Trying out Mendeley (again)
A while back, I tried out Papers as a reference manager. I liked it, but since I’m regularly using three different computers (and the license allows for two) I decided against using it and settled for BibDesk that’s also pretty good. Especially since I’m mainly using LaTeX for my writing.
Since then, though, I’ve moved to writing more and more in Word since that is what my biology colleagues are using, and there I use EndNote, but as a reference manager I don’t really like it much. I need it for work, but for managing my references I’m just not that attracted to it.
Now I am finding myself in the situation that I need to share a reference list with some people I’m working on a review paper with. I have no idea how to share such a list using Papers, and while it is possible with a combination of BibDesk and Dropbox, it isn’t quite as easy as I would like and I would need to to export to EndNote from time to time, so I looked around to find an alternative.
I was recommended Mendeley a while back and tried it out there, but didn’t really use it. But I decided to try it out again, and it is growing on me.
Synchronizing the references between my computers is really easy since the reference list is on a web site, and sharing a reference list is just as easy since this is built in.
The desktop application is pretty easy to use
but I’m finding that I like the web interface more (but I would love to have auto-completion on keywords there as I have in the desktop application).
The main feature I missed when I tried out Mendeley the first time was a way to search for publications within the tool. As far as I can see that is still missing, but if I’m using it through the web interface it isn’t such a pain. I can search in PubMed or Google Scholar or such, Mendeley can import from search results.
I haven’t tried this yet, so I don’t know how well it works, but Mendeley can also synchronize with a BibTeX file which makes it perfect for my typical use. It can also export to EndNote (but there’s more manual work involved here; not so much an issue for me since I don’t need this quite as often as exporting to BibTeX). It also exports directly to Word, as far as I can see (but I haven’t tried that yet), so perhaps I can get my colleagues to use it instead of EndNote to avoid the problem completely. We’ll see.
May 3rd, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Try Zotero & Firefox:
Free
Any platform
Has endnote-like plugin for mac and windows ms word
web storage and sync
can attach PDFs to citations
I’ve used papers, bibtex, jabref, endnote, mendeley, etc. Zotero is similar but is my current tool de jour
May 3rd, 2010 at 12:29 pm
I actually used Zotero for a while. Not sure why I switched away from it now …
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:46 pm
I have bought one (and only one) license for Mekentosj Papers, but that hasn’t prevented me from installing it on three Macs. I store my Papers library in my Dropbox folder which is synced between all my Macs. Bob’s your uncle!
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Perhaps you are just not being true to the license ;-)
But you are right, using Dropbox that way would work, but sharing reference groups with others, especially if they are not also running OS X, would not work.
May 3rd, 2010 at 6:48 pm
If they are, then of course a shared dropbox folder would work, though.
May 18th, 2010 at 12:09 am
Hi Thomas,
I have been coming at the research management problem from a different perspective. I decided to build Qiqqa (pronounced “Quicker”) at the same time as working towards my PhD.
Although I did try using existing applications like Zotero and Mendeley, to locate my papers, I found them all quite lacking in the ability to mark the interesting parts of my papers (text, formulae and diagrams) so that I can quickly review them every few months, and especially when it comes time to writing up my thesis! GoogleScholar is still my method of choice for locating documents, so I made it easy to query Google Scholar while reading a PDF. Of course, using it all day, I have added in tons of little nifty features that save me loads of time (e.g. right-click text in PDF and lookup word in dictionary.com).
Also, I found the text searching and exporting support from most of the other tools to be quite unreliable for scanned PDFs, so I built in OCR to tackle that.
At the moment I don’t support bibliography management – although that is coming fast (I have only been working on Qiqqa since the beginning of this year and I don’t want to add yet-another-half-baked-references-manager to the world). But first I am putting in the finishing touches on synchronizing and backing up onto the Amazon S3 cloud so that I can work from the lab and from home.
I am hoping that others will find Qiqqa useful, and will enjoy using it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. I hope to get a lot of feedback from other students and researchers to learn how they are approaching their PhDs or research, and where they are hitting bottlenecks.
If you have a moment, I’d really appreciate your feedback, since you’ve surveyed so many others. It’s available at http://www.qiqqa.com.
Thanks,
Jimme (jimme@qiqqa.com)
May 18th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I’d definitely try it out Jimme, just as soon as I am over my jetlag and have the mental capacity for it :)
May 18th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Ah, crap, it is Windows only? I only have mac and linux at the moment :(