Papers 2 and Papers for the iPad: the ultimate journal reading combination

I read this article and all of the comments and I came to realize that I could use a software like this. So, I checked out papers. I was somewhat impressed. It made importing easy and organizing was fine. However, I would have really liked a way to annotate the actual PDFs with something like what Preview has built in. And, even with the student discount, I was not all that impressed with it for the price.

I didn't even try Sente because of the price and I wanted a local solution. Then it hit me, I had been using a program that can do this for a while. I used BibDesk to create a few BibTex files in the past. It had just about everything I could want and it is free!. So, I used my own folder structure and BibDesk with the files linked. Not only is it free, but it also uses a mostly plain text database so it can be future proof.

Finally, I put everything in my dropbox folder so I can read the papers anywhere. I haven't looked but I am sure there are some kind of PDF annotating dropbox-compatible software for the iPad to make it even better!

I can't believe no one has mentioned Zotero yet. Free, with all (or at least almost all) of the features of Papers, Mendeley, and Sente, with the in-document citation flexibility of the otherwise maligned Endnote.

Zotero's biggest shortcomings have been its dependence on Firefox and poor file organization. But Zotero is now available as a standalone app, and the Zotfile plugin lets you specify where and how to organize PDFs, so these shortcomings are easy to overcome.

Zotfile lets you organize PDFs in a Dropbox folder, making Zotero docs easy to use with any iPad PDF reader with Dropbox integration. I find this preferable to using a custom iPad app like Papers or Mendeley, which do some things well (file searching, organization) but others poorly (annotations, notes, etc).

And perhaps most importantly for some of us: unlike the in-document citation features of Mendeley or Papers, Zotero allows the user to exclude author name or year, or add prefixes, suffixes, and page numbers to citations. This kind of flexibility is essential for many of us, rendering other citation managers unusable.

Papers can't be beat as a document manager, but I find Zotero to be a better all-in-one solution (until Papers improves its in-doc citations, at least!).

Can someone who has used both comment on Sente and Mendeley's iPad app differences? Ease in annotating documents and powerful zoom are the most important for me.

Based on the review, it seems like Mendeley can do everything that Papers does (and maybe more with sync between computers and ability to form research groups that share articles and cross-platform and web stoarge for your most important articles to access them in the iphone app and online).

Oh...and Mendeley is free.

This recent plethora of practically useless software with hyperbolic claims, is really starting to get on my nerves.

Anyone who can cobble together an iTunes/iPhoto/Apple Mail-like interface, and add some syncing capability, rushes to release supposedly productivity-boosting software, that adds NOTHING to what the OS itself is *already* capable of, or does what it does only mediocrely. Some even impose their own databases, document types, and so on, on the user, obviously to 'lock customers in'----Microsoft or Apple or Adobe can get away with that kind of thing, because they offer entire (so-called) 'eco-systems'; a single 'app' having such pretensions is just pathetic.

'Papers2' adds no additional functionality above what TextEdit and Preview are already capable of. There exist very simple open source 'solutions' for more advanced tagging of documents (just check out open source taggers, (or tag list software) that support 'open meta'), and any decent Word processor can embed loads of metadata into documents----all of that helps make Spotlight a *lot* more efficient. Smart folders on Finder can be put to good use, in grouping together documents that are relevant to a given project, and so on. 'Cloud syncing' is not even a notable 'feature' nowadays, and in a matter of weeks, will become integrated to OS X.

The more such vacuous software tries to become 'smart', the more pathetic it gets... This particular program asks for the user's 'area of research' at the start, to be picked up from a pop-up menu that lists strangely worded, odd alternatives. It then proceeds to list 'relevant' material culled from Google scholar. It's blatantly calculated to 'impress' the user right from the get-go; the effect however is the exact opposite.

Are you serious. Did you even try to use the program for doing research before writing this review? Papers 2 is a terrible program compared to other programs out there. Sure it looks nice but it is impossible to use for anything productive. I don't know about you but most people who are doing research need to do basic things like highlight and write notes on the paper you are reading. You can't do that in Papers 2. You can do it on Papers for the iPad - of course those notes don't sync back to Papers on the Mac so they are useless when it comes time to use the papers you have read to do some actual writing on your Mac. But my biggest problem with Papers is the customer service. It is bar none one of the worst I have seen from this type of software company. Check out the comments on the support boards of programs like Sente or Srivener - friendly, responsive if they don't have the feature you need they will point you in the direction of a program that does. Then look at Papers - any complaint gets the comment "Please don't complain about Papers." That is if they let you post - they are constantly locking down the support board and closing threads because there are too many people complaining about how bad the program is. Seriously - do yourself a favour and try something like Sente before you pay the money for Papers.

Okay, TUAW, it looks like the only way to get through this is to have a Papers-Sente showdown. Let's get it on.

I suspect the title ("Papers 2 and Papers for the iPad:the ultimate journal reading combination") is accurate as a statement, but not an accurate representation of the rest of the article - which is all a bit "breathless". Certainly my windows using colleagues are very impressed with the pdf reading and exporting abilities of Papers, and it is a huge improvement on the 'usability' of EndNote, but needs a lot of love & attention still.

I have long found the application "reviews" on a TUAW to be unreliable, to the degree that the plurality of times an application is highlighted on TUAW, it represents nothing more than an advertisement. This so-called review of Papers 2 is no different.

The first paragraph begins with a rhetorical question that reveals the author's conclusion before the article even gets going: "This year, why not cut out paper from your scientific journal research workflow with the ultimate in journal management and reading for the Mac and iPad?"

In the second paragraph, we get the following blurb: "Papers 2 takes journal management to the max on your Mac." This sounds like something that might fly straight out of a magazine ad.

What takes the cake is the way in which Mr. Gibbs summarily dismisses all of the other available reference managers, as follows: "...none of them...come close to Papers 2..."

The article is so one-sided it's unlikely anyone so much as skimmed the "Verdict" section.

As for me, I've tried most of the reference managers, and, like Martyn, I have settled on Sente. It is imperfect, but anyone who has used a reference manager can attest to the fact that they are all relatively clunky. Reference management is complex universe to try to simplify, and they all have their strengths.

I wish I could use Papers 2, but it doesn't interact with footnotes.