How to keep articles organized - sorting papers (Aug/12/2009 )
Rsm on Thu Aug 13 07:41:19 2009 said:
I don't know if you want to write and cite an article or just keep your PDF files organized. For organization I use iPapers (click), which is for free (but unfortunately only for Mac). But a lot easier than Endnote...
Cheers,
Minna
Thanks, I hate the new version of EndNote, I was looking for something like iPapers for a while.
By the way, I name my PDFs Author-year-key words and file them into thematic folders. They are easy to find in that system or by "Find" on my computer. I also make short notes of the papers I read, something like what you would write if you had to summarize the paper in a couple of sentences, under a theme they belong to.
Another vote for Mendely - awesome for managing papers, annotating pdfs etc, reminds me of iTunes in simplicity. There is a plug-in for Firefox. Another bonus is that its Mac and PC compatible.. and free!
Two questions for the Mendeley users, the major drawbacks I found so far, and want to be clarified before I really use it:
1. Species names are usually in italics (e.g. Cossus cossus or Arabidopsis thaliana). If I get the metadata from the pdfs or data from databases to include them to my database, all italics are gone and I cannot even re-italicise them...is there a way to keep them or to format the titles?
2. Database entries have a link to the document. If you put the file in another folder, the link is dead. For one or two files no problem, but for the whole database if you e.g. move to a new computer? Is there a way to keep the link?
Thanks for any help...
yeah, at the moment the italics thing is an issue I have too...although iīm not writing just yet, hopefully it is fixed before publishing time!
It is on the forum "to do/wish list", so sometime soon....
Should point out that Mendeley is still in Beta
Still love the programme though..
Re the database issue: havenīt tried changing computers, but i think the idea is that you donīt move files out of the database, but rather have one or two folders, and let Mendeley do the organising (like iTunes). But what you could do is have one watched folder (eg "All articles"), and organise your folders within that. I actually use a DropBox folder for storing pdfs (organised into sub-folders) to share between computers, works well. You can have several watched folders too..
Here is a free way to keep your PDFs organized
toejam on Tue Jan 26 16:58:21 2010 said:
i was using zotero until i came with the problem that i couldn't synchronize my library on different computers (as it is in my lab). if you're using only one computer, and i should also remark, and you do your writing on only one operating system (this is for the people who dual boot, since referencing has problems if you're swapping between openoffice / msoffice) then zotero is great.
fortunately my university provides us with endnote web, so i don't worry about that anymore. i know zotero 2.0 can manage synchronization but i haven't tried that, and probably won't. when products are still on beta testing it means it all can be ruined if you click on the wrong moment.
Try mendeley .its the best
I LOVE the program papers for Mac. I have been using it for a couple years now and able to organize my pdfs, and, most importantly, find them when I need them. The only little drawback is that one cannot use it for citing. However, you can export the papers as references and import them into EndNote.
Cheers,
V
hi all,
Last week, i downloaded mendeley desktop and using this. its good and freely available.
you can try this also. If find any problem, can write to me.
good luck
http://www.readcube.com/
does search your computer for all pdfs and then makes a bibliography of all scientific pdfs that can be searched easily (also shows all the publications that do cite the ones that you have on your computer).
Very usefull if you are a kind of a messy 
Regards,
p
thank you it is kind of useful when you have tones of PDF and you dont know exactly where to find them!!! 