Manage papers offline on a linux system

Question

Is there any smart way to manage scientific papers for offline use in a linux system.

For example:

It should be possible to tag papers with customizable tags, sort them by tags and so on
if I see a new paper on arxiv.org and want to read it if I have more time, there should be a nice way to put it to my "read it later list" of my paper manager
the paper manager should allow me to store bibtex data
it should give an easy way to write down notes and comments to individual papers (supporting math-formulas)
support pdf and djvu
should be easy to backup

I don't need any integration to word-processing software.

You may want to try asking on http://scicomp.stackexchange.com — Lorin Hochstein, Mar 05 '12 at 22:15
@LorinHochstein Nothing to do with [scicomp.se]. Possibly [academia.se], depending on where that's heading. Or [tex.se], for a (Bib)TeX-based solution. But the question is fine here. — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Mar 05 '12 at 23:25
Jabref with some additional plugins fulfills most of your wishlist. — jofel, Mar 05 '12 at 23:25
Create an list/ a spreadsheet/ a database for the meta information and save the URL or the file location in the list (...). Write a skript to parse the list (...) and start an application to read a file. — user unknown, Mar 06 '12 at 01:28
Check out http://www.zotero.org/, from poking around on their website it seems to support everything your requested. — André Paramés, Mar 11 '12 at 23:36
+1 for Zotero; it's a Firefox extension, which may or may not suit, but it seems like it'll do all of what you're asking. — Ben Williams, Mar 22 '12 at 23:46

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 14 '12 at 06:51

3

Mendeley Desktop (http://www.mendeley.com/) is pretty close to what you want; it supports tagging papers (although I haven't used this feature), adding nodes to papers, viewing/annotating PDFs, and it has web-based imports for several reference sites including arXiv: http://www.mendeley.com/import/. There is a Debian/Ubuntu repository to install the desktop client.

And of course, it can export to bibtex.

Note that it keeps your references on their server, and you might have to change some settings to get it to sync the PDF files with the references, but it stores the data under ~/.local/share/data/Mendeley\ Ltd./Mendeley\ Desktop/ so there is a local copy available.

answered Apr 14 '12 at 06:51

Joseph

166
4

1

Does that mean, that I can use it offline? – student Apr 14 '12 at 07:05
It does work offline; you can add PDFs and references without synchronizing to the server. – Joseph Apr 14 '12 at 20:51
But I have to create a mendely account? – student Apr 15 '12 at 08:34
Yes, I think you need a Mendeley account; it's a web-based reference management system with a desktop client that can function offline. – Joseph Apr 18 '12 at 11:26

Manage papers offline on a linux system

1 Answers1