This app helps learners get familiar with the process of research work. It teaches them to get information from research papers. It also allows them to bookmark sites, highlight information, add sticky notes to pages, organize references, and write comments about a web page.

Website: https://www.diigo.com/

What Users Love About the App

“Works. Always works. Never fails. Never down. Never changes. Secure. Stable. Fast. Saves links with descriptions. Adds tags. Sorts, searches, highlights. Add notes to pages. Save and highlight PDFs. Saves images, screenshots, and more that I’m forgetting to mention.”

“The features it offers to collect articles and text snaps from the web and pdf are quite nice and can be really useful. The outliner and “live” annotation and capturing tool are great. It’s helpful to organize your “web-based” knowledge collection. Mobile as well.”

“I did like how Diigo can attach as a browser extension and make it easier to bookmark things at times (I have chrome). I like how you are able to highlight specific parts of the texts or websites. You can even annotate them, which is nice. You can tag the highlights and bookmarks, but I didn’t do this often.”

“Over time you can create a very comprehensive collection of information from various sources into a single list. The integration into a Chrome or Firefox (Mozilla) browser is almost outstanding. You can also store (upload) PDFs and collect and organize information from within the PDF the same way you do with articles. Also, the possibility to save and integrate photos from the web is great. A safe and solid working mobile app.”

“I’d been using Diigo consistently for several years, primarily for bookmarking and list-making, until Pocket came along with its one-click-to-save feature. I set up an IFTTT recipe, however, to continue backing up bookmarks to Diigo as well, I’ve gone back to it every once in a while to re-evaluate its use-value for me. I never stick with it for long. There’s a powerful feature set, however. Diigo should be on any researcher’s shortlist of tools to evaluate.”

“I loved how much easier it made my note-taking and sharing research online. Prior to this, I was using about three different tools to keep track of the research material I was reading, temporarily bookmarking links, and sharing the content. Diigo did all that in one place, how fantastic. Also, I loved that it just hooks right into your browser so there is no installation required (at least if you are using Chrome). All you have to do is to select “text” and then use the Diigo icon next to your mouse to save it, share, or come back to it later. If you tend to do a lot of reading online then I cannot recommend it enough.”

What Users Dislike About the App

“Most of Diigo’s research tools are of little value to me as I would rather have one workspace with everything related to one topic easily accessible and organized, and be collaboration-ready. Something like Dropbox Paper. Perhaps this is due to how I work. Adding outliners and phasing out lists makes a kind of sense but using outlines on the web is clumsy at best at the moment. Diigo looks a little primitive as well right now without any sort of messaging or chat system for teams.”

“The interface doesn’t seem very friendly or organized at times. The use of pdfs is limited, especially on mobile phones, since you can’t store the pdfs offline in the Diigo app. The download takes time and requires a connection to the internet. The outline only allows for lists and you cannot freely write like in a notebook. That would really be a great addition, actually.”

“I had to download this for a class to see how we liked it—I didn’t like it. I feel like the design is out of touch and I don’t feel like I would use a lot of the elements available on the app, like posting to different boards and discussions, if it wasn’t for a class. I like sleek designs and user-friendly software and I simply don’t enjoy using it.”

“I wish there were more category saving features such as folders. Tags are the only option.”

“The design is not really friendly and modern, and the outliner functionality, as well as the organization of the different topics, could be improved.”