research, conducting-research, reference-managementIn conducting research, I often have to manage dozens or even hundreds of pdf files. Does anyone have recommendations for programs?
I use Mendeley, I like the GUI interface. Wikipedia gives a good rundown of a number of different reference management programs at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_management_software .
There are a number of enterprise solutions for this and, as long as all you wish to do is manage documents (collaboration with documents is a different matter), here are a few recommendations:
If you have the skills and wish to build your own system, then I recommend Mayan EDMS which is an open-source (GPLv3), Django (Python)-based platform. From their blurb:
Open source, Django based document manager with custom meta-data indexing, file serving integration, document tagging and OCR capabilities.
If you are into latex I think I simple bibtex library file will do. Couple that with a program like referencer (on linux) and you have also a centralized index of where those pesky pdfs are.
If the problem is sharing with other team-mates we found version control programs to be the easiest way to be always updated. Yes, version control was designed for source codes but work fantastically with documents as well.
I recommend Zotero - it’s very easy to use, integrates to browser and MS Word/OpenOffice, autogenerates citations and more.
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