Research Tools for Students and Faculty: Dropbox

Dropbox is a great way to organize files and have information stored online without cluttering computer space and completely accessible from any internet connection. There are a multitude of ways that Dropbox has helped me stay organized for my graduate work and I am happy to share them all here.

First, Dropbox is an online file storage system that is similar to an external hard drive or "cloud" system. Downloading Dropbox and saving a folder to your desktop means that everything saved there is automatically saved and uploaded to your online Dropbox account. When you go to your online Dropbox account, you can manually upload documents (or photos depending how much space you have) to different folders. For me, I use folders to indicate which of my computers the files originated from and this is also where you can "share" folders with friends. I will talk more about the uses of these features below. Before that, I will mention that Dropbox is free for 2GB of memory (a fair amount of space if all you are interested in uploading is documents). Extra space is billed on a monthly/yearly basis from 50GB ($9.99/month) to 1TB ($895/year). These different packages allow for extra data for storage of media files, photographs, and larger documents (to replace an external hard drive). But if you are just saving the essentials, the free version has space. Additionally, referring people or using referral links to sign up will give each person (the one who shared the link and the new sign-up) 500MB of data, which can easily add more free GBs of space to your account and others!

Here are a list of ways that I've used Dropbox to simplify my life:

• Upload a link to a file from your Dropbox to your website (e.g., your C.V.) so that when you save changes to the file on the computer, they are automatically updated on the website
• just click "get link" next to each uploaded file for a unique link to the document that people can see but not edit
• Instead of using Google Docs or emailing tracked changes back and forth, groups can share updated versions of shared projects/documents/brainstorms to a shared Dropbox folder
• Organize research files into folders by ideas, projects, dissertation chapters, conference papers, publications, etc.
• Organize class work into folders that can be accessed anywhere - from your office, home, class, transit, etc. you can even get Dropbox on your phone or tablet!
• Never worry about hard drive failures, computer viruses, lost thumb drives, and keeping track of emailing yourself files
• Share any file quickly by email or print directly from the Dropbox website
• Share photos with friends without uploading everything through email/social media

I would recommend Dropbox especially because of its ease to keep track and organize files that one can access anywhere. Having documents with research ideas combined with PDFs of current literature, slides from a conference presentation of those ideas, etc. can help keep researchers organized and on track of which articles (which I always save by last name) actually belong to each research idea. Have a PDF that belongs in multiple folders? Simply copy it and have the file in multiple places, which can be done with documents as well so different versions will have different changes recorded.

Though I doubt most researchers would need to pay for the service, it is always an option if you have larger and more image-heavy files. Give the free version a try and see if you get use out if it, I think once you upload your files, you will really see how versatile and useful this file storage system is!

Referral Link

Dropbox Website

Eliminating the Electoral College: A Solution to Voter Skepticism

Voter skepticism and overall political aversion is a staggering problem for American political life. Where more people chose not to vote than do and where college students do not even know many prominent political figures (see further discussion here), how do we overcome these issues to create a more aware, active, and optimistic public?

One can always link the importance of emotions over reason to modern day cynicism. This has been a constant theme as the transition from logical fidelity to narrative fidelity requires a shift from analyzing arguments logically to evaluating stories emotionally. If the story of American politics conjures up feelings of regret, shame, disgust, and anger, one is more likely not to participate in that story or that it is not faithful to their picture of themselves or the country. In light of decreased political participation across all groups, perhaps there is less voter participation at the polls, but that the venting of frustrating has moved elsewhere. As more and more people turn to the Internet to express frustrations, remix images for humor, and participate in online interactions, voter participation has dipped over nearly all age groups and educational levels (Hollihan, 2008, Uncivil Wars, chapter 12).

I do not feel that the skepticism in society can be controlled or diminished until politicians change their methods of garnering support, reaching out to voters, and campaigning. Considering that the money and the votes are found more prevalently today in public opinion polls, name recognition, and negative advertising and debating, I do not have confidence that this will change in the future, but perhaps there is hope in some new legislation that can influence these decisions.

One important way I feel that people can be more empowered is by eliminating the electoral college. Although this has been a proposition for a long time and many efforts have been thwarted, I feel that this is one of the most important ways that people can feel reinvigorated by the power of their vote. If a direct popular vote is enacted, then candidates could no longer (or at least to a lesser extent) preference certain states for advertising and visiting. More of the public would have greater access to political information and engagement opportunities. In addition, I believe that voting numbers would increase as Republicans in “blue” states and Democrats in “red” states could still attend the polls and be confident that their vote was going to the candidate of their choosing instead of being lost in the electoral votes.


Many voters were undervalued in the elections in 2000 and 2004, when the popular vote gave the opposing candidate the win, but the electoral college (and the US Supreme Court) gave George W. Bush the presidency. How supportive of the governmental system can the public be expected to be when the direct voting will of the public is denied? When people in safe states can go an entire political campaign without hearing much at all from candidates but when swing states are inundated with information, advertising, and messages, how politically knowledgeable and active can we expect our nation to be? I believe that by removing the electoral college from presidential elections, more people will feel empowered to vote for candidates, much of the attention from candidates will be dispersed to all states, and people will not feel left out or cheated by the system.


Although there are many more steps that can and should be taken to make politics more engaging and equal for the public, the suggestion above is obviously an overly optimistic account of how easily politics can change. Part of the issue, of course, is that those in the system are the ones with the power and that make the decision to change the system. So, any type of legislation that will disadvantage incumbents is likely to fail. Fortunately, there has been legislation in the past and a current movement that has been ratified by 9 states with bills still moving through state legislatures, so perhaps this change is on the horizon.


What other changes would you be interested in seeing? Changes to campaign finance reform? Easy of access to voter registration? Increased civics requirements in public schools? There are many ways that the political system can be changed for the better, and I hope that more gain traction in the years to come.

Research Tools for Students and Faculty: Google Citation

Once in graduate school and during the tenure process, academics are concerned with one thing: branding. Creating one's own website (site comparison forthcoming), formatting and meticulously combing one's CV, and  constructing an online presence are all important parts of one's academic brand and profile. In order to facilitate  one's online identity as a scholar, I'm going to take this post to explain two important ways to ensure that your academic publications and profile are the top results for your name.

Google Citation is an off-shoot of Google Scholar that creates profiles for academics by linking their publications within the scholar database. When someone searches Google Scholar to look for a publication or a topic area and finds an article of interest, they can select the author and be linked to their profile. Within this profile is the author's other articles in the Scholar database, the number of articles that have cited each article over the years, and links to those articles. Becoming familiar with Google Citations helps a scholar in two ways: creating a branding opportunity and tracking one's citations and web of scholarly interaction.

Google Scholar often auto-creates profiles for the more prolific authors by finding similarly cited names and linking the articles together. For new scholars and academics however, we can do part of the work for Google by creating our own profiles and linking our own publications there. The benefits to this (instead of letting Google create own for you) is that your profile will be available for searches and attached to your articles sooner and will be completed with more information. Scholars can upload their own profile photograph, create a verified email address for contact, key areas of research interests, links to other sites (like a research blog or professional website), and manually add articles that Google Citation might not have added (due to differences in citation style or name changes).

Keeping track of one's citations is a great way to create connections with other scholars with shared citations and cited each other's articles. With the multitude of journals and publications across field lines, scholars are often not aware of the people citing their articles or similar or tangential work in the same line of inquiry. This is great way to contact other scholars for panels at conferences, to find colleagues at institutions that might be hiring, or to find co-authors.

These benefits can be doubled if one has multiple citation sites. Other databases similar to Google Scholar have their own author profiles. Consider making one at each of the more popular search engines to make sure that your work is being connected to your brand. Other notable citation sites are ResearcherID at Web of Science and Scopus.

Keeping track of all of these sites is one more task on the ever-growing list of to-dos for academics, but this is an important one. Being able to link all of one's publications increases the likelihood of being found by other scholars and overall creates a stronger brand for the graduate student and faculty academic.