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Zotero for Android available for beta tests

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Re: Zotero for Android available for beta tests

#11

Post by freddex »

j4yav wrote: post #7

Out of curiosity what is it? Neither the store link or this one seem to explain. Is it some kind of citations tracking system? A pdf editor? I'm not sure what the features add up to in total.

It's mostly a tool to manage research literature. It allows you to add works you are viewing in your web browser to collections. Then, you can create bibliographies from these collections. As a researcher I use it a lot, since it makes working with references much smoother. There's also extra features like cloud syncing and most recently an integrated PDF viewer and annotator. https://www.zotero.org/

Re: Zotero for Android available for beta tests

#12

Post by P-Nuts »

freddex wrote: post #11
j4yav wrote: post #7

Out of curiosity what is it? Neither the store link or this one seem to explain. Is it some kind of citations tracking system? A pdf editor? I'm not sure what the features add up to in total.

It's mostly a tool to manage research literature. It allows you to add works you are viewing in your web browser to collections. Then, you can create bibliographies from these collections. As a researcher I use it a lot, since it makes working with references much smoother. There's also extra features like cloud syncing and most recently an integrated PDF viewer and annotator. https://www.zotero.org/

A bit like JabRef then? That was what I was using when was in academia but that was 15-20 years ago.

Re: Zotero for Android available for beta tests

#14

Post by DoctorDabadedoo »

P-Nuts wrote: post #12
freddex wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly a tool to manage research literature. It allows you to add works you are viewing in your web browser to collections. Then, you can create bibliographies from these collections. As a researcher I use it a lot, since it makes working with references much smoother. There's also extra features like cloud syncing and most recently an integrated PDF viewer and annotator. https://www.zotero.org/

A bit like JabRef then? That was what I was using when was in academia but that was 15-20 years ago.

Exactly like the new generation of JabRef and Mendeley.

Re: Zotero for Android available for beta tests

#15

Post by panza »

j4yav wrote: post #7

Out of curiosity what is it? Neither the store link or this one seem to explain. Is it some kind of citations tracking system? A pdf editor? I'm not sure what the features add up to in total.

Yeah, fundamentally it helps you manage records of documents. Of course you can also attach PDFs and full text (if you have them), but it's the record that's important.

A common use case is in academia - it helps you track your citations and then output standardised reference lists, which is a pain to do by hand.

Other tools in this space are Mendeley and Endnote.

Re: Zotero for Android available for beta tests

#16

Post by retskrad »

It's funny how on the desktop, Windows has more apps and developers generally target it before MacOS. On mobile, it's the opposite where developers make apps for iOS first and release the Android version months/years later, even though Android has a 70% marketshare in mobile.

Re: Zotero for Android available for beta tests

#17

Post by MrBurrito »

Zetobal wrote: post #9

Oh nice Christmas present. I am using devonthink at the moment but would love to have a look at something else how does zotero hold up with big libraries?

Very well I would say (20gb and counting). More importantly: Zotero is the only one that does Web scraping correctly. If you are looking at a paywalled article, it will capture your DOM from the browser, so you get what you are looking at. DevonThink and many others choke at paywalled content because they try to access the content independently.

Last but not least: thanks to the developers for the latest updates that bring zotero to a more modern experience. The iOS app specifically is awesome!

Re: Zotero for Android available for beta tests

#18

Post by gexla »

senectus1 wrote: post #8

Anyone aware of a self hosted alternative?

The only server functionality I'm aware of is syncing between devices. Zotero does offer hosting space for this, but you can host your own as well. It works with Webdav, so I have used my own hosted instance of Nextcloud for syncing.
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