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Ask HN: What do you use for reading papers?

2 pointsby hhthrowaway123011 months ago
Just started organising the papers I read, was wondering what tools are out there.

4 comments

iFire11 months ago
I use <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archivebox.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archivebox.io&#x2F;</a> and point it at the uri &#x2F; doi.<p>I tend to not able to find the page even 15 minutes ago if I&#x27;m on a dense information search.
ibash11 months ago
how many papers are you reading? A single text file where you write down the 1-2 big ideas &#x2F; insights in each paper will go a long way.<p>You don’t need perfect notes, just enough to jog the memory for random access. Less is more.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.connectedpapers.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.connectedpapers.com&#x2F;</a> is nice for discovery.
eimrine11 months ago
For reading papers I have a laptop and a sofa, for organizing them I have nothing more except my brain.
dredmorbius11 months ago
Are you talking about devices, organisational methods, overall management, or what?<p>A large-format (10&quot; or 13&quot;) e-ink reader works well for the actual reading. These tend to be lighter, and have far better battery performance, than an emissive tablet. There are colour e-ink readers as well, though these max at about 10&quot; AFAIK, and command a price premium. Smaller displays can be used, though you&#x27;ll find yourself zooming and panning through pages of lower-quality and&#x2F;or smaller-font papers (all too common in academic publishing).<p><i>Get a device with ample storage.</i> Particularly if you find yourself using the device for other purposes (e.g., podcasts). I&#x27;d consider 128 MB <i>minimum</i> acceptable storage, and would go up considerably from there if possible. Apple&#x27;s tablets can be obtained with 1 TB+ storage, and that&#x27;s not unreasonable. Cost of storage is really minimal compared to the overall device cost. I eliminated the Remarkable tablet for its absolutely inexcusably insufficient storage (16 MB IIRC), validated by the company&#x27;s later pivot to cloud-based accounts (thanks, but no).<p>Few ebook-readers have organisational capabilities anywhere remotely up to the task, and little of what software does exist run on these.<p>For organisation:<p>Physical: An index-card file &#x2F; Zettelkasten. Academics and other researchers can compile archives over their lifetimes of many tens of thousands of cards, filling cabinets. Niklas Luhmanns&#x27;s archive is one of the most exemplary, site in German: &lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;niklas-luhmann-archiv.de&#x2F;nachlass&#x2F;zettelkasten" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;niklas-luhmann-archiv.de&#x2F;nachlass&#x2F;zettelkasten</a>&gt;. There are numerous essays and articles with more information on his use and system.<p>Software: Calibre and Zotero seem to be the main preferences. I ... can&#x27;t really grok either, frankly. If you don&#x27;t mind mainlining all your reading straight to Elsevier, there&#x27;s the Mendeley reference manager. (I mind this in the extreme.)<p>There are also some archive &#x2F; media management tools which can run off-device. I believe Plex is one of these, though I&#x27;ve really not looked into this. This can be run on a small server or NAS if you have sufficient articles.<p>There are tools for online web article management, notably Mozilla Pocket (I&#x27;ve used it heavily, I find it all but useless), Wallabag (&lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wallabag.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wallabag.org&#x2F;</a>&gt;), and Pinboard (&lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pinboard.in&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pinboard.in&#x2F;</a>&gt;). Maintainer of the latter is active on HN.<p>IMO the ultimate tools have yet to be created, though I lean heavily toward index cards myself.<p>I don&#x27;t know if gwern (&lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gwern.net&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gwern.net&#x2F;</a>&gt;) has a specific method &#x2F; system, but suspect they&#x27;d have a <i>highly</i> informed response on this topic.