
(ReadCube Papers is supported by Digital Science - part of Holtzbrinck, the majority shareholder in Nature’s publisher, Springer Nature.)įor Goldacre, Paperpile’s seamless compatibility with Google Docs, which the team uses for collaborative writing, is what tipped the scales towards its use. There are dozens of options, including EndNote, Mendeley Reference Manager, ReadCube Papers, RefWorks, Sciwheel and Zotero. Reference-management tools, also called citation managers, perform a handful of related functions: searching the literature storing and organizing PDFs of papers and supplementary materials generating bibliographies and fostering collaboration. That’s because it dovetails nicely with his team’s workflow. Goldacre, who is also director of the DataLab at the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, UK, explains: “Paperpile is the first time I’ve used a reference manager where it didn’t make me want to punch myself in the face on a regular basis out of sheer rage.


Physician Ben Goldacre, for instance, has tweeted at least five times about Paperpile, a subscription-based reference manager that integrates tightly with Google Docs, calling it “amazing”, “fantastic, best ever”, and “unbeLIEVably good”.

For such utilitarian tools, reference management software can inspire strong reactions.
