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

papersapp.com

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

#31

Post by kaybe »

Jugurtha wrote: post #24
GuiA wrote: post #22

In grad school, I wrote my own academic research "organizer" using Django (the framework makes it really easy). It takes a few weekends of work, but then you have something really cool and suited to your needs. And it allows you to do stuff that commercial software couldn't do, like use a headless browser to fetch metadata from the ACM website using your credentials (hey, I pay for my membership, and I have very reas…

Cool. Here's an idea you should definitely look into (if it's not you, I'll look into it when I finish my studies). I spent countless hours reading articles all over the place, only to find most of them are the utter shit imaginable, you wonder how they even get published. I am sure that, around the world, many people are like me, preparing a thesis or something.. So this shit gets read a whole lot of time, when it s…

Well, once in a while someone publishes a review paper that does that. I found them quite good.. not as sophisticated as your idea though, but it exits.

I'm dreaming of a program that checks papers of all fields for me and suggests those with similar ideas in areas I'd never look at for me to read..

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

#32

Post by ceeK »

I tried to use this recently, even going as far as paying for the iOS version (whilst on the Mac trial). Unfortunately, it was too slow and clunky on my Mac, which is admittedly fairly old (mid 2009). The iOS app also crashed a lot, and wouldn't sync particularly well.

If they fixed these issues, it would be great. I ended up using Mendeley in the meantime.

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

#33

Post by peatmoss »

k2enemy wrote: post #28
guygurari wrote: post #23

I use BibDesk [1], which is open source and comes bundled with MacTeX. It is useful and very fast by itself, and it has a full AppleScript API which makes it extendible without having to dig into the code. I wrote a couple of 'plugins' for it, one for looking up papers through Alfred, and another for quickly importing papers from the arXiv and from INSPIRE (the high-energy physics database). [1] http://bibdesk.source…

I'm also a big fan of BibDesk. I used to use Papers 1, but it was always a little buggy. Then the paid upgrade to Papers 2 was a big kick in the shins (paying to upgrade to an even buggier program with some features removed). I tried Zotero standalone and Mendeley also, but the switch to BibDesk was a fresh breath of air. If you're using a bibtex workflow, I highly recommend it. It isn't the prettiest program out the…

I started with Mendeley (used it all through my masters) and have gone entirely to BibDesk for my PhD. I keep .bib files in git, and sleep very well. For writing papers, I use biblatex-chicago if I have a choice. My workflow might look old to an outsider, but to me it feels dependable--an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.

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

#34

Post by peatmoss »

jestinjoy1 wrote: post #16

No Linux Version :(. Think Mendeley is the best one from GNU/Linux point of view

Except that, because it's not open source, it doesn't make it in to the package repos. Also not Free/Open Source, if that's of importance to you.

I'm kind of surprise that nobody has cloned BibDesk from OSX. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it's BSD-licensed and functional.

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

#35

Post by mikevm »

mturmon wrote: post #15
alceufc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does Mendeley help to keep up with the state of research? I thought it just lets you manage the papers you read. Does it actually give you access to paywalled papers?

By the way, as a non-academic, I've always wondered how I could keep up with the latest developments in the field of information security/cryptography. Are there simply some key journals that one has to keep track of, or are there other more frequently updated sources that one should read?

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

#36

Post by alceufc »

mikevm wrote: post #35
mturmon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does Mendeley help to keep up with the state of research? I thought it just lets you manage the papers you read. Does it actually give you access to paywalled papers? By the way, as a non-academic, I've always wondered how I could keep up with the latest developments in the field of information security/cryptography. Are there simply some key journals that one has to keep track of, or are there other more frequen…

Mendeley does not give you access to paywalled papers. You have to download them yourself.

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

#38

Post by coherentpony »

mikevm wrote: post #35
mturmon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does Mendeley help to keep up with the state of research? I thought it just lets you manage the papers you read. Does it actually give you access to paywalled papers? By the way, as a non-academic, I've always wondered how I could keep up with the latest developments in the field of information security/cryptography. Are there simply some key journals that one has to keep track of, or are there other more frequen…

Aim for journals with a high-impact factor. Researchers are encouraged to publish there. Unfortunately there's usually a pay wall for those. For free stuff you can check open-access journals. Some open journals also have a high impact factor and there's recently been a push for publish to publish only in open access journals.

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

#39

Post by mikevm »

therobot24 wrote: post #13
privong wrote: 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/ )

How does Qiqqa compare to Zotero? According to an old (2010) post by the author of Qiqqa (https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/13326/qiqqa-and-pdfs/):

  It's Jimme here. I am the guy building Qiqqa.

  Qiqqa is not trying to be a reference manager like Zotero or Mendeley. 
  As I do my PhD I am building something that is excellent at helping me (any anyone else who wants to use it)
  READ, UNDERSTAND and DIGEST the papers in my library using Computational 
  Linguistics techniques, and not LOCATE/DOWNLOAD/COLLECT the papers.

  Zotero's incredible strength lies with its ability to download reference matter from hundreds of sources - and that is something Qiqqa would never need to compete against. 
  It is great to see a community at work writing the hundreds of parsers and scrapers of the various online libraries.

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

#40

Post by alceufc »

coherentpony wrote: post #38
mikevm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does Mendeley help to keep up with the state of research? I thought it just lets you manage the papers you read. Does it actually give you access to paywalled papers? By the way, as a non-academic, I've always wondered how I could keep up with the latest developments in the field of information security/cryptography. Are there simply some key journals that one has to keep track of, or are there other more frequen…

Aim for journals with a high-impact factor. Researchers are encouraged to publish there. Unfortunately there's usually a pay wall for those. For free stuff you can check open-access journals. Some open journals also have a high impact factor and there's recently been a push for publish to publish only in open access journals.

Also, in some computer science areas conference papers can be another useful resource.
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