Is there a good free alternative to Mendeley?
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I imagine most of the users here do not devote their lives to the writing of scientific papers. Mendeley is a reference manager, really handy when it comes to the organization and automation of citations during writing. Although it is a proprietary software. Is there a good alternative? I tried Zotero, but it's nowhere near good as Mendeley.
I have never tried Mendelay, but in every comparison of Mendeley and Zotero that I have seen they compete well. Perhaps it's a matter of getting used to it? Like I said, I can't compare myself, but I am very happy with Zotero.
What can Mendeley do, that Zotero can't?
I have used Zotero for very little time. For what my poor observation time led to acquire: Mendeley have more space to save references; A rich PDF reader; The possibility to share your references among a community (which I face as the main advantage Mendeley has); A better citation style import system (although that is not a much greater difference, it is indeed very convenient).
I decided to let myself use Zotero for sometime on the foreseeable future, actually I am using it to write a issue at current moment. I will try to get used to it. For I decided to give up on all the proprietary software I can.
Give Zotero some time. My fiancee used it while writing her Phd thesis. Although she was quite new to free code software at the time, she found it superior to EndNote, which is what she used before. She paid the very reasonable annual free that gave her access to the remote storage and sharing features. If you don't want to help fund ongoing development, that's fine, AFAIK all the source code required to set up your own remote backup and sharing server is here:
https://github.com/zotero
I've not tried, but I imagine there's a way to integrate Zotero with a full-featured, free code PDF reader. Something like Zotfile?
https://github.com/jlegewie/zotfile
I am doing a PhD thesis and find no reason to look for alternatives to Zotero. I Second Strypey's comment on space - it's rather cheap and you can pay by credit card (i.e. without paypal).
The only possible negative thing I can find is if you have to share with fellow researchers not using Zotero. I suppose though - but this I am not sure about - you can merge references if you write in LaTeX or the like.
By he way, Zotero can be used for a number of other things than academic references.
Another interesting project is Authorea, an experiment in creating an academic collaboration platform on top of GIT. Sadly, not all their code is free yet, but hopefully at some point they can be convinced its the right thing to do:
https://www.authorea.com/
http://www.linuxlinks.com/article/20100706151504485/Bibliography.html may give solutions.
Do you have any experience with anyone of this softwares? Could you recommend one of your preference?
I tener use them more than out of curiosity. I liked Kbibitex.
Not sure if it is what you want.
This list may help though
It is very useful. I was already aware of BibTex. Although on my study area (ecology and taxonomy) very few of the researchers use BibTex. In fact I only know one who does. It's not very convenient, even so I feel like learning this and getting familiar, just for the pleasure of knowing.
Docear (http://www.docear.org/) is nice.
I will read about it. Thank you very much.
You are welcome. I use it on a daily basis and can really recommend it very much. Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions.
KBibTeX?
Not all of these are kosher, but I like using AlternativeTo,net for most of these situations:
hi, just wanted to say that we should avoid using the word "alternative" when we look for a libre replacement to a nonfree program
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.en.html#Alternative
Yes. Thank you for correcting me. I will apply to get used with the correct terms.
Hi jules_verne,
I use Zotero as reference and pdf manager, it allows effectively to organize large amount of bibliography, and you can purchase for more space if you need. Additional citation styles can be added from https://www.zotero.org/styles/. The LibreOffice pluggin is great for the word processor. All references can be exported as bibtex file to be used in a *TeX document. I recommend you Utopia documents (http://utopiadocs.com/) it is a pdf manager and viewer with some interesting functionalities, and it is Free Software.
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