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Pros
Love the chrome extension and add to paperpile button. Customer support exists unlike other free apps and is awesome.
I love its reader platform —so comfortable for reading, highlighting and making annotations. The citation system works seamlessly with Google docs.
I enjoy the easy-to-use interface and capacity for editing. I like the ease with which I can add papers/documents to the program.
Terrific software for compiling references, papers. Pretty good for collaboration.
Cons
My biggest complaint is that you cannot search the text of papers.
The main issue is in organizing citations because users cannot upload a paper directly into a folder, so there is a risk of misplacing it.
It is difficult to troubleshoot why the format is incorrect.
The annotation feature is glitchy and limited.
Showing Most Helpful
Showing 25 of 122 reviews
"Great citation tool"
Overall: Great. It's a very user friendly tool, can be integrated into both GoogleDocs and Word and prevents me from messing up my references. I also love that it can change citation styles with pretty much a click of a button.
Pros: Paperpile is great - convenient and easy to use. I love that it can automatically change the reference style with zero effort and it can find the paper I want to cite by title DOI, link, whatever I throw at it. I reecently stumbled on a bug after Google updated - the Paperpile support team were really responsive, provided a work around and then got back to me when they had patched the software. Overall, just a stellar experience and I'll be using Paperpile for years to come.
Cons: Not much to dislike. At most, it would be that every now and then the ciation is imported incorrectly, but given the multitude of formats that papers come in these days I find that a forgivable fault.
"I literally recommend this to everyone. "
Overall: Despite my issues with Chrome, I recommend Paperpile to all of my coworkers (I've gotten about half of my grad program on the Paperpile train). It's easily the most user-friendly citation manager I've ever used.
Pros: Best feature is that it is so easily integrated into my workflow. I use Google Drive for my cloud storage, and it's incredibly convenient to have all of my PDFs clearly labeled and easily findable.
Cons: That it is ONLY easily integrated into Google Chrome. I hate Chrome as a browser, and I do wish that Paperpile were more easily integrated into other browsers or Chrome derivatives (e.g., Brave).
Vendor Response
"Pros and cons"
Pros: It is easy to use and the interface looks clean and simple.
Cons: (1) Sometimes when I tried to add a paper from a web page [SENSITIVE CONTENT], although you can see that the readers can simply download the PDF from the website, after I saved it to Paperpile it always says no PDF found so I would have to manually download it and then upload it to Paperpile. (2) Cannot rotate pages when viewing PDFs in Paperpile.
"Solid reference manager and citation tool"
Pros: Its ability to add new papers (e.g., automatically pull papers from Google Scholar) is pretty good, better than competitor's products for the most part. Also, synchronization across devices is quite good.
Cons: The iPad version is not as robust in adding new papers. I find myself having to go onto a desktop/laptop machine to do that, even if the need arises while on my iPad.
Vendor Response
"Easy to use and ideal for managing libraries"
Pros: It is very easy to use both in Word and in Google Docs. Very easy to import papers and manage libraries for different projects. Much less glitchy than other programs and imports paper metadata with much fewer errors compared to other commonly used software.
Cons: It still is much easier to use with google docs than Word. It is still hard to justify the cost of this program compared to free alternatives. Managing libraries for different projects could be a little easier.
"Essential and indispensable ingredient of team science "
Pros: Collaborative research requires an ecosystem of knowledge sharing and team-based writing. Could writing platforms are gaining popularity and it requires integration with citation managers. Paperpile is the best so far.
Cons: Search capacity is very limited. You can not perform advanced search to find the reference you need. However, if you know what you need or the size of library is small (<200 articles) this is not a huge limitation.
"A fast, easy-to-use paper manager"
Pros: In-app highlighting and commenting is vital and works well enough. Integration with google drive is nice. The program is light-weight and not too slow. It's easy for the program to find papers and PDFs from a given webpage.
Cons: I wish the highlighting and commenting had a bit more flexibility. I wish there was a "compact" view so more papers would fit on the screen in the listed papers view. I wish the "website" link for each paper linked to the publicly accessible link or DOI, not the paperpile link.
"Easy way to manage papers using Google tools"
Overall: I use it to save research papers I come across for searching and reading later.
Pros: With the browser plugin, its easy to add a paper and it's smart about detecting whether the URL is a PDF or a page with a PDF (like arxiv.org), etc. It's easy to search papers and read them later.
Cons: I Safari for almost everything else now, so I would like a Safari browser plugin. Using iCloud for storage would mean one less cloud storage provider to deal with, too.
Vendor Response
"Paperpile"
Overall: Excellent. Very easy to use and easily accessible on all of my devices.
Pros: Easy to search, easy to add new articles
Cons: The sharing of references with others is kind of difficult to figure out.
"Great reference management tool "
Pros: Really like how easy it is to add papers to your library on Paperpile straight from the browser, as well as the Google Docs plug in which makes adding references to collaborative projects really easy. Lots of tools for organization within the system, where you can organize by project. Papers save as PDFs to the associated Google account which is nice as it saves space on your main drive.
Cons: It can be hard to convince colleagues to switch to this reference manager as it does have a monthly fee, whereas universities often have subscriptions to other reference managers that are available for free to students and faculty. Install of the plug-in can be a little confusing as well.
Vendor Response
"Dissertation reference management"
Pros: Ease of use for "official" features, Google ecosystem integration, collaboration allowing sharing of reference collections, hosting in the cloud (not for backup but for any-time any-place availability)
Cons: Lack of reference version control to explicitly link version numbers/dates to duplicate references and allow controlled deduplication is an issue. Paperpile also lacks ready/easy means to modify existing citation styles to correct punctuation issues. A direct link to a rule-file for the citation style in use (containing comments with quick examples for correct syntax) would make Paperpile much better. Manually correcting in-text citation/punctuation for my dissertation got old quickly.
"Paperpile for Education Research"
Overall: I use Paperpile everyday for viewing and reading literature for research. It’s so easy to use and manage. Because you can tie it to Gmail accounts, I always recommend it to other researchers and Grad students because of our (“unlimited”) University storage. The low cost also makes it easy to recommend to Grad students.
Pros: I really like how easy it is to tag documents for better organization and searching. I also find the Chrome extension extremely beneficial for quickly importing new papers/references
Cons: One recommendation would be to implement better Touch support for in-browser experience, especially using a stylus to hand write annotations. I use primarily 2-1 Chromebooks, so I don’t care much for the mobile app. I also wish I could use the built-in PDF viewer/editor as a standalone application, rather than having to first import the document to Paperpile. This would be to keep work/play purposes separate.
Vendor Response
"Paperpile review"
Overall: Overall I have had a great experience with paperpile and it has made my PhD/Research life substantially easier, I will keep using it after my PhD due to this fact.
Pros: I like how easy it is to use especially with the chrome add on I am able to just add any paper that I need for my research. It has definitely made my PhD life a lot easier. The integration with google docs is also very convenient and allows for quick creating of references.
Cons: It is a bit difficult to edit 'folders' for different projects, however that is a small issue.
Vendor Response
"Great product with lots of great features!"
Overall: organization of many, many medical articles into individual and shareable folders.
Pros: Easy to import content found online and easy to cite within docs including google docs. i also like the feature where you can highlight the title and copy and paste it turns it into a full citation. additionally, i like that if i attach a PDF that is named with random letters/numbers, it turns it into a proper title with the author once attached.
Cons: Wish i could directly share links/PDFs to articles as one-offs with users rather than having to create a folder. wish it was easier to highlight the title to copy and paste it to turn it into citation format- sometimes it is finicky.
Vendor Response
"Absolutely recommend Paperpile"
Overall: Wonderful. It is a pleasure to use.
Pros: As a new doctoral student, I have tried several citation management programs, downloading trial versions and trying them out. Paperpile is the most intuitive, user friendly system I’ve tried. I love its reader platform —so comfortable for reading, highlighting and making annotations. The citation system works seamlessly with Google docs. When I’ve had questions, a customer service rep responds quickly and helpfully. The software is such a pleasure to use.
Cons: I hope that as my studies go forward that I won’t have issues collaborating with colleagues who are using different platforms such as Zotero (which I tried but didn’t like).
Vendor Response
"Streamlined and easy"
Overall: The process of citing sources and storing them has been streamlined for me in my research which saves time and money.
Pros: Easy to use, quick to find and save new sources
Cons: At first paperpile got confused about which google profile to use, which was frustrating. I think this has since been worked out.
Vendor Response
"pros and cons"
Pros: It is very easy to organise papers in this software. Firstly, there are many methods to find papers. You only need to type doi, link or name of the papers you want. Secondly, the paperpile can download these paper directly, which is very convenient for us. Finally, we could highlight the pdf directly using paperpile, which helps us reading quickly.
Cons: There are several things can be improved. Firstly, is there any method to download and organise supporting information of articles directly by paperpile? secondly, when editing the pdf of papers, the position I want highlighted will move to the position with one row above. This problem is really annoying sometimes. Finally, during the pandemic, people are working from home. However, even after using vpn, it fails to download papers directly in the paperpile. Hope you guys can solve these issues.
"Paperpile"
Pros: Paperpile makes managing my scientific documents a snap. I have the papers organized into categories; each one has personal annotations and notes that are searchable, so I can quickly find the publications I need. Citation management is very good too with support for Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
Cons: Sometimes annotation features don't work on some documents. In these cases, things like highlighting text can be buggy.
Vendor Response
"Simplistic and Easy to Use"
Pros: This software is effortless to use. It is reliable and I have never had any issues with it.
Cons: Integration with Google Docs is very helpful with manuscript citations, however, some of my co-authors prefer to use Microsoft Word, so I wish it could provide citations for both.
Vendor Response
""Paperpile is perfect""
Pros: Paperpile is the best citation management software for working on shared documents (i.e. google docs). I have introduced my colleagues to it for documents that we are collaboratively working on. As one of my colleagues put it, "Paperpile is perfect." I couldn't agree more. After having used many citation management tools, Paperpile is by far the easiest and most straightforward. I really appreciate the add-in extension for web browsers so that you can easily cite a website. I also appreciate that you can add citations in documents directly through web searches. Additionally, it is simple to share libraries. I now prefer to use Google docs over Word even when I'm not working collaboratively because of the ease of using Paperpile in Google docs.
Cons: When a reference is cited in a document it is "hyperlinked," but the hyperlink doesn't actually connect to anything. This has been confusing to some of my colleagues. It would be nice if the hyperlink connected to the actual citation. Some of my colleagues are hesitant to use Paperpile because they don't want to pay for a software when there are free citation softwares available. Having a longer free trial period might help with that.
"Easy paper management tool"
Pros: This software allows you to save papers, along with the PDF copies (if applicable). The phone app works well to integrate browser activity on your desktop - super easy to access papers while on-the-go. I like the "Cite" function, which generates a citation of the paper in a format of choice.
Cons: The PDF is not always attached to the Paperpile entry, especially if you have to go through a paywall to access an article. In an opposite scenario, sometimes Paperpile is unable to add a paper to the library if you are only looking at the PDF web version of a paper. This is an issue I see when using PubMed and integrating with my institutional access.
Vendor Response
"Excellent function"
Pros: I am happy with the current functionality. I am a heavy google suite user, so the Paperpile UI integration with chrome and google doc perfectly fits my need.
Cons: I am satisfied! The only drawback I found is pretty minor. If I log in with two google accounts in my chrome, even though I only log in into one account for google doc, somehow the references update would fail. This was annoying because I usually keep two google account active, one for work and another for personal use. To sidestep this problem, I have to log out all my account and log in again just to update my bibliography.
Vendor Response
"Paperpile - Researcher"
Pros: The functions are intuitive, easy to use and figure out. I chose Paperpile because everything was easy to figure out. For the few questions I had, customer service answered me back within hours.
Cons: Sometimes the auto-update doesn't pickup information and I have to enter it manually.
"Great way to organize and cite papers"
Overall: Great!
Pros: Paperpile is really easy to use with google docs. I started using it on a paper I was co-writing in google docs, and it was helpful to be able to cite as we wrote the paper instead of having to do it at the end. Also love how seamlessly it can save citations, and download the pdf from the journal page w one click.
Cons: I wish there was a better way to take notes on the articles that I read and save in Paperpile - essentially scratch paper that I can save my notes, important figures from the text, or text that I highlight / send to the note.
Vendor Response
"Has made literature reviews easy! "
Pros: 1. I love how easy it is to connect to my institution's credentials and log in remotely. 2. It is extremely easy to search between them documents 3. Connecting to google docs is a breeze.
Cons: In google documents, if I select the paper to open in the citation, it brings me to an error.
Vendor Response