Dear Colleagues,
I apologize for the rather off-topic question, but I would like to ask Mac users for help - what would you recommend as the best (both free and paid), firstly, reference manager for academic writing and, secondly, PDF files editor? In the latter case, I mean mainly the possibility of correcting and replacing text directly on the page, and not as comments somewhere on the side.

Reference manager: I've found Zotero to be reasonable enough over the last 8 or so years that I haven't been inclined to seek out other options. Features I like: automated entries via ISBN and DOI numbers; integration into MS Word/Libre Office, for quick citations and bibliographies when drafting; the ability to sync to a dedicated .bib file through the Zot2Bib add-on.

PDF editor: I've found PDF Expert to be quite good, not just for annotating but also for editing, as you describe. A bit expensive at $80, but if you're a student/educator you can enjoy a 50% discount.

Bonus - document manager: DEVONthink. Perhaps you're already onboard for this, but it sure beats Finder.

For reference purposes, it’s also worth taking a look at Ilaro (not well known, but in constant development).

And I’d second PDF Expert for editing PDFs; it does a very nice job. Just one tip: a PDF editor can’t do a good job unless you have the same font(s) on your system as the ones embedded in the PDF.

Thank you very much for all the advice!
Zotero - fine, I'll try (on Windows I use Citavi, and I'm very glad).
Ilaro - you mean https://www.ilaroresearch.com/ Thanks a lot, never heard about it.
PDF Expert - super, looks that I can achieve exactly what I want. And yes, I am an educator :) Thanks for the tip!
BTW, have you ever tried Apowersoft PDF Editor Online - https://www.apowersoft.com/pdf-editor-online I can't deal with it. As soon as I try to edit something online, the desktop application is downloaded to my computer right away, which is paid (at least this is what the website says).
Thank you once again and best regards

For reference managers I can make two recommendations:

1. Paperpile. This is web-based, but they are working on a stand-alone app that will eventually allow you to do everything in a plain text editor like Ulysses, or in Word for Mac. They also have an iOS app in beta that is already pretty good. Right now it is mostly designed to work with Chrome and Google Drive. It works very well already if you are OK using these tools.

2. Bookends. This is one of the oldest mac reference managers and is still going strong.

https://paperpile.com

https://www.sonnysoftware.com/

PDF Expert is good, and I like it. But if you wish to OCR scanned documents and have no other means of doing so, PDFpen or PDFpen Pro from Smile Software will do most of what PDF Expert can do, though perhaps not as sleekly, and OCR as well.

Thanks a lot for all your advice and suggestions!
With best regards,
W

I would like to second Luhmann's recommendations, I use both Paperpile and Bookends and am very happy to hear that Paperpile is headed toward a stand-alone approach.

Luhmann wrote:

For reference managers I can make two recommendations:

1. Paperpile. This is web-based, but they are working on a stand-alone
app that will eventually allow you to do everything in a plain text
editor like Ulysses, or in Word for Mac. They also have an iOS app in
beta that is already pretty good. Right now it is mostly designed to
work with Chrome and Google Drive. It works very well already if you are
OK using these tools.

2. Bookends. This is one of the oldest mac reference managers and is
still going strong.

https://paperpile.com

https://www.sonnysoftware.com/

FWIW, a parallel discussion is ongoing at MPU Talk about replacements for Papers3.

https://talk.macpowerusers.com/t/papers3-successor/13891/