Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

zotero.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 206 posts

Re: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

#41

Post by medimikka »

vondur wrote: post #37
medimikka wrote: post #35

Zotero is, if you're not in the market for a closed source silo like EndNote, the only game left in town. Mendeley went full on Evil, and Papers for Mac is Mac only, closed source, and missing dozens of functionalities that are absolutely a must have in academic writing and research. An absolute must have is BetterBibTex ( https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/ ), which adds better Citekey management and, my perso…

I believe Pages is free for Mac users. I do agree that Zotero is a an awesome product.

Yes, Pages is, but the only citation manager integrating with it is EndNote, because Apple keeps the API locked down and expects quite the payment and revenue share to open it up.

On the upside, no one with a little bit of academic cred would use Pages.

Re: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

#42

Post by lfmunoz4 »

nvrspyx wrote: post #12
chana_masala wrote: post #7

I found Zotero very confusing to use. But maybe I am not the target demographic. I have always just used vim txt files for notes, using cli tools like grep to find what I need.

To add to the other comment, Zotero can also download the PDF for you if you just have a citation (if it can find it) and it also integrates into Word, Google Docs, etc. for citations when writing research papers. It's especially useful for multiple people writing the same research paper as the library can be shared.

No post body was provided.

Re: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

#43

Post by jjoonathan »

wosk wrote: post #13

I highly recommend going for the beta version which features a (game-changing) built-in pdf reader[1], with annotations (searchable and synced with the beta iPad app) and many more improvements. Zotero is an amazing tool and I could not imagine writing papers without it. For collaborative writing, it syncs the bibliography with overleaf[2] and google docs. The browser add-on allows to build your library with one clic…

Ooh, cool! I'm spoiled by liquidtext, and while this isn't at the same level yet, I'm glad they're headed down this path because liquidtext recently went Scrooge McDuck with the pricing.

Re: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

#44

Post by criticaltinker »

This looks really cool, but apparently it relies on a web service to extract pdf metadata:

>* The Retrieve Metadata feature uses a Zotero web service to find item metadata. The Zotero client sends the first few pages of text from the PDF to the web service, which uses a variety of extraction algorithms and known metadata from Crossref, paired with DOI and ISBN lookups, to build a parent item for the PDF. The Zotero lookup service doesn’t require a Zotero account and doesn’t log any data about the content or results of searches.*

Does anyone know of open source alternatives which are offline friendly? I’ve tried tesseract and was impressed but the layout analysis and OCR made enough mistakes that tasks like bibliography parsing became considerably more difficult.

Re: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

#45

Post by medstrom »

westcort wrote: post #40

I write a lot of academic papers and never use this kind of software. EndNote creates uneditable references and slows down Word, Zotero had some limitations after which they charge a monthly fee, and none of the reference libraries are easy to share with external clients. Most other medical/technical writers I know only use these tools as a “reference library.” It might be useful for someone writing a thesis, but alm…

What reference library is easy to share with external clients then? Also, what do you mean by "external clients"?

Re: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

#46

Post by WayToDoor »

medimikka wrote: post #35

Zotero is, if you're not in the market for a closed source silo like EndNote, the only game left in town. Mendeley went full on Evil, and Papers for Mac is Mac only, closed source, and missing dozens of functionalities that are absolutely a must have in academic writing and research. An absolute must have is BetterBibTex ( https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/ ), which adds better Citekey management and, my perso…

> Mendeley went full on Evil Could you explain what happened with mendeley? I've been using it for a while, and didn't notice anything different really.

Re: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

#47

Post by prepend »

wcerfgba wrote: post #18
prepend wrote: post #16

I use zotero for managing research and bibliographies. But it’s so weird that their web version (the only one I’ll ever use) doesn’t make it easy to share bibliographies with other people. It’s such a weird feature that’s missing and it really important when collaborating on a paper. It’s free and better than the alternatives I’ve tried (endnote, mendeley, Google docs)

You can edit your settings to make your web library publicly shareable :)

I don’t want to make it publicly shareable. I want to share the references with a group of collaborators.

Re: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

#48

Post by carbocation »

WayToDoor wrote: post #46
medimikka wrote: post #35

Zotero is, if you're not in the market for a closed source silo like EndNote, the only game left in town. Mendeley went full on Evil, and Papers for Mac is Mac only, closed source, and missing dozens of functionalities that are absolutely a must have in academic writing and research. An absolute must have is BetterBibTex ( https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/ ), which adds better Citekey management and, my perso…

> Mendeley went full on Evil Could you explain what happened with mendeley? I've been using it for a while, and didn't notice anything different really.

They locked down the SQLite database so that you couldn't use it with 3rd party tools (such as your own commands, or to export). I am not sure if this got reversed, but at the time it was what triggered me to switch to Zotero. (Still using Zotero, which does everything I need it to.)

One thing I like a lot about Zotero is that they charge a subscription once you get over a certain amount of cloud storage, which gives me more confidence that they'll continue to exist in the future.

Re: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

#49

Post by akjssdk »

westcort wrote: post #40

I write a lot of academic papers and never use this kind of software. EndNote creates uneditable references and slows down Word, Zotero had some limitations after which they charge a monthly fee, and none of the reference libraries are easy to share with external clients. Most other medical/technical writers I know only use these tools as a “reference library.” It might be useful for someone writing a thesis, but alm…

Only if you want to sync pdfs using the Zotero server does Zotero cost money. Anything else is completely free, including syncing your db (without pdf attachments). If you want to sync your pdfs you can point Zotero to a webDAV server, this has worked flawlessly for me.

Re: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research

#50

Post by bluenose69 »

wosk wrote: post #13

I highly recommend going for the beta version which features a (game-changing) built-in pdf reader[1], with annotations (searchable and synced with the beta iPad app) and many more improvements. Zotero is an amazing tool and I could not imagine writing papers without it. For collaborative writing, it syncs the bibliography with overleaf[2] and google docs. The browser add-on allows to build your library with one clic…

Thanks for pointing out the built-in PDF reader. I use the beta version but was quite busy last term, and hadn't noticed this new feature. It's handy because it lets me highlight and take notes without affecting the PDF file.
Post reply on HN