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Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

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Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#101

Post by zwaps »

burtonator wrote: post #96

I'm the author of Polar. An app very similar to both Zotero and Mendeley: https://getpolarized.io/ Both Mendeley and Zotero are better than Polar (for now) with bibliography management but I believe we're better at both at document annotation and knowledge management. We're also Open Source and launched on Hacker News a few months back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219960 We're still rather new so not a lot…

Thank you for your work.

I will try your software soon. What I really like so far is the reading progress, which is actually very, very important for me. So far, I have to do this with manual tags in Zotero.

By the way, since this is a work tool, I (and I imagine others) are fully willing and able to pay you for support or storage or other features.

But since Mendeley, me and people I know have become very sensitive about lock-in, encryption and collaboration barriers associated with pro/non-pro accounts. It seems you are determined to take the right steps, I just want to emphasize the importance for your business.

The backlash against Mendeley isn't random. If I build my pipeline on your product, my lifelihood and hours upon hours of crucial work depend on it. This is not a casual software, where switching is inconvenient but not a big deal. Mendeley has f'ed me in a crucial deadline situation, even though I was paying them lots of money. That company is dead to me, and I will badmouth and try to destroy their business any chance I get.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#102

Post by snowwindwaves »

I have been using Qiqqa for 4 years and it is perfect for me. It allows me to perform full text search on my PDF library, performs OCR when necessary, and supports tagging, annotations, and bibtex.

http://www.qiqqa.com

It is wonderful software. It provides me with my own personal google for my PDFs. I used to use google desktop.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#103

Post by masnick »

spott wrote: post #77
masnick wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably Papers is your best bet at this point. Zotero will let you send PDFs to/from a tablet with the ZotFile ( http://zotfile.com ) plugin. This works well if your workflow is (1) find PDF on your computer; (2) read on tablet. But if you want to do anything else -- even choosing a PDF to read from your tablet without touching your computer -- then Zotero won't work. With that said, I know Zotero is working on mobi…

Do you have any experience with bookends?

Yes, it's got some really nice features but it is a little clunky/complex compared to Zotero. I would try out Papers first before looking at Bookends...Bookends can work great, but it does take some work to set up.

Also, Bookends annoyingly checks to see if you are running the same license on multiple devices on your network, and if you have more than once instance running it forces you to close it down. This may seem superficially reasonable, but for someone with both a desktop and a laptop it's quite annoying. I emailed the developer about it and they didn't seem to get why this was a problem.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#104

Post by masnick »

Quanttek wrote: post #76
masnick wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never heard of it before! Looking at their website, it does seem like Citationsy is somewhere in-between a full-blown reference management application and one-off bibliography creation applications. What Citationsy does not appear to do is manage inline citations within a Word or Google Docs document. Zotero will let you hit a keyboard shortcut, search for a reference, and insert a citation right in a paragraph (e.g.…

Have you looked at Citavi? It's the software many German universities offer. While it's PDF annotation system/knowledge database is awesome (elements of different types linked to locations in the PDF, categorizable and taggable) and the Add-Ins are very fast and bug-free (compared to Zotero), collaboration is cumbersome and its focus on "projects" instead of one overarching "library" is annoying

This is new to me too. Thanks, I'll take a look.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#105

Post by shittyadmin »

Some quick RE work:

sqlite_rekey_v2 is at 00CA1C13 on the Windows version of 1.19.3

Hooking it with Frida or similar should allow you to drop the 3rd parameter and set pKey to NULL allowing you to create a database which can be read by standard sqlite.

Keys however appear to be account-specific - I haven't looked into the full algorithm yet, but it's fairly pointless as you'd need a copy of sqlite3 with SEE support (which costs $2600 or so) to decrypt it using that method anyways, I tried briefly but was unable to come across a stray copy of sqlite3 with SEE enabled, the above solution is probably better for now anyways.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#106

Post by leemailll »

ramraj07 wrote: post #27
leemailll wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your institution does offer f1000 subscription, I suggest you take a look at f1000 workspace.

This is literally the worst thing you can do. Even a tenured professor doesn't seem to stay in the same institution for their lifetime nowadays so why would you go to a service that even you personally cannot pay for yourself (reasonably)?

F1000 offers tools to transfer an account to another email address. Why this makes you think it is "the worst thing you can do"?

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#107

Post by leemailll »

black_puppydog wrote: post #18
leemailll wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your institution does offer f1000 subscription, I suggest you take a look at f1000 workspace.

Apart from it being domain specific (according to wikipedia) it is also not open source, so recommending this as a reaction to the Mendeley news is... words fail me... :|

What do you mean "domain specific"? Personal subscription is also available. And of the popular online reference managers, I don't think open source by itself certify anything related to the core functions of a reference manager. In my opinion, the really established open source ref manager is BibTeX, however, its user base is quite limited even inside academy to specific fields.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#108

Post by leemailll »

boyband6666 wrote: post #30
leemailll wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your institution does offer f1000 subscription, I suggest you take a look at f1000 workspace.

I gave this a try, but sadly it came up short. For writing a single paper of MSc Thesis, it might work. However it just doesn't seem suited for handling a large number of references for a variety of projects, which get called on frequently as standard references in papers, reference material, and much more. If it helps I have just under 2000 papers in my Zotero. It isn't massive by research standards, but it is subst…

Try to group into different projects in F1000. One thing I still don't like about F1000 is the reference manager need to go online for entries, so it kind of slow on first call. By the way, i don't how you cite when writing, but for me, I mostly handle that part after I finish the writing. At the places citations needed in the manuscript, I often just put a mark saying #somebody's paper on somethin#, and then do the job all the once. There always some really prolific guys make the citation search taking too much time to break to flow.

Re: Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer

#109

Post by leemailll »

bocklund wrote: post #70
ramraj07 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is literally the worst thing you can do. Even a tenured professor doesn't seem to stay in the same institution for their lifetime nowadays so why would you go to a service that even you personally cannot pay for yourself (reasonably)?

It's $10/month for premium? https://f1000workspace.com/#plans

And online storage space is unlimited https://guides.lib.unc.edu/comparecitationmanagers
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