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As a researcher I always appreciate to see new opportunities to organize my work and improve my routines. This system does seem interesting. To this day though
by ghego1 6y ago
As a researcher I always appreciate to see new opportunities to organize my work and improve my routines. This system does seem interesting.
To this day though I've found that Zotero is unbeaten to keep everything organized. I collect all my notes and documents in the Zotero library, and I sync it on multiple devices by placing the Zotero files in a Dropbox folder.
In this way I can use whatever app I want to write the actual notes (MD, txt, docx, whatever). I organize the notes in Zotero "folders" and the documents of each note are stored in "sub-folders". The best thing is that these are not actual folders, so the same document, if relevant for multiple researches, can be placed in two or more folders/sub-folders etc.
This setup has worked for me for nearly 8 years, with over 50 publications and over 5000 documents in my Zotero library. And best of all, the only thing I'm actually paying for is Dropbox, which I would anyway and, IMHO, is totally worth it. But that's another story. And more importantly, to get things started one can rely on the free tier of Dropbox, so even that's free.
So as a researcher (which translates to little money to spare and high volumes of documents to manage), I find that to this date I still have to find a solution that beats my configuration. I would love though to discover new opportunities!
- WJW 6y agoDropbox (or any of the other syncing apps) as a syncing mechanism for other stuff is underrated IMO. I personally have notes, password manager database and a budget app database synced between devices and the amount of value I've derived from having everything automatically sync between devices is huge. I wish more apps would take the wide availability of "magic syncing folders" into account when designing their data storage. (I know many VC funded apps would prefer to keep the data in house so it can be monetized, but there is less excuse for open source tools)
- quaintdev 6y agoI don't like to involve cloud apps in my workflow because there is no guarantee when what will change and then break my workflow. I currently self host a simple note server[1]. Now cloud apps can help me sync these notes across my devices but I would rather prefer mapped drive than cloud sync. I take notes from my mobile/desktop browser address bar or simply edit the files directly. No dependencies, no cloud storage, only files and no one can ever access them but me. Works like a charm for me. [1]: https://github.com/quaintdev/pinotes https://github.com/quaintdev/pinotes
- sudhirkhanger 6y agoDropbox is a dumb solution to note syncing. It works for me for now but I miss not having to sort conflicts manually.
- bosie 6y agoWhy do you have conflicts?
- sudhirkhanger 6y agoIf you modify a file from both ends then a program may not know how to merge the changes.
- bosie 6y agoHow is this specific to dropbox though? Any storage backend will have those issues?
- auxym 6y agoI agree but there's no great cross-platform syncing solution yet, to my knowledge. Dropbox dropped all linux support except ext4, which is limiting. GDrive and OneDrive don't have a Linux Client. Nextcloud is neat, but still not very well supported (eg, by android apps). The result is I'm using a mishmash of all those, and keep forgetting what is synced where.
- bachmeier 6y agoI've been using pcloud on Linux, and I've found it to be fast and easy. Comes with a lot more free storage than Dropbox. I believe you do have to be willing to install their client.
- LoveMortuus 6y agoFor Google Drive there is a solution for Linux [0]. I actually really like it, it's not automatic, but that's not really a problem, because you can make it automatic with some bash and crontab. [0] https://github.com/odeke-em/drive https://github.com/odeke-em/drive
- rodelrod 6y agoI agree with you. The Dropbox move turned my previously smooth workflow into a much more convoluted system. For GDrive (I use that for work), [insync](https://www.insynchq.com/ https://www.insynchq.com/) is not 100% perfect but was worth the one-time price.
- c17r 6y agoI use Odrive as my syncing “frontend” and works great even with Linux
- PudgePacket 6y agoI have syncthing running on desktop, laptop, and phone. Only downside is no iOS app but that's more an apple ecosystem issue really.
- wadkar 6y agoI am surprised you didn’t mention syncthing! Is it because you’re assuming a cloud backup is necessary component of syncing solution? In that case, you can just designate one of your synced devices to keep backups to S3/B2 :D
- prepend 6y agoI think dropbox (or any “magic folder” sync) is great as well. YouNeedABudget used to do this and then “upgraded” to use their own proprietary service that charges $X/month. I think it’s not just the data monetization, but that frequently data sync is the only feature that requires ongoing services. So if I write software and want to charge a monthly service fee, then data sync is where I can force the service. Companies can do whatever they like, but jerk companies will make poor designs that require their own magic sync. Smart companies should fall back to a sync folder to allow self-run and just charge me for software.
- WJW 6y agoYNAB is the budget software I was referring to. I just never upgraded to the SAAS version and it still works fine.
- prepend 6y agoI did that for a while, but 32 bit apps no longer run on mac. Phone works great though.
- phre4k 6y ago“magic folder” sync always meant https://syncthing.net https://syncthing.net for me. Once set up it syncs in LAN, over slow connections, with lots of changed files, handles concurrent syncs, hundreds of GBs of data etc. – it's great and becoming better day by day.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bluenose69 6y agoYour comment resonated strongly with me, for I am also a researcher who finds zotero and dropbox to be a very helpful combination. (I use dropbox to store PDFs of documents, rather than using zotero, because I already pay for dropbox and basically want to avoid the paperwork of yet another bill.) However, I do not use zotero notes much at all (apart from taking notes on bibliographic elements), and so I am hoping you might write some more about the mechanics of how you do that. I am particularly interested in how you handle cross-references. I tend to use markdown and wiki approaches, because they make it easy to have inline cross-references to other documents. Is there a way to do that with zotero notes, other than using the "Related:" and "Tags:" items at the bottom of a note? Also, do you have hints on organizing folders of notes? Since you've been doing this for years, I can bet that you have some great advice, and I hope you can spare the time to explain your procedures in a bit more detail. Thanks.
- igammarays 6y agoAs a researcher too, I understand exactly what you are saying. I prefer DevonThink[1] to Zotero for searching and organizing over tens of GB of data with tens of millions of words. Works with the native Mac filesystem, so you don't have to import into the app if you don't want to. Automatically archiving my entire email history is a huge plus. Finds everything in milliseconds. Mac only. [1] https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink
- porker 6y agoDevonThink is one of those apps I've always wanted to use, but as I'm cross-platform it's never been possible.
- criddell 6y agoIf you run a lot of cross platform software, the Mac may be the perfect machine for you. It can (legally) run more software than anything else - MacOS, Windows, Linux - though a combination of dual booting & virtualization.
- NotSammyHagar 6y agoLinux and windows can do the same, inc running mac / hackintosh.
- atombender 6y agoDevonthink is amazing. It's very versatile — it's got great image handling, for example, so you can use it for collecting visual materials, and easily browse as a gallery or as full-sized images. And I particularly love the built-in PDF support, which has everything you need — multiple reader views, annotations, table of contents, rotation, conversion, OCR, etc. Search is fast, multiple database support is great. And it's a very nice touch that you can combine the local database file support with cloud sync, although the mobile app could be better there. It's worth noting that Devonthink does not have citation/reference management, so for scientists/adademics it's probably not an adequate replacement as Zotero, Endnote, Papers, etc.
- malshe 6y agoGreat points! I also use Zotero extensively. I used to store files on Box previously because of WebDAV but they dropped that support a year or two years ago. Now I pay for unlimited storage on Zotero. This is for two reasons: 1) They recommended supporting them by buying storage rather than donating directly. Maybe it has changed now but I continue with my subscription, 2) I have several co-authors with whom I share my documents. Most of them don’t have a paid Zotero subscription. But shared folders don’t eat up their personal storage limit unlike Dropbox.
- thomasfedb 6y agoZotero is a lifesaver for organising articles and documents. I also pay for storage as a way to support the project. Their new web-client is quite nice.
- drikkkkk 6y agoI never understood how to do this. You just drag and drop a document, and after that only one consistent copy is maintained? Also how do you have documents with inline images? Is it possible to cite other documents from zotero -- let us say you are creating a literature review?
- andrepd 6y agoNot sure what you mean by "documents with inline images", but yes, that's how it works. There's also a handy browser plugin to import web pages/pdfs into Zotero, with automatic metadata. Yes, you can cite documents you have with zotero by having it generate a pre-formatted citation or a bibtex entry.
- drikkkkk 6y agoThank you. Let me explain what I mean by "documents with inline images". When i take notes, I want to include screenshots of different pages (may be some pictures or pictures of equations) as inline images. AFAIK, zotero does not sync the inline images entered in notes.
- andrepd 6y agoReplace Dropbox with Nextcloud running on my rpi and that's my setup.