Introduction to Me

[DrJJWMac]

Hello! I thought to make an introduction as I join.

I am just starting with Bookends for macOS (BE) and iPadOS (BoT). I have used Mendeley and Papers3. I write in LaTeX, so my bibliographies are also always filtered through BibDesk.

I am moving to BE+BoT primarily because I will drop Papers3. I had hopes that Papers3 would replace Mendeley to share citations with collaborators who use Windows. I also appreciated the "find similar" feature of Papers3 as a tool to collect journals that followed a certain topic. In the meantime, Papers3 as it currently stands no longer supports the find similar feature properly, and the development of the Papers3/ReadCube Mac/Windows hybrid is just taking too long. I am also moving more to the iPad for review and markup of journals, and I have learned tangentially that annotations in Papers3 are not carried across well if at all to other PDF apps. Finally, I am rather particular about having robust syncing of documents and about how the markup/annotation tools are placed on the iPad, with an almost religious preference for having a toolbar accessible on the left side of the landscape page (for me as a right-hander) rather than at the top or bottom of the page.

That all said about Papers3, I will keep Mendeley because I need a way to share citations with my research team (who use Windows computers).

So, what is important to me? Here are a few thoughts:

* Mendeley will remain as my place to share citations. After a long spell of holding duplicate local databases in both Papers3 and Mendeley, I will strip Mendeley of all local storage. I need a way to move those local citations out to my new local storage in BE+BoT databases.

* Papers3 will go bye-bye. It has been a robust application to store my local database. Indeed, more so than Mendeley, Papers3 has been my starting point to write publications and proposals. I have a structured set of folders in it. I need a way to move my local citations out while coordinating the same folder structure as desired.

* Since I am combining two local databases, I need a proper approach to merge them.

* I am pulling together and moving resources collected over a few decades. As I do this, I need an approach that allows me to distinguish at one end those journal articles that I will likely never read again (archived) versus at the other end those that I will need to have accessible at any immediate future moment (active).

* My active set will contain articles that have to be shared to team members on Windows. I need to be able to share them as seamlessly as possible to Mendeley.

* My active set will contain articles that I want to mark up *exclusively on my iPad*. The annotations tools of BoT need to be up to the tasks I have in mind.

* I will need to be able to pull out citation sets to BibDesk.

* Finally, I am reviewing other tools that I might want to bring to the mix after the annotation process, specifically DevonThink and perhaps MarginNote. The intent is to improve upon my meta-analysis of the collection of annotations as much as do at analyzing the individual journal articles. I hope in the process of indexing over or copying over the annotated journals from BoT to maintain a "link back" to the source journal article within the annotation itself.

I have been lurking here for a week or so during a trial period of BE and BoT. I have found answers to some of my questions. I have found some things that I want to explore further. Finally, I have found some things that I want to share as possible new insights.

That's my introduction. It's a lot. I hope to take things one step at a time.

[Jon]

Thanks for posting. Getting data in and out of Bookends shouldn't be difficult. And Bookends works particularly nicely with DEVONthink and Tinderbox. If you have questions about features or process I'll try to help, and there are others on the forum who can no doubt be helpful the latter.

Jon
Sonny Software

[DrJJWMac]

Thank you.

I have already browsed postings about export/import from Mendeley or Papers3 in anticipation. I will work slowly and systematically on this part. I am helped by the fact that I just did a clean install of a new SSD. So, all parts of my system are being re-built one step at a time. But, that is what summer time is for in the academic world

I have discovered already how nicely BE and BoT work with PDFExpert and DevonThink. It transitions part of the way also with MarginNote as I've also posted. I've only dabbled in Tinderbox and find it a bit beyond my needs at this point. I look forward to exploring options elsewhere.

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JJW