Zotero but web based?

illicit1

Hi everyone,

First off, this may be inappropriate for these forums. If that's the case, feel free to delete. I am just reaching out to other researchers for advice and thought you guys were a good source!

First off, I have used Zotero on and off for a few years. Each time never sticking with it. My primary issues with not staying with it is the following:

1) Online storage space
2) Shared with other users
3) Current folder structure is in Google Drive and I have found no way to keep that folder structure when using Zotero. Everything needs to be imported.

So my question is this. Does anyone know of a resource or a document management system that is web based that is similar to what Zotero offers? I want the ability to tag documents easily, add metadata, etc. Currently Google Drive does not really offer any extensive metadata. I do combined research with a few others and we currently upload documents obtained for research in folder structure for organization. It's annoying because some documents could be filed in multiple places which is where using metadata would be beneficial.

Any thoughts would be great!

adamsmith

Paperpile might work for you, though make sure there's a good way to get data _out_ in case, e.g., they go under.

bwiernik

That said, I’m not really following what you don’t like about Zotero. It has online storage and facilities collaboration really well through Groups (This was why I personally picked Zotero).

If you Sync your Google Drive to your computer, you can drag several PDFs at a time to Zotero as linked files so that they stay in your Google Drive folders.

emilianoeheyns

I've tried paperpile on and off (I was one of the early beta testers and I have a free account as a result). The integration with GDocs is super nice, but as a general reference manager, I like zotero lots better. Doesn't help that it will *only* work with GDocs, when I need latex, markdown, GDocs and Word, in that order.

illicit1

Thanks guys, I will look into paper file. Biggest problem is I have thousands of documents already sorted in Google Drive by subject. Multiple people add to these folders. From what I understand, if I use Zotero, Zotero will move all these documents to their own structure. I also need to be able to keep all these documents shared and there is over 100GB of files. Maybe I do need to look into Zotero and it's online storage more, at first glance pricing is a bit higher than i'd like.

Also - with SD drives these days in Laptops I simply cannot have 100gb+ of documents on my laptops. From what I understand, I have to locally have the library on my drive even when I sync.

Another part of this is mobile access, ill have to look at Papership mobile app again to see how well it works. I know when I used it a few years ago there was something that I didn't like, I forget what though.

Thanks for your thoughts.

LiborA

No, you can still have your pdf files on Google drive. You do not add these files as local copy, but you will add a link to this documents.

Mobile app is missing yet, unfortunately.