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Docear - The Academic Literature Suite
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 17, 2012 at 04:14 PM
Docear http://www.docear.org/ is a new tool for organising academic literature and writing, a successor to the Sciplore project http://www.sciplore.org/software/sciplore_mindmapping/
I do not do any academic writing at present, and cannot say that I will be testing the software, but I found the following interesting (from the home page):
- Includes: digital library, reference manager, PDF and file manager, note taking and mind mapping.
- Docear works seamlessly with many existing tools like Mendeley, Microsoft Word, and Foxit Reader
- Docear is free and open source, based on Freeplane, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Technology and developed by scientists from around the world, among others from OvGU, and the University of California, Berkeley.
Posted by Dr Andus
Apr 17, 2012 at 11:30 PM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Docear http://www.docear.org/ is a new tool for organising academic literature and
>writing, a successor to the Sciplore project
>http://www.sciplore.org/software/sciplore_mindmapping/
The video (http://www.docear.org/software/screenshots/) is quite interesting. I’ve downloaded it and played with it for a few minutes, but didn’t completely get it. It’s a beta and it seems that parts of the manual are still missing, and it wasn’t all that intuitive.
I’m a bit wary of the Swiss knife type approach to writing software. While I’m impressed with efforts like Citavi or Docear that try to capture the entire writing process, I’m reluctant to give up my freedom to assemble my own system of specialist software for the various stages of the process. I guess I worry that it somehow constrains my creativity.
Posted by JBfrom
Apr 18, 2012 at 03:13 AM
It’s not for writing, it’s for organizing research files and ebooks. The additional capabilities are there to make it better at the primary function.
There’s been a major gap in this space that’s been making my head hurt. This might be the solution.
Good find, Alex. Always got your ear to the pulse.
Posted by jamesofford
Apr 21, 2012 at 02:34 AM
Looks pretty interesting. It would have to go a long way to beat my current setup. When I download PDF files, I drag them into Papers 2.1.17. This program does a pretty good job of dealing with the metadata of the PDF and pulling out the information that I need. You can use Papers as a reference manager like Endnote, but I generally export the PDF files into Endnote that I am working with because most of the people with whom I collaborate don’t use Papers(Yet.)
For searching PDF files, I use Devonthink Pro Office. I keep the PDFs in a folder that Devonthink indexes, and I update the indexes once a day or so. Searching in Papers works pretty good, but Devonthink pulls out the exact matches, and also pulls out stuff that is similar. That’s pretty handy.
I may give Docear a try, but right now my Crimping is at a relatively low level.
Jim
Posted by Daly de Gagne
Apr 21, 2012 at 01:10 PM
JB it seems that writing (paper drafting) and word processing is seen as an intrinsic part of the program. From its website:
” Where an office suite bundles several applications for office workers, Docear integrates several applications for researchers, i.e. academic search engine*, file manager, PDF reader*, mind mapping and note taking tool, reference manager, paper drafting, and word processor*.”
MindMason also has writing as an intrinsic part of its program. I emailed the company several days ago to ask for its development plans beyond version 4, but have had not response.
Daly
JBfrom wrote:
>It’s not for writing, it’s for organizing research files and ebooks. The additional
>capabilities are there to make it better at the primary function.
>
>There’s been a
>major gap in this space that’s been making my head hurt. This might be the
>solution.
>
>Good find, Alex. Always got your ear to the pulse.