There are tens of reference manager packages, that usually are not compatibles among them (you can't export your work). What do you believe is the best reference manager?
I've tried EndNote, Mendeley and Docear and each of these has its advantages and limitations. How do you manage 1) the storage of the articles in your pc folders and in the reference manager, 2) the highlights, comments etc on the pdf file, 3) the insertion of a reference in a word document while writing?
The best option for me now is Mendeley: http://mendeley.com/
Best,
Cristina
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Endnote Web works well for me because my bibliography it is stored online and accessible from any computer I work from.
Zotero. It is free and very simple to use. https://www.zotero.org. Its much easier than Endnote and does more.
According to the answers, the question sounds a bit like "What's the best football team?" :) Endnote, Mendeley or Zotero have all their good and bad points and are more or less equivalent. However, you are much better to choose the bibliography manager that are in use in your lab, among your colleagues. It is then so much easier for sharing references, styles and any kind of teamwork, especially cowriting a paper...
The choice we make is not reliable because not every respondent has worked with all the software packages. I worked with Zotero, Endnote and with Citavi, my preference goes to Citavi. But the decision was taken in the research team I used to work with. We actually had on the Local Network a site called "Shared Knowledge Base", accessible to all team members, but not from outside. Part of it was a huge Citavi-File, the team's shared bibliography. Over the years this became a tremendous instrument. It was in a clear opposition to the academic egotism which is at work sometimes, with people hiding their references and stealing those of their colleagues. Team or network discussions, which is different form an absolute abstract interrogation, can help in deciding about a reference manager. Keep in mind that you are pragmatically looking for a good enough solution suitable in your situation.
@ Peter: careful is good, but would add regular, you can correct a lot of errors if you work regularly with your reference manager. A great feature under this regard are the Citavi-lists.
Hi Nicola Caporaso, I would like to suggest Zotero as it is very good and available in open access. Try. Best of Luck.
I agree with those who mentioned that all reference managers have mutual features as well as their own advantages and limitations. I work with EndNote Web. It's important what's your preferable source for searching for references. If, for example, you use WOS as your major source, it's very simple to save your references in EndNote Web.
Hi Nicolas,
For me, the best reference manager is Endnote. However, the problem is that it is expensive, but it is very very performant. The performance has a price ! Then, you can use also Mendeley, best than Zotero for me.
Software to manage your reading lists should help you to find the bibliographic details, allow you to highlight and annotate each pdf, and produce reports containing these highlights and annotations. While you are writing, the software should allow you to find the reference and insert the bibliographic detail.
In my opinion, the best software will also partition your library into themes and allow global searches of your library, like Qiqqa does.
http://www.qiqqa.com/70557
Well, everyone has its own approach but for me Mendeley is the best reference manager. It provides all the features with ease of use that you are looking for... you can easy manage folders, highlight text and prepare notes and very easy to insert reference in word processing tools... Moreover, you can easy change the referencing style with single click.
I used Mendeley to manage reference for my PhD thesis and I really feel comfortable with it :)
I think the problem is that we still think of reference managers, rather than pdf managers. EndNote (which has a truly horrible interface) is based on the old card-index box. I use Papers, which is a pdf manager. You add your pdf to the library and it locates the bibliographic details. You can then use it to cite and generate bibliographies. A plus, from my point of view, is that I can use the citations manager to insert references from my library into any document, even an email.
That said, Mendeley and ReadCube are strong contenders because they are free. Mendeley is a more mature interface, but ReadCube has been developing very swiftly to overtake it.
There's little excuse nowadays for spending vast sums of money on EndNote.
Thank you prof. Conroy for your comment. I'm using EndNote actually for the sole reason that my institution has got the licence for it. I agree about the need of pdf manager, so far I highlight and comment directly in the pdf file, but then the organisation of these files (and looking again for articles already read) is time consuming, and required a good organisation of the folders, etc.
Nicola ; you should see my pdf collection, currently over 3,000 references gathered over a very long career! I need a pdf manager, which is why I use Papers.
Abdelrahman : If you find EndNote is too expensive, the solution is not to use and distribute pirate copies. Please do not encourage this sort of software piracy.
EndNote can do all the things you were looking for. Latest versions also allow for on-line 'parallel' working with several users
Mendeley is a simple reference manager. it is the best one for me.
Hi Nicola Caporaso , you should definitely try Zotero. If you're running macOS in this article here (https://medium.com/swlh/fantastic-reference-managers-and-where-to-find-them-a412621eb4ba) I explain WHY I ended up choosing Zotero and what it does better than its competitors.
I would also recommend Zotero as a reference manager. It is free, easy to use and only paid element is cloud storage which you may not need if you can manually back up your library to Google Drive. Most importantly, it allows migration out of it any time you feel like, unlike most other software.
Zotero is an open source tool that helps collect, organize, analyze research and share in multiple ways. It has the ability to store the author, title, publication fields and export all that information as formatted references. Organize references, tag them and allow advanced searches. Interact perfectly with online resources: detect if you are viewing a book, article or other web object. It is able to automatically extract and save complete bibliographic references.
Qiqqa used to be my favorite, will become an orphan as an open source by the end of 2020. Citavi is the best in my opinion but it is not available for Mac. One of the best features of Citavi is the ability to develop the outline for your paper within the program and attach your references to sections of your outline. It can also import your notes and comments into the outline as needed.
I am using Mendeley, somehow for me it is good enough user friendly...
I am using Mendeley and Zotero. Both suffers of lack of filtering features.
I'm using Mendeley and it tries to give a direction of how to cite your references but it does not give you the exact citation without adjusting the paper with Mendeley form. It is best for me.
Docear is my favorite as it gives me better overview of my literature with mindmap, enables me to modify annotations on the literature or mindmap and it does the syncing. But it has a steep learning curve compared to other tools like zotero.
Papers from Readcube.com is a nice and decent tool with 30 day free trail.
https://www.papersapp.com
Auratikum is a good one too. Not just a reference manager but a kind of editor to organize your notes into a document. It can also does the conversion to word/PDF/Latex. Check out this small comparision
https://auratikum.com/blog/4-best-endnote-alternatives/
https://auratikum.com
Mendeley is my favourite. You can use it as a PDF reader. You can even share your progress (i.e., reading your pdf) with another person. The best part for me is, however, the Mendeley word plug-in, which is a huge help for writing academic or research articles.
We have been using EndNote, but their tech support is not to our liking. They have released a new version that is getting some bad reviews. The strengths of EndNote are the integration with word processors, good performance with very large databases, ability to format references exactly as needed, and a good cloud database service. I am interested in Citavi because it might give us more control over the cloud database feature, I hear. Don't know but might trial Citavi.
For me, definitely Citavi. You can find Quotes from paper much quicker than Mendeley or Zotero. Best part is, you can keep your "ideas" for the papers for later works...
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