Paperlib
An open-source desktop app for organizing academic papers, scraping their metadata and exporting references.
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About Paperlib
Paperlib is a paper management tool for Windows, macOS and Linux. It scrapes metadata for your papers from many databases, with particular care for conference papers and fields such as computer science and physics. You can flag, tag and sort papers into folders, and keep Markdown or plain text notes alongside them.
References can be exported while writing through a quick copy-paste plugin or a Word plugin. RSS feeds bring in new papers, a sync database gives access from several machines, and you can write and publish your own extensions.
Strengths
- Accurate metadata scraping, including conference papers
- Tags, flags, folders and Markdown notes
- Reference export with a Word plugin
- Extension system and RSS feeds for new papers
Limitations
- No mobile app
- Smaller ecosystem than Zotero
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree and open source, supported by donations.
- License
- Open source, license not stated
- Developer
- Future Scholars
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Researchers who want a clean, simple library for their PDFs and citations
- Categories
- Learning tools, AI research
- Last verified
- Added
- Sources
Alternatives to Paperlib
Compare allSoftware that can replace Paperlib for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
Mendeley
A reference manager from Elsevier for collecting, annotating and citing research papers.
Mendeley is a freemium web and browser-extension reference manager owned by Elsevier, adding built-in PDF annotation and library sync, but free storage is limited to 2 GB and it is not open source.
EndNote
A long-running reference manager for collecting sources and formatting citations in academic writing.
EndNote is paid, closed-source software for Windows, macOS and the web, with no free tier, plus an AI assistant for summarising and translating papers that depends on an online service.
JabRef
An open-source reference manager for collecting, organising and citing literature in BibTeX and BibLaTeX.
JabRef stays free and open source on Windows, macOS and Linux, but keeps libraries in plain-text BibTeX or BibLaTeX files, which suits LaTeX writers more than Word users.
ReadCube Papers
A reference manager and PDF reader for organizing, annotating and citing research papers.
ReadCube Papers is a paid web and browser-extension service after its trial, combining PDF annotation with reference management and AI answers linked to source passages, rather than a free desktop app.
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Litmaps
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Scholarcy
An AI summarizer that turns papers, articles and videos into interactive flashcard summaries.
Paperguide
An AI research platform for finding papers, managing references and running systematic reviews.
