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Papers – Desktop app for finding, organizing, citing academic research

papersapp.com

11–20 of 44 posts

Re: Papers – Desktop app for finding, organizing, citing academic research

#11
post #2

Interesting that this has appeared here now, since it's been around for quite a while (I first saw colleagues using this nearly 7 years ago). I've only heard good thing about it, though I've never used it myself (not being much of a mac person). Other similar services include Mendeley [0] (now owned by Elsevier, I believe), gPapers [1] (less functionality, looks defunct), and good ol' bibtex files. [0] - http://www.m…

What does papers provide over Mendeley?

I haven't used Mendeley since I started using Papers, about 3 years ago. Mendeley at the time seemed to have an uncertain future and less than stellar performance. I find the Papers experience overall much better designed, though the 3.0 release, status post Springer's purchase of Mekentosj, still has some warts. Specifically, I found the PDF interaction is much better and with 3.0 the sync and mobile support is great.

Re: Papers – Desktop app for finding, organizing, citing academic research

#12
post #2

Interesting that this has appeared here now, since it's been around for quite a while (I first saw colleagues using this nearly 7 years ago). I've only heard good thing about it, though I've never used it myself (not being much of a mac person). Other similar services include Mendeley [0] (now owned by Elsevier, I believe), gPapers [1] (less functionality, looks defunct), and good ol' bibtex files. [0] - http://www.m…

Colwiz is another not yet mentioned: https://www.colwiz.com/

Re: Papers – Desktop app for finding, organizing, citing academic research

#13
post #2

Interesting that this has appeared here now, since it's been around for quite a while (I first saw colleagues using this nearly 7 years ago). I've only heard good thing about it, though I've never used it myself (not being much of a mac person). Other similar services include Mendeley [0] (now owned by Elsevier, I believe), gPapers [1] (less functionality, looks defunct), and good ol' bibtex files. [0] - http://www.m…

Also Qiqqa (http://www.qiqqa.com/)

Re: Papers – Desktop app for finding, organizing, citing academic research

#14
post #2

Interesting that this has appeared here now, since it's been around for quite a while (I first saw colleagues using this nearly 7 years ago). I've only heard good thing about it, though I've never used it myself (not being much of a mac person). Other similar services include Mendeley [0] (now owned by Elsevier, I believe), gPapers [1] (less functionality, looks defunct), and good ol' bibtex files. [0] - http://www.m…

> Mendeley [0] (now owned by Elsevier, I believe) Similarly, note that Papers is owned by Springer.

Yes, my enthusiasm for the product went down considerably after the acquisition happened. It feels like the cartel asserting control.

But I still use Papers! It is really effective for downloading a lot of papers fast to get up to speed on a new topic area. It's also cool to have all my papers and notes synced between devices. Download at work and read wherever.

Re: Papers – Desktop app for finding, organizing, citing academic research

#15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does papers provide over Mendeley?

That is a very relevant question, since Mendeley is free. Reading the Web site the only advantage that I found is that it allows you to use your Dropbox account to sync the files, while for Mendeley, if you want more space than a free account offers, you have to pay.

The cost is incidental for many users, considering what is at stake -- basically, continued professional competence due to keeping up to date with the state of research.

Re: Papers – Desktop app for finding, organizing, citing academic research

#18
post #5
post #3

I wonder how adoption has been? I'm particularly interested amongst undergraduate students.

I know a few people that use it, including myself. However, I can't bring myself to upgrade to version 3. It's just too different for my tastes.

I should probably add though that I'm not an undergrad :) I started using Papers in grad school a few years ago (version 1) and have kept using it since then.

Re: Papers – Desktop app for finding, organizing, citing academic research

#20
I remember that OSX colleagues used to be quite enthusiastic about Papers. As a Linux and sometimes Windows user, I used to use Mendeley quite intensively, until I rediscovered Zotero, which is open source, and for my use case much better than the competition.

Zotero is cross-platform; it enables me to sync my papers in whichever way I choose and its bibliographic data extraction and PDF downloading work much better that that of Mendeley, because it does this from your computer, not via their servers, meaning you have access to all the fulltexts that your institution has access to.

I've used Zotero to write a bunch of papers, book chapters and part of a book. It's very solid.

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