Mendeley users revolt against Elsevier takeover

Post by hemmer » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 5:33 PM UTC

snowwindwaves wrote: post #61

hemmer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like the way Mendeley handles notes, specifically highlighting / annotating PDFs. Do you know of any alternatives that include this? I was planning on writing my own at some point but it might be a bit ambitious.

check out quicka (spelled qiqqa) http://www.qiqqa.com I chose it a few months ago over mendeley because it allowed me to search in the PDF annotations, which isn't possible with mendeley. I recall mendeley could search notes added to a PDF file (one text area for the whole file), but not within sticky notes attached to specific pages, so it was impossible to search the annotations I made and also have those annotatio…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 5:35 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #27

bioinformatics wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference of Mendeley is that they had a good PR team, and composed of academic, "people like us". And they were everywhere, and this PR team banged on the note that Mendeley was going to be open and "grassroots" academic, because it was made by academics. Now, we know the real answer.

All those employees just turned into evil drones this week because of the acquisiton?

Post by twog » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 5:39 PM UTC

treerex wrote: post #55

Osmium wrote: post #5

My own personal favourite, Papers (papersapp.com), was recently taken over by Springer too. So far, so good--the original team is still running it and there's no sign anything bad will come of it, but I'm still wary of the future.

Of course Springer has one of the most onerous paywalls I've come across. I hadn't heard of the Papers acquisition: I use it on my iPad but only because it sucks less than every other solution I've looked at.

Post by pms » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 5:42 PM UTC

pseut wrote: post #82

pms wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a technical solution is needed to make changes faster and even better, namely: 1. Provide for the papers a system of transparent reviews and ratings accessible and readable to the public. 2. Provide a recommender system and a search engine based on the reviewed and rated papers available publicly. This would add real value to the scientific publishing and simply help the researchers to find what they need.

> Provide for the papers a system of transparent reviews... [snipped] I don't think this is a technical issue. Journals make mistakes on which papers to publish all the time, even when the referees work hard and take the review seriously, so this is hard for committed people to do well.

Post by jessriedel » Wed, Apr 10, 2013, 5:48 PM UTC

hemmer wrote: post #49

1337biz wrote: post #4

I don't get it. It was absolutely clear that they were using a propiretory software owned by a for-profit company. There a perfectly viable alternatives, Open Source and free to use e.g. Zotero et al.

I really like the way Mendeley handles notes, specifically highlighting / annotating PDFs. Do you know of any alternatives that include this? I was planning on writing my own at some point but it might be a bit ambitious.