Referencing tools - Docear

Referencing tools There a number of referencing tools such as: Mendelay, Endnote, Zotero…etc There is no such thing as the best referencing tool. Thus, choosing one depends highly on personal needs An extensive comparison between Docear, Zotero and Docear can be found in the following webpage: comparison-of-reference-managers-mendeley-vs-zotero-vs-docear/ comparison-of-reference-managers-mendeley-vs-zotero-vs-docear/

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Docear  Docear is a project of the Information Science Group at the University of Konstanz, Germany.  It is free and open source referencing tool that depends on mind mapping  For your information: Docear is not only for referencing, but it also helps you develop your literature review, by including your comments in the mind map.  You can download either the desktop version or a word add-on from the following website:

How to use the desktop version of Docear?  First, create a father folder where you place all your downloaded pdf papers in.  Second, create subfolders where each will include papers with the same topic.  Third, start Docear and from the main menu, choose New mind map  After that, press on the pop up menu, create new project  Follow the wizard by choosing creating new project from scratch and give your project and name and directory. Always choose the default directory for placing your project (mind map)

 This is what you will have as a start

 Now right click your New Map node then choose monitoring  Add monitoring folder  This monitoring folder should be the father folder you created earlier  It will ask you if you want to save the mind map first, choose yes and place the map inside the directory you created for your project  Now, after you saved your mind map, you will be asked to choose a directory with Pdf files (your father directory)

 Now it is creating your mind map

 Done

Fold and Unfold your mind map  From the home menu, choose unfold or fold children if you want to compact or expand your mind map. If you fold all your children, you will have the father view only. If you want to expand any node, just click on the plus sign to do so.

How to find the reference for a paper in your mind map?

Now you will have an entry like the following:

Edit a Reference  To edit the reference and find the bibtex format, double click on your reference (5 in this case) To edit reference Bibtex format Double click

How to add notes to the mind map?  Docear will automatically import any comments you have in your pdf document  To show these in your mind map, click on the plus sign next to your document in the mind map. Click here to expand your comment

Now how is this usefull?  Now you have your papers arranged in the mind map  You have your references ready  All you need is to start writing your paragraphs where each paragraph is the comments of the papers of one subfolder along with your additions