Pascal Schulthess

So, what are the first things when you start a new job? Right, prepare your computer in a way that the upcoming work runs as smooth as possible. This process calls for even much more time if you have to get familiar with a totally new operating system. Fortunately, the operating systems coming from Apple are really really really easy to learn and understand. But, of cause, you need to “learn” new programs too. And if you’re lucky, these programs even do the job a little bit better than the ones you used to use. After a couple of weeks I really didn’t stumbled over outstanding Mac software. Ok, everything was a little more “stylish” than on my Ubuntu machine, but that’s pretty much it. In fact, Ubuntu is in many ways much more geek-friendly.
But, the exception proves the rule. For every researcher, the program for managing papers and other literature is quite important. I was used to the way, the ordinary bibliography managing tool has be operated. First you have to search for a paper via Google Scholar or PubMed. Secondly you either have to insert all the meta data of an article by hand or copy the BibTeX code in your program. At this point you haven’t downloaded the paper yet.
But this whole procedure changes and consumes much less time now with the incredible Papers. I really haven’t seen a piece of software which does the job so well. In the following I’d like to list a few of its features.

• Search article repositories and download articles without leaving Papers
• Papers lets you view, browse and search your library, iTunes style
• Ease the pain of organizing and naming files on your hard drive with Papers’ automatic management
• Collect your articles together or create smart groups that are always up to date
• Browse your library by author or journal, and check for recent articles you don’t yet have
• …

Well, if you’d like to use Papers you have to pay a couple of bugs but it’s definitely worth it. By automating nearly every process in literature management, you gain time to actually read all the stuff. And there’s even an iPhone/iPod Touch App to take your literature with you wherever you go.

Papers – Website

No, I wasn’t paid from anybody to write this post. I only wanted to share my happiness that there actually is quite good software out there for literature management.