Organizing and managing these digital resources for purposes of review, and with the technical savvy to do so, are now essential skills for graduate study and life in academia. Whether your desk is piled high with printed articles, or your computer desktop is filled with incongruously named PDFs, unmanaged references can be a headache even when you aren’t desperately trying to locate an article for your advisor, or finish a grant proposal at the absolute last minute.Research outputs across the academic disciplines are almost exclusively published electronically. #Mac alternative to docear software#Using a piece of reference management software is one of the easiest ways to alleviate this headache. Unfortunately, not all reference managers are created equal. Choosing the right program can make the research process easier and much more efficient. Choosing the wrong manager can generate a whole new set of headaches. The de facto standard for reference management is EndNote. Now on its seventeenth version, Endnote has been widely adopted by researchers and academic libraries alike. Unfortunately, Endnote is also inordinately costly, difficult to use, and lacks some of the basic tools available in more cost effective, or even free, options. Luckily there are lots of alternatives.īecause many alternatives to Endnote share a common set of tools for generating references: inserting citations into text, syncing, and sharing PDFs, choosing the right options depends on the needs of the individual researcher. Some options are designed to managing extensive libraries of PDFs, others are designed to generate references on the fly from the results of literature or web searches, and still others are designed to facilitate collaboration and communication. No matter what you’re looking for in a reference manager, there is an option out there for you- and it isn’t EndNote. Integration with word processing software: YesĬolwiz is designed to both organize references and facilitate collaboration. #Mac alternative to docear full#Like other reference management tools, Colwiz can automatically generate both in-text citations and full bibliographies from downloaded references, and can integrate (via a free plug-in) with most word processing software. In keeping with its focus on collaboration, Colwiz includes tools for sharing both articles and user generated comments. Uniquely, Colwiz also allows users to share and manage calendars and project checklists.Ĭolwiz currently has an extensive set of analytic tools, allowing users to track connections between authors, journals, and subject areas references. Like other free software, Colwiz includes a limited amount of free online storage space (2 GB) for backing up and syncing references between collaborators and devices. Unlike options such as Mendeley or Papers, Colwiz currently lacks tools for renaming and managing directories of reference files.Īdvantages: Extensive collaborative and analytic features,ĭisadvantages: Less extensive library organization tools What Colwiz has in terms of analytic and collaboration tools, it lacks in library management. Though it shares many features with other reference management options, Docear has a unique system for organizing information. Unlike options that display references as lists of citations or annotations, Docear utilizes a “ mind map” that allows users to efficiently map the connections between references and quickly prepare outlines. Like other reference management tools, Docear allows users to automatically generate citations from downloaded references. However, at present, it does not integrate with word processing software.
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