======= Date Modified 28 31 2009 13:31:46 =======
Hi,

I hope that someone can help.

I need to start organising my references more efficiently and have been looking at Zotero. I've looked on PGF and there doesn't seem to be much said about it. Has anyone had experience of using both the more mainstream referencing systems (e.g. Endnote or Reference Manager) and Zotero, as it'd be great to hear the pros and cons?

I'm just starting my PhD and haven't established any referencing system yet, so some guidance would be good (although web access is essential and cost is a consideration). My sups don't have any strong feelings as one uses EN and the other uses RM.

Thank you for your help,

James the Cat
(chasing birds and butterflies for those of you who remember!)

My main concern about Zotero having looked at it briefly is whether you can get the reference database information out again, to reimport it into another reference manager in future, if you choose. I'd be concerned about spending a long time typing in references, to potentially be tied into that software.

As a computer scientist I'm also a bit sceptical about something new like this, whether it will still be around in several years, though being open source helps. Those are probably daft concerns. I've just seen a lot of software come and go over the years, and lots of great ideas not be taken forward.

Agree with Bilbobaggins. I tried Zotero and didn't like it. Feels much more secure to have references stored locally with standalone software. I prefer LaTeX + JabRef or Word + Endnote.

I'm not really at the writing stage yet, but I've been dabbling with JabRef - as suggested by Cleverclogs - and it looks good to me.

Cleverclogs also recommends LaTex, I see. If you're interested in going down that road, I'd heartily recommend you take a look at Lyx. It's a sort of word processor "front end" for LaTex, so you get the very professional typesetting without all the code-y gubbins. Basically you just use a drop-down menu to tell Lyx what each bit of text is - chapter title, section header, bulletpointed list etc - and it generates a beautifully typeset document for you, complete with citations, bibliography, contents page, footnotes etc. It really is very clever and straightforward - much less 'tinkering' with the look of things than Word.

Both pieces of software are free, so easy enough to try out.

I've never come across Zetero, but it seems it get v. good reviews. I never liked Endnote, and reverted to using one very long bibliography on a Word doc (simply organised into chapters). None of these software programs are very good when it comes to supporting citation styles for lawyers.

To digress slightly, what is the best software for providing a sophisticated 'favourites' system? I favourite/bookmark an awful lot of webpages, but then they seem to get lost in the vortex of my Favourites list.

Hi,

thank you everyone for your feedback. It's good to have your thoughts esp as I've not used any reference manager system before (other than my own, which will no longer suffice!).

I shall give it some more thought. After your feedback I did, however, find out that you can backup Zotero to an external system, so I could put stuff on my extneral hard-drive. Whether that's the safest option I'm not sure. Plus, if it becomes an expensive commercial package there may be a problem. Hmmm.

I was interested to hear about the other open-source suggestions, so I'm looking at those too. 

Thanks again,

JTC

Hi,

Just wondering if you've considered Mendeley too. (http://www.mendeley.com). It's free desktop software (compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux), and also has a website where you can network with other postgrads.

Try it out and let me know

ps (I'm part of Mendeley's team, so feel free to ask me questions)

I'm looking forward to an open-source alternative to Mendeley. Mendeley is a good idea ruined by its propriety nature -- they will monetize on it eventually and this will likely be to the detriment of the academic community.

My recommendation is Lyx + Jabref + Zotero. Personally I have used mainly Lyx + Jabref but the new version of Zotero has functions which are a MUST for researchers. The most important of them is the "Add Item by Identifier" function. Give it DOIs and it retrieves the citation entries automatically. They can be exported to bibtex format later on and merged with my other bibtex files.

The reason I use Jabref and not only Zotero is that the native database format of Jabref is bibtex which is compatible with lyx.

Zotero could be a good choice if someone wants to use OpenOffice.org for writing because citations and bibliographies can be pushed from Zotero to OO.org (needs installing a plugin for OpenOffice).

Well, this is my two cents...

I've tried Zotero and I hate it. Bear in mind that with many of these add-ons for Firefox, when they update the version of Firefox, the add-ons often don't work for a little while, until the author updates it. On top of this, don't use Zotero along with Endnote, as they don't like each other and mess one another's referencing system up - as I unfortunately found out.