Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers?

Posted by TooManyPapers on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @09:35PM
from the ask-hn dept.

If they were an text based webpage I could use instapaper or paper or readability. But when it comes to keeping track of pdfs it becomes an all out mess.

So far the best solution I have found is the kindle cloud software which seems to handle stuff decently well. But it's not the best and could be better.

How do you keep track of your acedemic papers?

( 14 comments | 14 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by davecap1 on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @10:18PM (#7974760)

Papers app for Mac (http://www.papersapp.com/mac/) is probably the best that I've tried. For other platforms I'd suggest Mendeley (http://www.mendeley.com/).

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by ajarmst on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @12:06AM (#7975134)

+1 for Papers. It's got a lot of amazing features. I particularly like that I can set it up to use my University Library proxy and use it to search various databases and download, index, and make biblio entries for papers automatically.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by slocklin01 on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @10:15PM (#7974751)

These days: I stick them in labeled subdirectories, sync my machines using BitTorrentSync, and use an org-emacs file or two to keep notes. Not awesome, but it keeps most of the visible work flow within emacs (which can view PDF files these days).

A friend does something similar, but uses BibTex to keep track of things.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by neumann on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @10:26PM (#7974777)

this is what I use. The only thing missing is a nice quick cli text search to compete with spotlight/mendeley text search. i have yet to try pdfgrep and such.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by RubberSoul on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @10:34PM (#7974801)

I am an academic using Zotero and it's great. The Chrome plugin allows me to download PDF and metadata at the click of a button. User written plugins allow me to sync selected articles to my iPad and extract annotations I make on the device. It also has automatic backup via WebDAV so that I can re-download an article in my library anywhere.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by nemesis1637 on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @10:44PM (#7974833)

I'll catch flack here for this I'm sure. But when I was I grad school I installed a SharePoint instance and used it solely for this. It worked perfectly.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by skram on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @09:36PM (#7974605)

Have you looked into Zotero? https://www.zotero.org/

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by iamshs on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @10:27PM (#7974782)

One more vote for Zotero. It is an awesome nifty software, that I liked more than Mendeley. Yes, you will have to install Firefox plugin. The built-in features automatically pull the paper name, and tag authors too. I got fed up from downloading 4fgh7u.pdf names from ACS sites, and Zotero solved the name tagging, then collating into directories and sub-directories very easy. You can save webpages too etc. I totally recommend it.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by TooManyPapers on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @09:53PM (#7974674)

do I have to install an app?

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by dennybritz on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @10:15PM (#7974748)

I agree that this is a problem that hasn't been solved yet. Two things I do:

- Label papers in Google scholar. It's a bit of a pain though.

- I put all the PDFs into Dropbox and have a folder hierarchy. I can access Dropbox from all my devices and 3rd party apps.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by sytelus on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @12:37AM (#7975212)

I use GoodReader. It's really the best PDF on tablets/phones with ability to annotate, highlight and so on. Problem is that there is no web version but for that you might use dropbox or Google drive anyway.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by blahedo on Tuesday July 01, 2014 @09:53PM (#7974675)

I know it's appallingly low-tech, but when I download a PDF, I paste the author/title into a text file alongside the PDF's filename. Works well for as infrequently as I check any particular paper.

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by sycren on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @04:30AM (#7975808)

Mendeley - http://www.mendeley.com/

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Re:Ask HN: How can I keep track of academic papers? by marmarlade on Wednesday July 02, 2014 @08:31AM (#7976515)

Seconded.

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