I am currently using a wordpress blog to archive all literature references. A blog is perfectly fine for most of the tasks.
- It is easy accessible from everywhere and every computer
- It has fulltext search
- It has an open format
- It is easy to backup
- It is more or less open standard. I can change the software platform anytime withouth to much hassle
- All I need is internet and text editing
- I can write summaries
- it is automatically saved with date
- It has categories and tags to archive the texts using keywords
But of course there are some drawbacks.
- I cannot automatically generate a reference list.
- I do have do type in all the references manually
- I cannot sort or search by author, year, topic, title or other database fields
- I cannot save the documents with the file
My endeavour now is to find an alternative to a blog software that helps me archiving, keywording and referencing the literature I have read without loosing the key functionality but solving the drawbacks.
Jakob Voss has an overview on webbased referencing systems [German].
Joachim Eberhardt provides a list and a test of on- and offline products [German].
A overview of Mac software is available at Apfelwiki
LibraryThing
An interesting idea is social web service LibraryThing. The only drawback. You cannot export the references afaik.
Litlink
There is also product for Filemaker: LitLink
Zotero
Zotero is Firefox plugin to collect and organise references directly in the browser Zotero.org, Wikipedia-Entry
Bibtex
Bibtex is a software tool for generating lists of literature references. It is used within Latex. Wikipedia.
Endnote
Commercial reference management software for local installation on mac or pc. Wikipedia. endnote.org
Citavi
Citavi is Swiss product that is also locally installed. Is the successor of Literat.net
CiteULike
CiteULike is a free webservice to store, organise and share scholarly papers. Add online papers to your library by clicking. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details. Only a browser is needed. Seems to be intersting. But I cannot keep it private or add my personal notes.
Connotea
Free online reference management.Connotea.org
Bibsonomy
BibSonomy is a system for sharing bookmarks and lists of literature. Bisonomy.org
Refworks
“RefWorks is an online research management, writing and collaboration tool. It is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies.” Refworks
5 Comments
October 24, 2008 at 1:30 pm
You can export your references from LibraryThing, see http://www.librarything.com/tools at the right (Export as CSV / Export as tab-delimited text).
October 24, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Please try Connotea! You can share bookmarks or keep them private, it should automatically complete citation information (or you can add it). You can also import to and export from desktop reference management software. You can add a browser button to easily save links, but the site is based on a login, so you can use it from any computer. See: http://www.connotea.org/about
I work for Nature Publishing Group so I am biased, but I am also a complete Connotea convert and use it myself all the time.
October 24, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Wikipedia has a comparison of reference management software. There is a You might consider using the COinS plugin to WordPress to embed nice citations that can be scraped by zotero.
If you like the idea of an online reference manager (a’la CiteULike) and don’t mind running your own server, refbase or connotea are open source webapps & you can make your data private.
October 25, 2008 at 7:54 am
@Jakob. Thanks, I did not see this feature.
@Rick. The WordPress Plugin is a fantastic idea. I have been looking for something like this. Will try it next week. Thanks a lot for pointing me to it.
November 24, 2008 at 12:37 pm
The new version of Aigaion has just been released, and seems to provide most of what you need. The only thing missing is a pdf-text search. Please have a look at http://www.aigaion.nl
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