ity of the standalone app as I have not used it for an extended time but I hear good things. If Mendeley, which has recently been acquired by Elsevier, goes over to the dark side and makes everything premium moving to Zotero would be an almost seamless switch. I did not start with Zotero as they did not have a standalone app at the time I started using reference management software, but they have come a long way since then. tion number 30 by letting my mouse hover over it. I also don’ t have to find the buried supplementary files on the journal websites; instead, I just click on the‘ Enhance’ button. Readcube is, quite simply, beautiful. Another feature I have advertised regularly is the‘ Recommendations’ feature, which allows Readcube to look through your library and find you relevant literature you may have missed. It has such an impressive algorithm that it beats Pubmed, ScienceDirect and feedly hands down. It has a wonderful citation editor and plugs into Word flawlessly. Its Pro version, however, does not come cheap and offers a lot of the
Dropbox. Dropbox is where I store my references. I do a minimum amount of Dropbox gardening by putting all my PDFs in a folder there and asking Mendeley to watch this folder. I also do semi-regular imports on Readcube from the same folder, which Mendeley has helped me keep tidy and organised. Readcube helpfully adds supplemental materials to this folder and Mendeley renames them. Readcube helps me read them and sometimes download more related papers to the same folder. Dropbox makes sure Mendeley watches them on all my devices and so the trapeze act continues. I still continue to check on updates and new software( currently frowning at Paperpile and Flow) because I’ ll jump ship the minute something better comes around. That’ s how I convince myself I’ m still young. Either way, it’ s a helpful world out there and you really don’ t have to use Endnote.
EndNote Mendeley Papers Readcube RefWorks Zotero
Platform |
Cross-platform |
Desktop & Web |
|
|
components, |
|
|
cross-platform |
Cost
Direct search of online catalogues or databases
Compatible word processors
Missing features / Problems
Notable features
$ 299.95, free to Uni-Tuebingen( web version free)
Free with free online storage of 2 GB, with premium features
Mac, Windows and iOS
Desktop & Web components, cross-platform
$ 79 Free app with premium features for $ 55 / year web-based, browser-access
Mac, Windows, Linux standalone, webbased
$ 100 / year Free with free online storage of 500 MB
Yes No Yes Yes Yes No
Word, Open Office and Pages, LaTex through BibTex
Ease of use, affordability
Automatic downloading of PDFs from within interface, most widely used
Word, Open Office and Pages, Google Docs and LaTex through BibTex
Integrated search, annotations and notes not saved in exportable, cross-platform form
Excellent integration with Word to create bibliography in many journal styles, steep learning curve, works excellently with Zotero, social features
Word, Open Office, Pages, TextEdit, HTML
Stability
Design and excellent integration with Word and Pages
Word
Many features still in beta
Also available for Kindle, best PDF viewer, Recommended articles based on your library
Any word processor or program which can save files as RTF
Dated until it starts using the Flow interface
No software needed, steep learning curve,
Word, Open Office, Google Docs, LaTex through BibTex
Ease of set-up, integrated PDF viewer, integrated search, tags
Notes can stand alone or be attached to PDFs, registration optional, syncs with Mendeley, best meta data extraction
Features I didn’ t know I missed in Mendeley, I found in Readcube. If you’ ve read a Nature paper, you have at least seen this combination of letters in this context. Nature, and more recently other journals, offer the Readcube PDF viewer, which is the winning feature of this system. Readcube is now a full-fledged reference management software available as a standalone application with beta features being developed as I write this( Jan 17, 2016). The PDF viewer has inline references and an automatic supplemental information download. My PDF reading experience has been vastly improved. Now, while reading a paper, I know which article is cita- features that Mendeley does for free, like syncing across multiple devices or watching a folder for automatic imports. The way I get around this is by using my third system.
Pooja Viswanathan, India Neural and Behavioural Sciences Master’ s Program,‘ 12 Currently a GTC Doctoral student at the Institute of Neurobiology in the lab of Prof. Dr. Andreas Nieder
July 2016 | NEUROMAG | 11