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Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

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Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#31

Post by StreakyCobra »

The device? My laptop.

The setup on my laptop:

- Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/) A software that allows you to easily keep references to academic papers right from your browser. Available as standalone app with multiple browser extension, or directly integrated into firefox. When you are on a paper's webpage, clicking on the button extracts its information, its PDF (if available) and do a capture of the webpage and store everything structured. You can then copy citation directly from zotero, generate a bibtex file, or use libreoffice extension. It also allow to sync between computer up to 300M, and extending the storage is quite cheap.

- Zotfile (https://github.com/jlegewie/zotfile) An Zotero extension that monitor the download folder to let you attach downloaded PDF to existing entries. It also rename PDFs with the pattern you want. And the killer feature: It is able to extract what you electronically annotated on the PDF (Highlights, comments)!!

- Okular (https://okular.kde.org/) For reading and annotating PDF. Straightforward use, nice annotations tools (F6 to open, double click items to make them permanent). Ctrl-S to save the annotation to file (otherwise stored somewhere in the user home file).

All these are open source software and are available on Linux!

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#35

Post by f_allwein »

teekert wrote: post #12

A printer. What I need is an e-ink device that lets me take notes on it and is large and fast and shows the images in color. Zooming would make it superior to paper. It's just not there yet. I tried to read articles in NCBI's ebook format on my kindle but you can't hop back and forward easily on a Kindle and note taking is of course not an option.

Have you tried a tablet? I'm really happy with my iPad for academic paper reading. Yes, eInk is very nice, but today's tablets are good enough for reading as well. Plus, it's a different kind of reading compared to, say, a novel. I tend to read academic papers quite quickly to glean the main bits of information. For leisurely reading, paper or Kindle would be better.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#36

Post by f_allwein »

f_allwein wrote: post #35
teekert wrote: post #12

A printer. What I need is an e-ink device that lets me take notes on it and is large and fast and shows the images in color. Zooming would make it superior to paper. It's just not there yet. I tried to read articles in NCBI's ebook format on my kindle but you can't hop back and forward easily on a Kindle and note taking is of course not an option.

Have you tried a tablet? I'm really happy with my iPad for academic paper reading. Yes, eInk is very nice, but today's tablets are good enough for reading as well. Plus, it's a different kind of reading compared to, say, a novel. I tend to read academic papers quite quickly to glean the main bits of information. For leisurely reading, paper or Kindle would be better.

just realized there's also https://getremarkable.com , which looks promising. Has anybody tried it?

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#37

Post by [deleted] »

f_allwein wrote: post #36
f_allwein wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried a tablet? I'm really happy with my iPad for academic paper reading. Yes, eInk is very nice, but today's tablets are good enough for reading as well. Plus, it's a different kind of reading compared to, say, a novel. I tend to read academic papers quite quickly to glean the main bits of information. For leisurely reading, paper or Kindle would be better.

just realized there's also https://getremarkable.com , which looks promising. Has anybody tried it?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#38

Post by Rainymood »

mdibaiee wrote: post #6
Rainymood wrote: post #3

Laptop, but in all honest I am still waiting eagerly for a good and fast enough e-ink second monitor, reading on a Kindle is such an improvement over a regular screen but the sluggishness is horrible ...

I have a Kindle but I would never use it to read academic papers. Reading a PDF on Kindle is a real pain as 1. The screen size is too small for a readable, fit-to-screen experience 2. Scrolling is too sluggish to even try, you don't want to scroll horizontally and vertically on a PDF which is zoomed a few levels Currently, laptop works much better I'd say.

There are some tools which can turn an academic pdf (i.e. double column, images) into a nicely formatted epub/mobi file, look into it. It makes it somewhat bearable.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#39

Post by dx034 »

f_allwein wrote: post #36
f_allwein wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried a tablet? I'm really happy with my iPad for academic paper reading. Yes, eInk is very nice, but today's tablets are good enough for reading as well. Plus, it's a different kind of reading compared to, say, a novel. I tend to read academic papers quite quickly to glean the main bits of information. For leisurely reading, paper or Kindle would be better.

just realized there's also https://getremarkable.com , which looks promising. Has anybody tried it?

They must spend fortunes on Facebook ads, don't think I've seen any advertiser that often.

Sounds interesting, but for $420 I doubt it would pay off compared to printing (black&white anyway).

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