Collaborative reference management and note taking

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Mar 25, 2014 at 11:38 PM

Within the context of a major project I’m looking for a tool to create a collaborative database of reference documents and notes. As a minimum, it should be able to handle the following:

- Collaborative references/bibliographies
- Attachments (the referenced documents themselves)
- Tagging
- Collaborative notes (not necessary wiki-like; conversation threads may be a good alternative)

Nice to have:

- Full text search in attachments
- Hierarchical tags
- Some kind of visual organisation of the material, e.g. mind maps or tables

I have found diverse solutions, so diverse in fact that they are almost impossible to compare, e.g.:

- Zotero, Qiqqa etc.
- A multitude of wikis offering WYSIWYG editing
- Plone
- Papyrs

Simplicity is key, as the tech-literacy of our collaborators varies greatly. Most wikis are no option because they require markup. Papyrs is ultra simple and convenient but expensive compared to most other solutions. Building a workspace with Plone may be the most flexible solution, but I wouldn’t mind skipping the development. As a collaborative bibliographic solution Zotero may be the best option, but possibly weak on the note taking part.

A suitable solution that people can try out _now_ would be preferable. Also, I would prefer to not use more than one tool, e.g. both a bibliographic manager and a wiki…

Any ideas are welcome.