One-stop paper readings solutions?

sayxx008

Hi everybody. I would like to seek your opinion on how I can best leverage on Zotero and Dropbox to achieve my current research workflow, or if there are workarounds.

Here are the things I wish could be done. I know I am not alone in this:

- I download papers mainly via my Google chrome brower - Zotero plugin. i.e. i click on the little icon at the right hand end of my url address box to have Zotero automatically save the paper/ or if unsuccessful, at least save some of the metadata.

- Access, read, annotate and insert comment on papers on multiple platforms (e.g. macbook, samsung galaxy tablet, galaxy phone)

- These very same papers should be synchronized to Zotero, so as to avoid multiple copies. When I do my research from my laptop in the day, I could have already access the comments made on the very same paper using my tablet (and the Repligo pdf reader app) the night before when I read it.

I read an earlier post where someone suggested storing the papers elsewhere and then use the "attach link" method. But I found this to be quite tedious to do individually.

Thank you very much.

Best,
Sebastian

aurimas

If you want access on an Android system, I think the best bet is currently to use ZotFile to copy a subset of papers that you are interested in to a Dropbox folder (or some other sync software), then use something like Dropsync (plenty other options available, but that's what I use) on your tablet to automatically download/upload your papers from the tablet/phone. When you're back at your computer, use ZotFile again to bring in any changes you made on the tablet/phone. I find that this works reasonably well for me.

You do have to decide a bit ahead of time which papers you will be reading, but on the other hand, with DropSync, you won't have to worry about having internet access on the tablet when you need to read.

jhanks

It's really unfortunate that Zotero doesn't have a good Android solution.

janew1

+1!