Researchers need a lot of data to prove their findings, the amount of data collected increases by the day and some of this could be in the form of books or photocopies or a non-digital format. How many times have you had a problem while saving or retrieving files? Files disappearing, deadlines nearing and you have lost precious information? Document management systems can come to use here.

A document management system provides:

 Easy retrieval of data

 No duplication

 Saving paper

 Saving space

 Saving offsite storage space

During the stage of literature review, a researcher usually goes through a lot of material from journals and periodicals, which are in the printed format. Document management companies usually offer digitization services to manage unstructured physical documentation by scanning, OCR, storing, organizing, indexing and filing make them electronically ready for all document management activities.

We are in a digital age, we publish books now through computers and send mails through e-mail. Educational institutions, which have M.Phil and PhD courses, can use digital management systems to organise the data they have collected. Data management systems allow groups and individuals to collaborate and discuss. Every stage of the research more and more data is collected, this needs to be saved carefully so that on completion all the data collected would be in a single file or location.

These are the different provisions document management systems offer:

 Metadata: This area provides the date the document was accessed by whom and at what time.

 Integration: Individuals can save the file in a repository, where changes can be made, you can retrieve previously saved versions as well.

 Capture: This involves in scanning a printed document and using an Optical character recognition (OCR) software, to convert it into digital format

 Indexing: This feature helps in tracking changes over a long period using the metadata

 Storage: Documents can be stored in a digital format. So they can be moved from user to the other easily

 Retrieval: Searching from different directories across users, here a person can look for a keyword and locate it online

 Publishing: Now the data collected must be analysed and a conclusion needs to be written. Peer reviews must be done so as to see if it is accurate or not.

 Distribution: This is the final formatted form of the research paper, where individuals must add citations wherever necessary. The un-formatted version is duplicated usually to be on a safer side

 Security: If the author does not want the document to be in printable format it can be done, by locking printing features.

 Workflow: This is done usually manually; the researcher will need to decide whom he/she is sending his/her research work too.

 Collaboration: Only authorised users would be allowed to modify the content after this stage of research

Document management systems are useful in other areas as well, for business, which started during the print medium. Newspapers went digital only in the late 80’s, now document management systems can help preserve copies of articles and newspapers in a repository. Newspapers are also a part of a research work they help in proving findings.  Archives of Televisions shows and Newspaper and older journals are also stored in the digital format as a repositor, these documents can be retrieved easily rather than sifting through a lot of paper, which occupies storage space and at times is of poor quality. More amount of files can be stored and even retrieved easier as it is digital.

Document management services help researchers in many ways these are only a few. In an age of e-books and digital readers, document management systems will help individuals across different fora.