Comments on: Alternative to Papers

Question: Alternative to Papers

Aanidaani — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 19:16:27 -0800

I recently found a fantastic program for managing research literature on OSX and I'm looking for a similar program for Windows and Linux.

The program for OSX is called Papers and is just beautiful. I really love the interface and it connects to all kinds of databases to make importing papers very easy. Is there anything like this for Windows or Linux?

By: Blazecock Pileon

Blazecock Pileon — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 20:28:42 -0800

EndNote is probably the closest.

By: Toekneesan

Toekneesan — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 12:51:52 -0800

Have you seen Zotero? It's browser-based but might be of use.

By: PueExMachina

PueExMachina — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 18:18:15 -0800

There's Referencer for Linux.

By: a007r

a007r — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 08:22:25 -0800

Zotero is awesome. Referencer is useful if you use latex I guess, if you combine that with saving the papers with a proper filename that can be picked up by gnome-search-tool or "locate". You may also look at Incollector.

By: a robot made out of meat

a robot made out of meat — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 10:14:27 -0800

One thing Zotero doesn't (to my knowledge) do that papers does is take an existing source (like a pdf) and automatically fetch metadata from, say, pubmed or google scholar. If you want it to full-text index your pdfs, you need to follow-through with the instructions under preferences for enabling pdf2text.

If I'm wrong, please let it be known.

By: Aanidaani

Aanidaani — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:29:31 -0800

Zotero looks like a good option. I'll check it out. Thanks!

By: col_pogo

col_pogo — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:29:00 -0800

This recent NYT blog post compares the two. She prefers Papers, and reading it, I wish there was an equivalent for Windows.

By: Utilitaritron

Utilitaritron — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 21:17:14 -0800

(Correct NY Times link)

By: Aanidaani

Aanidaani — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:04:28 -0800

I've since found a good multi-platform (OSX, Win, Linux) program called Mendeley. It does all the things that Papers does.

By: a robot made out of meat

a robot made out of meat — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:15:31 -0800

Wow, since people are still posting I'll add that Zotero has since added the (take PDF) -> (return metadata) function.