pdf" they will be accessible from the "Hiring" view.
- Memos allow you to make short notes. Texts are almost always saved automatically, but to be sure, press the save icon.


- The "Ruler" option gives the user a frame with user-defined border thicknesses, so to focus on the current line only.
- Click the speaker icon and the current page can be read aloud. A certain paragraph can be read aloud by selecting that text.

Every time a change is made, that change is updated to iCloud. However, if the user is not connected to internet at that time, no second try to upload the information is performed. This is why the user has the possibility to manually upload all data to iCloud in the settings view (Beta version, use only the download option if you do not have important notes you are keen to keep).