Making Bibliographic Researchers More Efficient: Tools for Organizing and Downloading PDFs, Part 1: iCyte, Mendeley Desktop, Papers, PDF Stacks, PubGet PaperPlane, WizFolio, and Zotero

Researcher-writers need integrated systems to help them increase productivity. These systems should enhance the intellectual aspects of writing such as analysis and synthesis of existing research, while lessening the burden of more routine, but still necessary duties, such as bibliographic editing. Although a robust, fully integrated system for researcher-writer support does not exist, new resources are moving closer to that goal. Third party programs that connect bibliographic search results to the full text PDFs of cited articles can save time and effort and result in discoveries that may not have been obvious using approaches and processes of the past. Questions considered in this column are: What types of programs exist? What are their purposes? How do these programs operate? Do they always behave as advertised? How do they compare? Part 1 of this exploration, published here, covers iCyte^®, Mendeley^™, Papers, PDF Stacks, PubGet PaperPlane^™, WizFolio, and Zotero^™. Part 2 in the next issue will cover a robust and highly integrated product, QUOSA^™, including an in-depth product performance evaluation.