Collaborative reference management and note taking

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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.

Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 26, 2014 at 09:38 AM

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
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)

Hm, that’s a tough set of criteria, especially if you want an all-in-one solution… I’m presuming that by “references/bibliographies” you mean academic type references and bibliographies, such as downloading/importing them from online academic journals and then formatting the bibliography in a word processor like MS Word or LibreOffice?

Services that come to mind:

Paperpile: https://paperpile.com/features
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/5152/0/paperpile-web-and-chrome-based-academic-writing-and-referencing-system

EasyBib: http://googledrive.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/add-ons.html
http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/5314/0/easybib—referencing-add-on-for-google-doc

EndNote Web: https://www.myendnoteweb.com/

I imagine EndNote’s main competitors would all try to offer something similar, so it might be worth checking them out.

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Mar 26, 2014 at 11:27 AM

Thanks for the suggestions; I will check them out.

Dr Andus wrote:
>I’m presuming that by “references/bibliographies” you mean
>academic type references and bibliographies, such as
>downloading/importing them from online academic journals and then
>formatting the bibliography in a word processor like MS Word or
>LibreOffice?

I should clarify this further. The academic context is _not_ essential, though it may be useful—project partners include some universities and these could more easily import some of their existing references in the database.

What is essential is to be able to classify/organise the documents within the context of the project topics. So, at the very least, any imported document should be tag-able and should have some kind of note field associated to it.

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Mar 26, 2014 at 11:34 AM

And then, any collaborative notes should be able to link to the imported documents with no restrictions.

Posted by Dr Andus
Mar 26, 2014 at 01:55 PM

On that basis Paperpile sounds the closest to what you’re describing, as long as the users don’t mind using Google accounts.

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