JabRef: Nice Open Source Bibliography Tool (like EndNote)

[mouser]

I have a fair amount of antipathy and distrust for Thomson ISI, the makers of EndNote, the dominant bibliography management tool on the marketplace.  They basically bought out every competitor product to endnote and then let them all whither and die, including the superior ones (Procite).

I've been very tempted over the years to embark on writing a free alternative to EndNote -- I think it's a crime (and ridiculous) that academic institutions haven't funded an alternative program that would be free for researchers.

So anyway it gives me a lot of pleasure to see a project like JabRef, which by all appearances looks quite substantial and promising:

JabRef is an open source bibliography reference manager. The native file format used by JabRef is BibTeX, the standard LaTeX bibliography format. JabRef runs on the Java VM (version 1.5 or newer), and should work equally well on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.

http://jabref.sourceforge.net/

from http://www.betanews.com/

[Nod5]

The latest JabRef is looking good! I will install and try it out a bit.

Yeah, the aggregated cost of EndNote licenses for academic institutions all around the world must be staggering by now! Imagine what a great FOSS program those resources could have fueled instead.

Another project of interest is OpenOffice Bibliographic (OOoBib), http://bibliographic.openoffice.org/ . They request programmers:

When will this wonderful facility be available ?  Development work for Bibliographic enhancements to OpenOffice is expected to commence from late 2007, and probably available for users in OpenOffice version 2.x/3.x (mid-late 2008 ???) see feature timeline. Also see a blog on plans for Writer.

See our development plans on the Developers' Wiki and the list of project tasks below.

The project urgently needs some experienced C++ developers to get this important work to the programing stage.

[nontroppo]

mouser: sentiments shared perfectly!  Luckily on the Mac, the Thomson stranglehold is less comprehensive. There are two excellent modern apps, Sente and Bookends, that survive outside of the Endnote kingdom. They are close to dream reference manager apps overall, from small responsive indie developers.

I've used Jabref in the past in my long-lasting exploration to escape from Reference manager/endnote. But being pretty addicted to cite-while-you-write, I didn't like the workflow it offered. I also couldn't get it to handle the RIS MIME-types for quick reference downloads into the app. Has that changed?

I've been dreaming about OOoBib since it first formulated itself a few years ago, but one cannot live on dreams alone (and certainly can't cite with them!)

[luc]

Thomson/Endnote is the most inept monopoly project that I know of  - no, I never wanted to organize images with Endnote, just easy ways to get the references into it and a big library of reference styles easily applied. New versions of Endnote could be doing more than merely introducing new database formats.
All the best to JabRef !

[zridling]

Yet another type of software (like math calculation software) that should be open source, no matter what. Students and researchers could start using JabRef at the beginning of their academic career and retain their references across years of papers, studies, and monos.

[sesc79]

Hello from lurkdom folks!
Those of you who've got a webserver or access to one may be interested in the bibliography manager project Aigaion.  Aigaion builds upon PHP and MySQL. Some of the main features are: a whole research team can use one shared bibliography database; you can assign different access-right levels from anon (guest) to administrator; you can group the library in any number of topics and subtopics, comment entries, and import and export from/to BibTeX and RIS.
Cheers,
/Sebastian (member of the Aigaion team)

[mouser]

Welcome to the site Sebastian -- looks like a terrific project 

[sesc79]

Thank you kindly on both counts Mouser! 

[TomColvin]

I've run through at least 5 bibliographic programs over the past year -- try one, ditch it, try another -- you know the routine.  Lately, I'm using IdeaMason, whose bibliographic component works, so far, just the way I like.

I must admit that it took me a long time to begin delving into IdeaMason.  It's very intimidating at the outset.  Has anyone written a good itroductory manual for IdeaMason -- one that someone new to the program can read to understand the program's underlying logic?

[Lutz_]

I just came across Zotero; it is also OS and seems to combine web-research (FF-addon) and bibliography creation (with addons for word and OpenOffice).
http://www.zotero.org/

[mcgiant]

Also have a look at Mendeley www.mendeley.com. It's cross-platform and has an integrated pdf viewer and you can cite into Word and OO.

[Nod5]

Feature list from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mendeley :

Free and interdisciplinary
Mendeley Desktop, based on Qt, runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Mendeley Web works with all major web browsers.
Automatic extraction of metadata from PDF papers on your computer.
Back up and synchronize your digital library with your private Mendeley Web account and across multiple computers.
PDF viewer with sticky notes, text highlighting and full-screen reading.
Access your private article library online.
Full-text search across all your papers.
Playlist-like organization of your library.
Smart filtering, tagging and PDF file renaming.
Create citations and bibliographies in Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.
Import documents and research papers from selected websites into your Mendeley Web library via a browser bookmarklet.
Create groups to share and collaboratively tag and annotate research papers with colleagues.
Create a research profile on Mendeley Web to share your latest publications, awards and upcoming conference travels.
Connect to like-minded researchers and follow their research profile updates.
Readership statistics about papers, authors and publication outlets in every academic discipline.
Statistics about your own article library.
Find other scholars and academics by research interests and geographic region.

Very promising! The main drawback is that it is proprietary. I haven't looked into the details on the database file and so on but there's a lock-in risk (just like with EndNote) that a program like this really shouldn't have.

But Mendeley looks interesting enough for some testdriving.

Some info on prominent backers here:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/25/mendeley-snags-2-million-in-early-stage-funding-for-research-paper-management-tool/

Zotero seems to be the best open source challenger to EndNote ATM but I think the tie to Firefox is a big problem. As far as I know it leaves those preferring chrome, opera and so on out in the cold. And it seems hard to add the types of features that Mendeley boasts into Zotero inside Firefox.

OpenOffice Bibliographic (OOoBib), http://bibliographic.openoffice.org/ , seems to move along VERY slowly. So it is out of the picture for the moment.

JabRef has moved through several versions since mousers first post, now at v2.5. Does someone here use it regularly and if so can you share some of your experiences?

Here's a list with some more alternatives, though it wasn't up to date on JabRef version so it might be dated/incomplete for other programs too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software