Not having tried this, I am a year into my dissertation work and could not do it without Zotero (which I discovered on Lifehacker a few months back).

I strongly recommend anyone who might need such a tool to check it out: [www.zotero.org]

Zotero covers much if not all of the functionality mentioned here, and has the added benefit of being a Firefox plugin, running right from Firefox's information bar.

ahersh

Ever since Office 2007 was released with referencing tools, I've been looking for a Linux equivalent. This is about as close as I've seen. If only it came as an OpenOffice plugin...

urmston

Another good reference manager, especially for (La)TeX documents is JabRef

[jabref.sourceforge.net]

It uses java so it is cross-platform.

weezuhl

easybib.com For The Win!!!

Thomas Palmer

I have a question about this. I use easybib now however I want to be able to handle the entire process of storing the data, formatting it in the desired format (either APA, MLA, etc) and then creating my references and intext citations using just my software instead of a web app. (Although I must admit easybib has saved my butt on numerous occasions) I followed the link and it says it puts the information it stores in "Bibtex" format. Now from there can I do something with bibtex to make it spit out a reference page in APA format? I'm trying to get from bibliography database entires and ("select the record you wish to include in your reference page") to a properly formatted APA reference page and if possible, in-text citations. Openoffice has the potential with the current bibliography database but the functionality to generate the references has to be tweaked a little and formatting the actual reference according to source type is still a manual process. Would using referencer allow me to store my entires and generate them in APA or will it simply create the ".bib" output and then it would be left to me to figure out how to get the raw data into APA (my style of choice) format via some plugin on another program?

John_T

You might also want to have a look at Luminotes [luminotes.com], a WYSIWYG personal wiki with support for file attachments and linking to various references on the web. It doesn't yet have BibTeX exporting, but can definitely be used for organizing research information and online references. (Disclaimer: I'm the developer.)

witten

@urmston: Bibus has an OOo plugin
I used it for my thesis, worked great- although it isn't a document organizer, just a bibliography tool.
I'd like to see a head-to-head comparison of Bibus and Referencer; most likely each has its strengths and weaknesses, will do X better than Y, etc...

eilu

@eilu:

"I'd like to see a head-to-head comparison of Bibus and Referencer; most likely each has its strengths and weaknesses, will do X better than Y, etc..."

You've pointed out a real problem there. I'd like to see developers stop trying to inflate their egos each in their own little corner and collaborate on a single open source tool that would do everything well.

I've tried Zotero: could not handle accented data properly from some web sites; one of my friends tried to use it for a bibliography and it crashed on him.

I've tried Bibus but it does some weird things with RIS. It is fixable but I don't have time to contribute right now.

JabRef is a non-starter for me because I don't think storing a database of references in BibTeX format is a good idea. (Yes, I know what I'm talking about. I use LaTeX and BibTeX exclusively for my papers. BibTeX is extremely fragile when it comes to supporting Asian languages. It is okay as an export format but not as a database format, no way!)

It seems that Referencer does not currently integrate with OpenOffice. I don't use OpenOffice that much but I'd like a tool that can integrate with it, just in case. I may have to collaborate with someone who relies on OO and I don't think I can expect them to switch to LaTeX.

In the meantime, I continue to use RefWorks which is not open source and sucks big time. My plan is to fix Bibus to do what I want it to do and ditch RefWorks but that won't happen until sometime this summer.

lemur

Comparison of reference management software on Wikipedia is worth a look. I use a combination of Zotero (for retrieval & Word/OO.o), JabRef (for LaTeX via BibTeX), and refbase (an online server to keep everything in sync).

sciencedude

@lemur:

I've tried Zotero: could not handle accented data properly from some web sites

Did you report this and does it work in other reference managers? Zotero supports UTF-8, but not all of the sites that it gets data from have UTF-8 in their export formats.

one of my friends tried to use it for a bibliography and it crashed on him.

I never saw this problem, but the Word Processor compatibility is evolving rapidly.

I don't think storing a database of references in BibTeX format is a good idea. (Yes, I know what I'm talking about. I use LaTeX and BibTeX exclusively for my papers. BibTeX is extremely fragile when it comes to supporting Asian languages. It is okay as an export format but not as a database format, no way!)

If you use BibTeX exclusively, it DOESN'T seem that you know what you are talking about. You obviously have to get it into BibTeX right somehow when you use it & so you know that BibTeX does accommodate multi-lingual data. This support isn't the best. If you didn't use LaTeX/BibTeX exclusively, I would not recommend using it for your primary database. But you seem to be wasting time looking for some other database utility that doesn't use BibTeX natively when you know you'll have to massage it into BibTeX later.

sciencedude

@sciencedude: "You obviously have to get it into BibTeX right somehow when you use it & so you know that BibTeX does accommodate multi-lingual data."

I said BibTeX's support for Asian languages is fragile, not non-existent. Tell me what is the way to encode these following words in BibTeX so that the bibliography appears properly in my final paper? Śrīdharācārya and Abhidharmahṛdayaśāstra. The first word is an author name so you also have to tell me what to do to get BibTeX to keep it in proper alphabetical order. Because if you thought that was automatic, think again!

The above examples are Sanskrit but they are real: that's what I have to work with. And that's nothing compared to getting BibTeX to properly handle actual Chinese characters in author names.

lemur

I've tried Referencer, several times. Thing is, it's spotty with it's ability to detect the information in the PDFs. Supposedly it can extract authors, titles, stuff like that. I always end up with 75% of my PDFs not detected. Editing that by hand is a pain.

I REALLY wish I could use it, it would be great to have something to organize my PDFs, JabRef is ok, but as an organizer it isn't that good. I want something that does what Referencer tries to do but fails. Give me a way to organize my references by subject, tag them, etc. not just a list of author and title like most of the JabRef type bibliography managers do. They're two different softwares. One is a PDF organizer, the other is a bibliography manager, IMO. Don't even get me started on trying to use LaTex. I LOVE it, but I can't just send the file to anyone I work with and collaborate with them...

earlycj5

@earlycj5:

Thanks for sharing your actual experience with Referencer.

I can't be 100% certain because I have not yet started to use bibus for real work, but I think bibus would do what you want as far as classification goes. You can check it out here:

[sourceforge.net]

When I tried it by doing a massive import of references from RefWorks, I was able to classify the literature for my dissertation by philosophical school and then subdivide it by primary and secondary sources, and then sources I had selected for inclusion in the dissertation and those I had rejected. That seemed to work fairly well. Obviously, the only way to know how well it works is to use it for real work, which I have not done yet.

lemur

I'll definitely try this for Linux, but I'm wondering about an equivalent for Windows. I have dozens and dozens of PDFs I'm trying to organize for dissertation-writing. Is there a good, cheap Windows-based PDF-organizer that allows easy tagging, sorting, and (most importantly and probably most impossibly!) easy previewing?

marmat

For materials you can find in a library, www.WorldCat.org lets you export saved lists of items automatically as a bib in various standard (Harvard, Turabian, Chicago, MLA) formats. Create a list and then go to "Citations View," choose the citation style and then export to HTML, Rich Text, End Notes or RefWorks. I copy/paste the HTML export when creating blog entries with a bibliography.

TinkerX