SignalStack

Tools and free resources

Platforms, datasets portals and free resources the newsletter has pointed at, by edition. Links are as published; the newsletter does not re-check them.

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March 2026

Tools & Free Resources, from The Research Rundown — March 2026 Edition, 2026-03-18.

ImpactMojo (impactmojo.in) A free development Education platform built specifically for South Asian practitioners. Courses covering MEL, participatory methods, data storytelling, and qualitative research — all free, all accessible without institutional login. PolicyDhara, hosted within ImpactMojo, is worth exploring separately for policy analysis resources. Full disclosure: I co-founded ImpactMojo, which is precisely why I keep mentioning it.

VoxDev (voxdev.org) is still the best single aggregator of development economics research for practitioners who do not have time to wade through journals. Their synthesis pieces are rigorous without being inaccessible. The Literature Portal lets you filter by country, methodology, and theme — useful for South Asia-specific evidence.

PLOS Climate (journals.plos.org/climate) Fully open access, no paywall, strong on climate-development intersections. The Rao et al. paper cited above is freely available here. Subscribe to table-of-contents alerts.

Open Syllabus (opensyllabus.org) A database of academic syllabi from universities globally, useful for understanding which development research is actually being taught and circulated. Helpful for tracing how ideas move — or fail to — from journals into classrooms and policy training programmes.

September 2025

Tools & Tech That Work, from The Research Rundown - August 2025 Edition (erm… in September), 2025-09-01.

Democracy Gaming Platform

I stumbled across playsabha.com this month and had to share—it’s a brilliant gamification of Indian parliamentary processes that makes governance both engaging and enjoyable. The platform enables users to simulate legislative debates, understand policy-making through interactive gameplay, and experience the complexities of democratic decision-making firsthand. What impressed me most was how they break down complex procedural knowledge into digestible, interactive segments that stick with users.

The team at Justice Adda has dropped a thoughtful piece on “unlocking value in failure” in the legal tech space. Their broader Everyday Justice platform represents precisely the kind of practical innovation development researchers should study and scale. The core insight: most legal tech initiatives fail because they don’t understand users’ actual workflows and decision-making processes.

DVisualisationtion That Matters

The Climate Watches data visualisation platform offers compelling climate visualisation tools. Their interactive dashboards transform overwhelming climate datasets into accessible and actionable insights, demonstrating microlearning principles. Rath-focused visualisation reports provide focused visualisations that answer specific questions about emissions changes, sector contributions, and renewable energy trends.

September 2025

Research Resources & Tools, from The Research Rundown - August 2025 Edition (erm… in September), 2025-09-01.

Essential Databases for South Asian Research

The** VoxDev Literature Portal** remains the gold standard for development economics research. Their improved search functionality lets you isolate research by specific countries, methodological approaches, and thematic areas. The synthesis pieces they publish demonstrate exactly the meta-analysis that helps practitioners translate research into programming.

WIEGO’s research hub has become indispensable for understanding the dynamics of the informal economy. Their recent piece on cooperative models unpacks specific mechanisms that enhance individual resilience through collectivisation and organisation.

Climate Economics Modelling

New approaches from Springer publications advance methodological frameworks by integrating feedback loops, adaptation costs, and trade linkages that earlier research ignored. These methodological innovations matter because they capture dynamic interactions between climate response and.

The GLables aorganisingransformed hoorganisenise research materials for literature reviews on my phone, yes, I do this on the phone <roll eyes!>. Particularly useful for interdisciplinary research where you’re juggling sources from economics, anthropology, climate science, and policy analysis.

September 2025

Platform to Explore, from The Research Rundown - August 2025 Edition (erm… in September), 2025-09-01.

ImpakT — Mission-Driven Job Board

Explore here Curates remote and impact-driven job opportunities globally with a strong emphasis on meaningful, ethical work. Ideal for researchers, policy enthusiasts, and change-makers seeking mission-aligned positions in climate, health, education, gender, or development.

April 2025

*A South Asia resource worth keeping, from [The Research Rundown April 2025](/SignalStack/archive/2025-04-28-the-research-rundown-april-2025-edition.html), 2025-04-28.*

WEESA

The World Bank’s South Asia Gender Innovation Lab runs the Women’s Economic Empowerment in South Asia Community of Practice, or WEESA.

This is one institutional mailing list I would actually recommend joining. The useful part is the regional evidence base: research, learning events and resources covering Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and the rest of South Asia, rather than treating women’s economic participation as an India-only question.

The Gender Innovation Lab itself funds and synthesises impact evaluations and other empirical research on women’s economic outcomes. WEESA is its wider knowledge-sharing community.

South Asia Gender Innovation Lab:

https://www.worldbank.org/en/programs/world-bank-south-asia-region-gender-innovation-lab

WEESA:

https://connect4impact.worldbank.org/organization/womens-economic-empowerment-south-asia-cop