11–20 of 211 posts
With some plugins (I don't remember exactly) I had a very nice pipeline of "find paper on the interntet" -> Zotero -> automatically updated .bib -> trigger rebuild of Latex document to PDF -> automatic reload in PDF viewer.
The UI is somewhat dated but the functionality is great. Nowadays I would probably choose Citationsy, maybe only because I find the UI more aesthetically pleasing.
for me the killer feature is that it makes all the PDFs full text searchable so it is like my own personal google where the links never break and the content is all relevant.
Highly recommend!
I've used Mendeley Desktop for some time, which I believe is very similar in functionality (but proprietary, yes Elsevier!): https://www.mendeley.com/download-desktop-new/ Furthermore I think http://www.docear.org/ deserves to be mentioned as another free open-source solution with some interesting mind-mapping functionality: http://www.docear.org/software/screenshots/
Recently they even added a new dark pattern so that when you click the "download PDF" button on their articles it opens up a web app reader loaded with tracking instead of just giving you a PDF. You then have to spend time and click through about three menus to really download the PDF.
It's to the point that I avoid articles published by Elsevier if possible. Easier in my field than others I'm sure.
My workflow is: 1. Come across paper pdf on the web. 2. Use Zotero firefox plugin to import it into Zotero. Zotero is able get citation data, and automatically exports it to a bib file. 3. Use emacs helm, which reads the bib file, to cite papers in my documents. I would have really loved to have this workflow during my Phd, but I was doing everything manually back then. My only complaint is this recent silent change…
Zotero was also the first reference manger to use CSL, the Citation Style Language [1], now adopted by many other apps including Mendeley and Citationsy. [1] https://citationstyles.org
> 9500 free CSL citation styles.
Should I ask how it has come to be that there are 9500 citation styles? Or will it make me angry and depressed at the lack of cooperation and widely accepted standards?
I've used Mendeley Desktop for some time, which I believe is very similar in functionality (but proprietary, yes Elsevier!): https://www.mendeley.com/download-desktop-new/ Furthermore I think http://www.docear.org/ deserves to be mentioned as another free open-source solution with some interesting mind-mapping functionality: http://www.docear.org/software/screenshots/
I actually specifically chose Zotero over Mendeley because Mendeley is owned by Elsevier. Their company has always been a toxic influence on publishing. Recently they even added a new dark pattern so that when you click the "download PDF" button on their articles it opens up a web app reader loaded with tracking instead of just giving you a PDF. You then have to spend time and click through about three menus to reall…
Too bad they sold out to the dark side. After they were acquired, I switched to Zotero, but I wasn't doing active research anymore by then, so I don't have as much experience of using Zotero. On the surface it looks pretty good though.