I am also closely following a possible zotero-mendeley cooperation, at least interchangeable databases on both parts. With their latest beta, Mendeley made a step forward in achieving -although one way- integration with the Zotero sqlite database.
I have been using zotero 2.* beta for a long time now but it seems that Mendeley doesn't work with it. Instead, I pointed Mendeley toward a Zotero 1.1.0 sqlite database on another ff profile of mine, which I keep for my own zotero development purposes. Mendeley worked for the zotero 1.1.0 database - not without problems, but at least it imported attachments, etc. You cannoy differentiate the types though - all references are showwn with a tiny pdf icon - althoug their types are provided correctly in the zotero-like information pane. Having said this, I think this is a good start.
Zotero is much more strong than Mendeley for the moment for reliable extraction of citation info, both from the web and documents. Mendeley, on the other hand, has a superior interface (for me at least), and the pdf-viewer capabilities makes it a charming option. I appreciate the fast development pace of Mendeley and their efforts in cooperating with zotero on the users' side. As they use bits and pieces from Zotero code, I wish Zotero interface can also benefit from some of their ideas, too (e.g. the pdf viewer option - this seems to be possible for zotero as well; if it provided a mendeley-like tab only to view attachments, that uses the built-in pdf-viewer plugin installed within the user's firefox profile - this may even be extended to view other types of in-browser viewable documents like open-office docs, etc.)
I find both Zotero and Mendeley intuitive and cooperable in most ways. It's nice to see such development.
I appreciate the fast development pace of Mendeley and their efforts in cooperating with zotero on the users' side. As they use bits and pieces from Zotero code, I wish Zotero interface can also benefit from some of their ideas, too ...
Note: Zotero's code is open source, which is what allows Mendeley to borrow from it (though also requires them to release any modifications). Mendeley's code is not.
yes, that is what makes it possible for not only mendeley but also me - and a lot of (wanna be) coders out there to have a development profile and try to apply changes as to specific needs (zotero plugins, translators, etc). as soon as the api comes opensource, possibilities will double.
What I mean is as Mendeley gets inspiration from Zotero implementation (and code:), Zotero can also benefit from the good implementations by mendeley (although 'good' can be a bit dependent on user choices maybe, but I mean some sort of best practice mentality here, depending on zotero user forums and feedbacks). As such, my preference for a good practice would be the in-program attachment viewing (pdf for the moment) capabilities of Mendeley. So in that regard zotero may benefit from this idea (not the code, as it is closed source - and anyways zotero already is stronger in terms of a reliable citation extraction and database formation), that is what I mean.
I already appreciate Zotero very much in terms of fast development & responsiveness to user feedback, as I often express elsewhere and heere in the forum. As this topic is on Mendeley, I wanted to make a fair comment on mendeley per se, as I think these projects are not mutually exclusive. But my personal preference would be open-source, and zotero in this regard.
@hamshibib There's at least one other report of a bug with the sync. Would you contact support@mendeley.com rergarding this?
@anatolica I'm sure the Mendeley team is grateful that you appreciate their hard work. One area where Zotero and Mendeley (and all other citation managers) could work together is developing a standard for Word processor integration, so editable documents can be used with any ref mgr and the bibliography management will still work.
As such, my preference for a good practice would be the in-program attachment viewing (pdf for the moment) capabilities of Mendeley.
Zotero has always had in-program attachment viewing for files supported by Firefox either natively (text and image files) or via a plugin (PDFs). If you want to open an attachment in a new tab or window rather than the current Firefox tab, use the standard Firefox modifier keys while clicking the View button.
If you'd like to make a specific feature request regarding, say, auto-opening of attachments in a dedicated Firefox tab while browsing through items without explicitly opening them, please do so in a separate thread.
Zotero has always had in-program attachment viewing for files supported by Firefox either natively (text and image files) or via a plugin (PDFs)
I am so sorry, I should have written something like "...while still viewing the item info on the sidebar" which is was what I pointed at as a good practice in mendeley (to me). Anyways, such interface ideas has long been discussed in the forums, and I sent a mock-up, in a separate thread as you advised. Thanks a lot. Emre Ayca.
IMO, Zotero and Mendeley are two very good products, using the same technologies, and both are better than EndNote.
Zotero is ahead of Mendeley for now, but it is older, so it is normal. I'd like to see those two products grow and share stuff together. They are meant to be partners, not competitors :-) Or at least, it will be positive competition.
When I add a citation to Zotero, Mendeley consumes it (i.e. syncs with Zotero) But if I add a citation to Mendeley (web or desktop) does Zotero consume that? Does/can the sync go both ways?
To obtain pdf's annotation capabilities with Zotero, I use PDFXchange viewer by defaut with Firefox.
Consequently, so far I can't find any reason to quit Zotero for Mendeley.
Waiting for Ipad Mendeley version.
Well, the biggest advantage of Z over M is the way it can be embeded into my webbrowser - no additional programmes etc.
I think that this is one of the major drawbacks of Z. For one thing, it restricts the user base of Z to Firefox users. I know people that need citation managers but like Chrome very much. So they won't use Z. Also, it makes Z's success dependent on the popularity of Firefox. If one day Firefox will be overtaken by Chrome, Zotero will go down with it, no matter how open-source it is.
Hi guys
I think Zotero web interface is so boring and not full of functions as that of mendeley. While I still like zotero more . I hope Zotero developers take more care about their web interface . Try to see the simplicity of Facebook for example. In facbook , no need to refresh the whole web page , instead, web components work embedded in the page.
WizFolio web interface is somehow good but not as I dream . Again , try to inspire the simple powerful Facebook interface
mfatehy: If you want to be of help, you would need to make a feature request. (Start a new thread) Just stating that Zotero website is boring is not really helpful. If you can provide some suggestions on how to make it less boring, that would give the developers something to work on.
The library part of the Zotero website works already by just loading the content instead of the entire page, so I do not really understand what the problem here is.
It's pretty clear that Zotero hasn't invested much in developing a "social networking" component. Personally I think that's the right strategic choice. Mendeley has a flashy web presence. Zotero has word processor integration that actually works. I sure know which I value more.
But the original idea of Zotero was social networking for academics. It definitely needs a substantial refresh to work well for that in 2012, probably including integration with other services (like Twitter).
For a number of colleagues (including myself) having public tags (à la flickr) would be a major step towards social networking and using Zotero as a platform for the development of shared knowledge. See e.g. this blog post http://code.flickr.com/blog/2011/12/16/pleiades-a-guest-post/ to get an idea of what we would like to be able to do.
Of course it should be entirely opt-in (per user and possibly per tag or tag family). I'm wondering how difficult this would be to achieve with the current infrastructure?
What Zotero needs :
1- Annotation management in PDF
2- Sign in using facebook
3- More deals with scientific papers sites to put Zotero logo and sharing in their sharing options
4- Allowing Zotero user to sign in using a Mendeley account and sync both libs
The Zotero super capability is the browser-based interface allowing one-click snapshot, citation and pdf attachment is not foun in any other ref management tool .
While I see Mendeley is more spread , more famous and more used .
Also Web interface of Menedeley is much more flexibla and usable as easy as Facebook interface , While Zotero web interface is boring , for example in Zotero you need to refresh the whole page for every single request or process you ask. Why don't them use Ajax or any similar technology?
I use Zotero completely now, its Office integration is so good and full of options . Mendeley can sync with Zotero, so my personal work around is to use Zotero as my main tool , and use Mendeley as a sharing tool .
Still Zotero is on top , but if Mendeley added a snapshot from browser with translators that get all metadata and PDF, I may migrate to Mendeley.
Oh! The most important point is Zotero is open source and more long lasting , this is a very positive point encouraging me to stick to Zotero
What if I sign in with different users on my PC... Shall I sync from zero every time and clear all previous data? If I wanna sync today deom account called : "mfatehy1"
clicking sync ... will it delete all data on HDD from "mfatehy" account?
i..e is their a capability of multiuser on the same PC without affecting offline data ?
1) The zotero stance on annotations is that it is better to let the user choose which tool to use instead of forcing a built-in tool, but there is also a practical issue that a good free cross-platform annotation library does not exits
2) Zotero support the OpenID system
3) I think these are paid advertisements, and I do not know if Zotero has the money for that. Does Mendeley do something like that? I know that Endnote does, but it is owned by Thompson Reuters that also operates databases.
4) There is a lot of discussion about two-way synchronization and why this is unlikely to happen.
As far as I know, the Zotero online library uses Ajax or similar. There are no page reloads on my Mac.
Chrome does not provide programming interfaces that are needed for Zotero, so implementing Zotero purely based on Chrome would mean a very limited Zotero that would need to be implemented from scratch.
(Same goes for iPad and Android and hence the third party ZotPad and Zandy)
If you have two different users on the same PC, you should use two different user profiles or two different firefox profiles.
the whole site will be better if acts like Facebook
A notification icon , an inbox and a friend request icon
u say substantial refresh is in lib , it is not enough , it is needed in groups and forums . actually needed in the whole site .
we may need more people management and group management options , again try to inspire Facebook model. The aim should be : a complete social network for researchers .
I agree that the site would be better if it acted like Facebook. However, given the limited resources I would argue that improving the Zotero application/extension itself should have a higher priority than doing a facelift for the website.
A lot of ideas can be added , one of them is a dream for me in my thesis
What I dream in is the following story:
1- in the full text paper , I choose a paragraph which I wanna put it in my thesis 2- by right-click , a short key and/or a menu command called "send to word processor" , the following happens : 2a - the paragraph is copied and pasted in the word processor at the cursor location 2b- the citation mark is put in the word processor and the bilbliogrpahy data is added below in bibliography section 2c- the citation mark is live and dynamic , clicking it sends me to the biblio then the biblio sends me to the source paper , or better , the citation marks sends me to the source paper , to the source paragraph which was previously annotated by a special automated annotation
3- so the whole word document will be e living document , allowing the researcher to get back to the source paper rapidly
it may be a dream , but record it in ur note ,you may need it later1 thanks
Upgrade Storage
I have been using zotero 2.* beta for a long time now but it seems that Mendeley doesn't work with it. Instead, I pointed Mendeley toward a Zotero 1.1.0 sqlite database on another ff profile of mine, which I keep for my own zotero development purposes. Mendeley worked for the zotero 1.1.0 database - not without problems, but at least it imported attachments, etc. You cannoy differentiate the types though - all references are showwn with a tiny pdf icon - althoug their types are provided correctly in the zotero-like information pane. Having said this, I think this is a good start.
Zotero is much more strong than Mendeley for the moment for reliable extraction of citation info, both from the web and documents. Mendeley, on the other hand, has a superior interface (for me at least), and the pdf-viewer capabilities makes it a charming option. I appreciate the fast development pace of Mendeley and their efforts in cooperating with zotero on the users' side. As they use bits and pieces from Zotero code, I wish Zotero interface can also benefit from some of their ideas, too (e.g. the pdf viewer option - this seems to be possible for zotero as well; if it provided a mendeley-like tab only to view attachments, that uses the built-in pdf-viewer plugin installed within the user's firefox profile - this may even be extended to view other types of in-browser viewable documents like open-office docs, etc.)
I find both Zotero and Mendeley intuitive and cooperable in most ways. It's nice to see such development.
yes, that is what makes it possible for not only mendeley but also me - and a lot of (wanna be) coders out there to have a development profile and try to apply changes as to specific needs (zotero plugins, translators, etc). as soon as the api comes opensource, possibilities will double.
For mendeley, there is a strong user feedback for them to open the code whether they do it or not (I hope they do, though):
http://feedback.mendeley.com/pages/4941-mendeley-feedback/suggestions/99304-to-publish-your-desktop-under-gpl-license-
What I mean is as Mendeley gets inspiration from Zotero implementation (and code:), Zotero can also benefit from the good implementations by mendeley (although 'good' can be a bit dependent on user choices maybe, but I mean some sort of best practice mentality here, depending on zotero user forums and feedbacks). As such, my preference for a good practice would be the in-program attachment viewing (pdf for the moment) capabilities of Mendeley. So in that regard zotero may benefit from this idea (not the code, as it is closed source - and anyways zotero already is stronger in terms of a reliable citation extraction and database formation), that is what I mean.
I already appreciate Zotero very much in terms of fast development & responsiveness to user feedback, as I often express elsewhere and heere in the forum. As this topic is on Mendeley, I wanted to make a fair comment on mendeley per se, as I think these projects are not mutually exclusive. But my personal preference would be open-source, and zotero in this regard.
There's at least one other report of a bug with the sync. Would you contact support@mendeley.com rergarding this?
@anatolica
I'm sure the Mendeley team is grateful that you appreciate their hard work. One area where Zotero and Mendeley (and all other citation managers) could work together is developing a standard for Word processor integration, so editable documents can be used with any ref mgr and the bibliography management will still work.
If you'd like to make a specific feature request regarding, say, auto-opening of attachments in a dedicated Firefox tab while browsing through items without explicitly opening them, please do so in a separate thread.
Emre Ayca.
Zotero is ahead of Mendeley for now, but it is older, so it is normal. I'd like to see those two products grow and share stuff together. They are meant to be partners, not competitors :-) Or at least, it will be positive competition.
Consequently, so far I can't find any reason to quit Zotero for Mendeley.
Waiting for Ipad Mendeley version.
I think Zotero web interface is so boring and not full of functions as that of mendeley. While I still like zotero more . I hope Zotero developers take more care about their web interface . Try to see the simplicity of Facebook for example. In facbook , no need to refresh the whole web page , instead, web components work embedded in the page.
WizFolio web interface is somehow good but not as I dream . Again , try to inspire the simple powerful Facebook interface
The library part of the Zotero website works already by just loading the content instead of the entire page, so I do not really understand what the problem here is.
Of course it should be entirely opt-in (per user and possibly per tag or tag family). I'm wondering how difficult this would be to achieve with the current infrastructure?
1- Annotation management in PDF
2- Sign in using facebook
3- More deals with scientific papers sites to put Zotero logo and sharing in their sharing options
4- Allowing Zotero user to sign in using a Mendeley account and sync both libs
The Zotero super capability is the browser-based interface allowing one-click snapshot, citation and pdf attachment is not foun in any other ref management tool .
While I see Mendeley is more spread , more famous and more used .
Also Web interface of Menedeley is much more flexibla and usable as easy as Facebook interface , While Zotero web interface is boring , for example in Zotero you need to refresh the whole page for every single request or process you ask. Why don't them use Ajax or any similar technology?
Still Zotero is on top , but if Mendeley added a snapshot from browser with translators that get all metadata and PDF, I may migrate to Mendeley.
Oh! The most important point is Zotero is open source and more long lasting , this is a very positive point encouraging me to stick to Zotero
clicking sync ... will it delete all data on HDD from "mfatehy" account?
i..e is their a capability of multiuser on the same PC without affecting offline data ?
2) Zotero support the OpenID system
3) I think these are paid advertisements, and I do not know if Zotero has the money for that. Does Mendeley do something like that? I know that Endnote does, but it is owned by Thompson Reuters that also operates databases.
4) There is a lot of discussion about two-way synchronization and why this is unlikely to happen.
As far as I know, the Zotero online library uses Ajax or similar. There are no page reloads on my Mac.
(Same goes for iPad and Android and hence the third party ZotPad and Zandy)
If you have two different users on the same PC, you should use two different user profiles or two different firefox profiles.
the whole site will be better if acts like Facebook
A notification icon , an inbox and a friend request icon
u say substantial refresh is in lib , it is not enough , it is needed in groups and forums . actually needed in the whole site .
we may need more people management and group management options , again try to inspire Facebook model. The aim should be : a complete social network for researchers .
This is my opinion thnaks
Thanks for your concern and prompt answers
I love Zotero so much and it makes me happy to find u care about improving it
Go on!
resources are the limitation , this is life
Go On dear , you are doing a great job
What I dream in is the following story:
1- in the full text paper , I choose a paragraph which I wanna put it in my thesis
2- by right-click , a short key and/or a menu command called "send to word processor" , the following happens :
2a - the paragraph is copied and pasted in the word processor at the cursor location
2b- the citation mark is put in the word processor and the bilbliogrpahy data is added below in bibliography section
2c- the citation mark is live and dynamic , clicking it sends me to the biblio then the biblio sends me to the source paper , or better , the citation marks sends me to the source paper , to the source paragraph which was previously annotated by a special automated annotation
3- so the whole word document will be e living document , allowing the researcher to get back to the source paper rapidly
it may be a dream , but record it in ur note ,you may need it later1
thanks