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Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

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Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#51

Post by 12fro »

StreakyCobra wrote: post #31

The device? My laptop. The setup on my laptop: - Zotero ( https://www.zotero.org/ ) A software that allows you to easily keep references to academic papers right from your browser. Available as standalone app with multiple browser extension, or directly integrated into firefox. When you are on a paper's webpage, clicking on the button extracts its information, its PDF (if available) and do a capture of the webpage an…

I also use Zotero, and use Box.Com for storage/syncing. Zotfile is a wonderful addon.

I use Zotero in conjunction with Papership (http://www.papershipapp.com) on an iPad. Papership syncs with WebDAV storage, which means that, after syncing, downloaded PDFs are available on your iPad for reading offline. Any annotations are pushed back and available in the Zotero client. It's a great client and really stable. In conjunction with the Apple Pencil, it's a really nice system.

I'd advise an iPad Pro 12.9" if you do a lot of reading. The extra size means that you spend less time zooming in and out, and an app like Liquid Text (http://liquidtext.net) comes into its own for bringing text and figures into the same region of the screen and reduce the amount of time you spend flipping between the two.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#52

Post by mdlap »

merraksh wrote: post #44

Sorry for nitpicking: shouldn't the question be What device do you use to read academic papers? or What device do you read academic papers with? Non-native speaker here, so my nitpicking might actually be useless.

In this case your correction is better, and would probably be more acceptable to most educated English readers (especially in formal contexts). But the original is still fine, in this informal context.

What you're nitpicking is a common and frequently-taught misconception. You can end a sentence with a preposition. Some elitists in the 17th century tried to make English conform to the rules of Latin and those rules have stuck around even though they weren't necessary in the first place, unlike in Latin where a sentence doesn't make sense if you don't follow the rules.

This article gives a few examples of when it's more natural to end a sentence with a preposition (and mentions the history): http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/11/grammar-myths-pre...

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#53

Post by porker »

StreakyCobra wrote: post #31

The device? My laptop. The setup on my laptop: - Zotero ( https://www.zotero.org/ ) A software that allows you to easily keep references to academic papers right from your browser. Available as standalone app with multiple browser extension, or directly integrated into firefox. When you are on a paper's webpage, clicking on the button extracts its information, its PDF (if available) and do a capture of the webpage an…

Interesting, thanks for the info! This sounds similar to https://www.readcube.com/, which I dabbled with but never got into.

Need to get some system in place as my hard-drive is becoming littered with cryptically named PDF files.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#54

Post by merraksh »

mdlap wrote: post #52
merraksh wrote: post #44

Sorry for nitpicking: shouldn't the question be What device do you use to read academic papers? or What device do you read academic papers with? Non-native speaker here, so my nitpicking might actually be useless.

In this case your correction is better, and would probably be more acceptable to most educated English readers (especially in formal contexts). But the original is still fine, in this informal context. What you're nitpicking is a common and frequently-taught misconception. You can end a sentence with a preposition. Some elitists in the 17th century tried to make English conform to the rules of Latin and those rules h…

Thanks for the link. I do know that prepositions are just fine at the end of a sentence (and I often use them that way), in fact the second version I propose has one. I think my nitpicking is at the presence of the preposition itself, not its position. Replacing it with "With what device do you use to read academic papers?" would be equally wrong.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#55

Post by StreakyCobra »

porker wrote: post #53
StreakyCobra wrote: post #31

The device? My laptop. The setup on my laptop: - Zotero ( https://www.zotero.org/ ) A software that allows you to easily keep references to academic papers right from your browser. Available as standalone app with multiple browser extension, or directly integrated into firefox. When you are on a paper's webpage, clicking on the button extracts its information, its PDF (if available) and do a capture of the webpage an…

Interesting, thanks for the info! This sounds similar to https://www.readcube.com/ , which I dabbled with but never got into. Need to get some system in place as my hard-drive is becoming littered with cryptically named PDF files.

I have taken ReadCube into consideration, but quickly dismissed it because A) there is not Linux support [1]; and B) it is not open source.

The open-source side is important for me because the data accumulated in these software is really valuable. If one day the company has to close, you may be stuck without access to your data. With open-source software I'm at least sure to be able to continue running the latest software version on my own, and a community can start to take over and maintain it. Also the way data are stored in the computer can be deduced/found in the code, allowing to make exportation/importation to other software easier. I don't mind to pay for a good software – like I'll probably do with zotero for storage when I'll hit the memory limit – but it has to be open-source.

Except this the concept looks quite interesting and the UI seems nice. The only additional feature (in regard to my setup) that I can see on the homepage is the recommendation system, that can be quite interesting though.

[1] http://support.readcube.com/knowledgebase/articles/242873-ca...

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#56

Post by StreakyCobra »

12fro wrote: post #51
StreakyCobra wrote: post #31

The device? My laptop. The setup on my laptop: - Zotero ( https://www.zotero.org/ ) A software that allows you to easily keep references to academic papers right from your browser. Available as standalone app with multiple browser extension, or directly integrated into firefox. When you are on a paper's webpage, clicking on the button extracts its information, its PDF (if available) and do a capture of the webpage an…

I also use Zotero, and use Box.Com for storage/syncing. Zotfile is a wonderful addon. I use Zotero in conjunction with Papership ( http://www.papershipapp.com ) on an iPad. Papership syncs with WebDAV storage, which means that, after syncing, downloaded PDFs are available on your iPad for reading offline. Any annotations are pushed back and available in the Zotero client. It's a great client and really stable. In con…

So if I understand you right, for syncing your bibliography you changed the "Data Directory Location" to a synced Box folder (a dropbox-like system)? I thought about doing so with owncloud, then I decided that paying when I reach the syncing limit would be a nice way to encourage the project.

Papership and LiquidText looks really nice, I would love to see such applications for Android. But I presume Apple is a more interesting platform as many researchers are on MacBooks. I suppose this is because researchers have really few spare free time and they don't want to use it fighting against the (linux) machines.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#58

Post by neutralid »

Macbook:

- Bibdesk (http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net): archiving papers (automatic rename / custom citekey generation), Google Scholar bibtex extraction, and bibtex interface w/ TeXShop

- Google Drive: storing archive ... it's not a great archive solution because of google's special system of renaming files, however stuck with it because of work

iPad:

- Goodreader: fast PDF renderer

I wish there was a bibdesk app for the ipad linking to goodreader.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#59

Post by ralfk »

Rainymood wrote: post #38
mdibaiee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Kindle but I would never use it to read academic papers. Reading a PDF on Kindle is a real pain as 1. The screen size is too small for a readable, fit-to-screen experience 2. Scrolling is too sluggish to even try, you don't want to scroll horizontally and vertically on a PDF which is zoomed a few levels Currently, laptop works much better I'd say.

There are some tools which can turn an academic pdf (i.e. double column, images) into a nicely formatted epub/mobi file, look into it. It makes it somewhat bearable.

can you recommend one in particular?

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#60

Post by parmegv »

ralfk wrote: post #59
Rainymood wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some tools which can turn an academic pdf (i.e. double column, images) into a nicely formatted epub/mobi file, look into it. It makes it somewhat bearable.

can you recommend one in particular?

I used to use K2pdfopt, http://willus.com/k2pdfopt/
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