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Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

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Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#91

Post by boyband6666 »

j88439h84 wrote: post #80
greeneggs wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How easy is it to leave Zotero? (Either to move to a different paper manager, e.g., Mendeley, or to leave the paper manager ecosystem entirely.) Can Zotero respect my filesystem organization (à la Lightroom)? I have thousands of papers organized, and don't want to move them all in (too much work, what if I don't like it?), but I also don't want to have two copies of some subset of the papers, which might not be in sy…

Yeah it can do that, with the use of some plugins.

Easy to leave? They are good about that.

Respect the filesystem? Erm, again we're in the world of the murky where it probably is possible with Zotfile, but out of the box, it wants to rearrange them in to folders like 'MN8YD'. I've made my peace with that, but if you are very touchy about it, try it with a copy first and see how you get on.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#92

Post by burtonator »

__jl__ wrote: post #28

For Zotero users: Try the add on zotfile (zotfile.com). It allows you to extract PDF annotations and save them as notes in Zotero (among other things). Full disclosure: I am the developer.

Hey.. I tried to reach out to you at your personal email address regarding collaboration between Zotfile and Polar and I never heard back.

https://getpolarized.io/

The idea was to have Polar also work with Zotfile since a lot of people use Zotfile.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#93

Post by boyband6666 »

montalbano wrote: post #83
boyband6666 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zotero has improved a lot, though sadly it still has a way to go on the user experience of Mendeley. My main gripes are - The way that it still doesn't play nice with cloud services (syncing the directory and its just a matter of time until you get database corruption. It takes a lot of wonky setting up to get it to kind of work, which just shouldn't be the case - The lack of developers and thus slow pace of improvem…

> The way that it still doesn't play nice with cloud services (syncing the directory and its just a matter of time until you get database corruption. It takes a lot of wonky setting up to get it to kind of work, which just shouldn't be the case I'm using Zotero's $20/year for 2GB space membership and it was quick and easy to set up. Works great too.

My library is about 4gb, and will probably hit 6 or 7gb in the next year as I make sure I have a copy of all papers in it. I'm already paying for G Drive however (previously I had One Drive), and would rather have one bill, and everything in one place (control over my own data, and all that).

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#94

Post by boyband6666 »

carbocation wrote: post #16
mwexler wrote: post #14

For those wondering, here's what I gathered as some context. Zotero = Your personal research assistant. Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research. https://www.zotero.org/ Mendeley = Reference Management Software, produced by Elsevier who also happens to be the publisher of many peer-reviewed journals. Elsevier come under fire for it's high costs and gateway actions to…

Good idea re: giving context as to what these programs are. For most of us who do research, these programs are essentially interchangeable "reference managers." Here's what I mean: I read a scientific paper or look up a citation. I add that with a click or two to my reference manager. It also stores the PDF for me. In the future, I can easily re-read the PDF. I can annotate it and the annotations will be stored. Crit…

I think you meant to say "when my paper is rejected, I can trivially change the format of references to whatever the publisher of my second choice journal wants without any effort" ;-)

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#95

Post by boyband6666 »

__jl__ wrote: post #28

For Zotero users: Try the add on zotfile (zotfile.com). It allows you to extract PDF annotations and save them as notes in Zotero (among other things). Full disclosure: I am the developer.

Genuine question - why make zotfile and not adding things to Zotero directly? After all it is open source. Zotfile adds a lot of useful things that feel like they should be in the main program, not optional extras.

I'm not a programmer however, so this may be very naive question!

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#96

Post by burtonator »

I'm the author of Polar. An app very similar to both Zotero and Mendeley:

https://getpolarized.io/

Both Mendeley and Zotero are better than Polar (for now) with bibliography management but I believe we're better at both at document annotation and knowledge management.

We're also Open Source and launched on Hacker News a few months back.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960

We're still rather new so not a lot of people have heard of us yet but moving forward very aggressively.

I'd also like to thank the Zotero guys for posting their notes about the Mendeley encryption issue.

I think this is a completely unacceptable situation and antithetical to what we should expect in the scientific community.

The Polar on disk repo is exactly the opposite.

We store all your data on disk and your annotations are in JSON format so they're easily hackable.

This is part of the design.

We MAY add end to end repository encryption at some point but it will be in the users control. We're not doing it to lock the user out or to prevent export.

The end to end encryption is so that you can store your repo in the cloud and not have to worry about your data being viewed by anyone other than you.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#97

Post by SubiculumCode »

aw3c2 wrote: post #48
jjoonathan wrote: post #33

Mendeley also snitches evidence of your SciHub habit to Elsevier. It probably won't amount to anything, but do you really want to bet against Elsevier becoming exceptionally greedy, desperate, or both?

Please provide some citations for that claim.

I presume that the source of the file is in the metadata..it is often placed in references. Since those are uploaded to Mendeley in their cloud storage service, it would seem that thry have the data..now it comes down to eulas

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#98

Post by jjoonathan »

aw3c2 wrote: post #48
jjoonathan wrote: post #33

Mendeley also snitches evidence of your SciHub habit to Elsevier. It probably won't amount to anything, but do you really want to bet against Elsevier becoming exceptionally greedy, desperate, or both?

Please provide some citations for that claim.

It uploads your PDFs to Elsevier servers for storage. By design.

Asking how that could lead to Elsevier obtaining evidence of paper piracy is like asking how using gmail could lead to google using your email to do targeted advertising. You are giving them everything they need to do it, so of course they might do it! The position that needs defending is the supposition that they can't.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#99

Post by 12fro »

__jl__ wrote: post #28

For Zotero users: Try the add on zotfile (zotfile.com). It allows you to extract PDF annotations and save them as notes in Zotero (among other things). Full disclosure: I am the developer.

Another very grateful Zotfile user who wants to say thank you for your hard work. I use it every day.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#100

Post by Libbum »

boyband6666 wrote: post #89
Libbum wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What cloud service are you attempting to connect to? I'm using my universities' box.com account - which generally has pretty appalling support (on linux at least). Zotero has managed this flawlessly.

So I work over a home PC, work PC, and a laptop. I'm already paying for limitless Google Drive, so want to use that. It kind of works, but is not a simple option - you have to set certain directories to sync, and not others (otherwise: corruption). I'm guessing box is similar?

Hmmm. No, I have none of those issues. I sync via WebDAV, automatic sync & full-text content selected. My three computers all have different library paths.

Having never set it up with Google Drive, I'm not sure of anything else that could help your situation. In that sense your original point is quite valid then - this must be a quirk that still needs ironing out.

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