Joeran Beel

Please visit https://isg.beel.org/people/joeran-beel/ for more details about me.

Don’t be shy: Write a testimonial about Docear

Today I was giving a presentation about Docear. Among others I wanted to show how positive many researchers respond to the concept of Docear. So I assembled a little picture with quotes  about Docear (SciPlore MindMapping respectively) (see figure below).

After the presentation one of the attendees told me, he was surprised to not find any of the quotes on our testimonial page. Well, he was absolutely right. The most enthusiastic feedback we receive is by email. I have no clue why, but users seem to be a little bit shy when posting their opinion publicly.

For us, it’s really important to know what users think and their feedback – your feedback – may really help us, for instance, to convince our university to provide us with further resources (at least if your feedback is positive ;-). So, I would like to ask you: If you are a Docear user, write a short testimonial. Don’t send it by email, don’t post in here as a comment – leave it on our testimonial page, and please be a little bit enthusiastic  :-). Surely, we don’t want you to write something you do not really think. But please also don’t hold back. And of course, we are also happy to hear constructive criticism. If you have ideas on improving Docear, if there is something you don’t like, let us know in our forum and we will happily discuss the issue with you.

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Docear4Word 1.0: Managing citations, bibliographies and references in Microsoft-Word based on BibTeX

For students and researchers reference management probably is the most tiring task in their daily work-routine. They have to re-type and format bibliographic information again and again, for each paper, assignment or thesis. This is particularly annoying if you need to change citation styles. As a student this might happen because your supervisor changes his mind on his favorite citation style and researchers constantly need to adjust citation styles because almost every journal and conference has its own requirements (see picture). Some reference management tools, such as Endnote, offer Add-Ons for Microsoft Word for inserting and formation references directly within a Word document. However, users of reference management software relying on the BibTeX standard had no such add-ons (there only is BibTeX4Word which is a good tool but very difficult to use). Until now.

Today, just after we released the brand new Docear 1.0 Beta 6,  we released Docear4Word 1.0. Docear4Word is an add-on for Microsoft Word (2003 and later) that allows you to insert references and bibliographies from BibTeX files to MS-Word documents. The great thing is that you don’t need to care about formatting. You can choose from 1,700+ citation styles (APA, MLA, Turabian, Harvard, IEEE, ACM, …).

IEEE Citation style vs. Elsevier’s Harvard Style

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Docear Beta 6 (Usability improvements)

Docear 1.0 Beta 6 is available for download. There are quite a few improvements and new features. The major change is a small icon to refresh the incoming mind map. Instead of selecting the entry in the menu, you can just click on the icon to get a new list of all your PDFs. In addition, when you create a new workspace (or start Docear for the very first time), the mind maps in the Library (Incoming, Literature & Annotations, …) will have a brief description for how to use them. We hope these two new features make Docear easier to use. Furthermore, Adobe Reader X and Professional are now correctly recognized by Docear and LaTeX users will be happy to hear that they can copy reference keys with a \cite{} prefix.

The complete changes are as follows

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Google Adwords Search vs. Google Adwords Display Network vs. Linkedin Ads

This post has nothing to do with Docear, but if you are interested in online marketing, it might be of interest to you. A few days ago, LinkedIn sent me a 50$ voucher for their new “LinkedIn Ads” program. LinkedIn Ads is similar to Google Adwords and allows organizations (such as Docear) to advertise on the profile pages of LinkedIn members (see screenshot).

I was curious how effective LinkedIn Ads would be and started a campaign. In addition, I started a campaign with Google Adwords (see screenshot below) which is the advertisement program of Google. Both campaigns were rather similar and had similar ads. However, results highly differed.

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Docear4Word 1.0 RC1 available for registered users

Docear4Word is ready to release but before we make it available for public download, we would like to publish another test version for our users. We have fixed several bugs, and added the feature to select a BibTeX file. By default, Docear4Word used the BibTeX file that is specified in Docear but you can specify any other BibTeX file you want. We also enhanced the field mapping but we cannot guarantee that everything is perfect. If you are missing some information in your bibliography (that are available in the BibTeX file), please let us know. But be aware that the reason might be the citation style – not all citation styles do show all fields. So, before you report some missing information, please test several citation styles and if they all don’t show a certain piece of information – well, than probably it’s a bug of Docear4Word.

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Docear 1.0 Beta 5 with Zotero and much better PDF Reader support

Yesterday we released Beta 5 of Docear with two major improvements. First, Docear fully supports Zotero. That means as a Zotero user you can use Zotero as you are used to and work with the same PDF files and references in Docear. For instructions on setting up Docear for Zotero read our manual. Second, we strongly improved the support for many PDF readers. Annotations from http://www.cerience.com/products/reader
RepliGo may be imported by Docear and PDF XChange Viewer (PDFXV) now is fully supported: Docear will automatically adjust the settings of PDFXV so that all kind of annotations (highlighted text, comments, bookmarks) may be imported. In addition, on first start of Docear, or when you install a new PDF reader, Docear lets you select your preferred reader and, if the reader supports this, automatically sets the right settings for the “jump-to-page” feature (i.e. the PDF will be opened on the page of an annotation).

The screenshot shows the PDF-Reader selection dialog. It should list the following PDF readers (if installed on your system): Foxit Reader, Adobe Reader, PDF XChange Viewer, Skim, Preview. Adobe Acrobat Professional probably will be support in the next Beta. If on your system not all installed readers are displayed, please let us know.

So, which PDF reader is the most recommendable?

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Docear moves to a new office and welcomes an intern from Cambridge

It’ already a few weeks ago that we moved to a new office. The computer science department of our university (OvGU) sponsors it and it’s really great, and huge.  It has space for six or even seven work spaces and there is a second room for another two or three people (again a big ‘thank you’ to  our university and our mentor Prof. Andreas Nürnberger). As you maybe know, the core team of Docear are three people  (Stefan, Marcel and me) and then there are a few students, volunteers and of course Bela, who co-founded SciPlore MindMapping, but who is in Berkeley now. That means, we have still some workspace to fill and we already began to fill it with a new intern :-). Two days ago, Cheng arrived from the university of Cambridge where he studies physics. He will stay for two month with us and will support the software development of Docear. This is particular good news for MacOS users because Cheng has a Mac and hence we can test Docear on a real Mac for the first time.

(Part of) the Docear team (Marcel, Stefan, Joeran, Cheng) in the new office

Btw. if you are interested in an internship, or writing your thesis about Docear, please read here and contact us. We have lots of great projects to work on, there are many research fields you can do research in, and, as you know, there is enough space in our office :-).

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Docear4Word: Mapping BibTeX fields and types with the Citation Style Language (CSL)

After releasing the first private Beta of Docear4Word a few weeks ago, we are confident to release the first public Beta in about a week. Currently we are working on the final mapping of BibTeX fields and types with the corresponding entries of the Citation Style Language (CSL). Unfortunately, it is not always obvious how to match BibTeX and CSL. Our current mapping looks like the following. If you think something is missing, or incorrect, please let us know.

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By Joeran Beel, ago

On the future of Docear: Funding for the next 18 months and 2nd prize at ego.Business (business plan contest)

As you might know, Docear originates from ‘SciPlore MindMapping’ which some friends and I developed as part of my PhD studies. Our work was  partly financed by my university (Otto-von-Guericke University, Magdeburg) and supported by many others such as the University of California, Berkeley. One year ago my friends Stefan and Marcel and I decided to make SciPlore MindMapping a full-time project, since then being called Docear. Luckily, we received a 100,000€ EXIST scholarship for one year  from the European Union and German Federal Ministryof Economics and Technology. Well, that year has passed quite quickly and during the last months we had to think about the future. And the future looks bright 🙂

Docear Team at the ego.-BUSINESS award ceremony

Stefan Langer, Joeran Beel, and Marcel Genzmehr from Docear at the award ceremony from ego.-BUSINESS

A couple of days ago we received a scholarship that allows Stefan, Marcel and me to work for another 18 month full-time on Docear. The scholarship is granted by the European Union and Federal State of Saxony-Anhalt in Germany. This is just awesome because when I look at the achievements from the past 12 month… I am really excited to think about what we will be able to do in the next 18 months. The scholarship is called ego.-START and we are really glad about all the support we received from the Investitionsbank Sachsen-Anhalt who helped us applying for this scholarship. And as with the previous grant, there are no strings attached. I think this is really amazing and I don’t know of any other country in the world that is that supportive to young researchers and entrepreneurs. ‘Entrepreneurs?’ you might wonder? Yes, we are considering to start a business with Docear.

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Docear4Word – First Beta published for registered users

Wow, today really is a special day. First, we released Beta 4 of Docear with literature recommendation, and now… we have the pleasure to present Docear4Word (Beta). The Beta of Docear4Word is a fully functional Microsoft Word Add-on to create formatted references and bibliographies in over 1,700 citation styles (APA, IEEE, ACM, Havard, Chicago, …).  Similar to  Zotero, Mendeley, and other reference managers we use the citation style language (CSL) and citeproc-js. However, in contrast to MS-Word Add-Ons of other reference managers, Docear4Word is not a proprietary tool functioning only with its own database. Docear4Word works with any BibTeX file from any BibTeX reference manager (at least it should ;-)). Of course, there is BibTeX4Word, a tool offering similar functionality as Docear4Word (and also working with any BibTeX file). However, BibTeX4Word is very difficult to install, not really easy to use, and there are not that many citation styles as far as we know.

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Docear 1.0 Beta 4 with literature recommendations (free full-text download)

Beta 4 of Docear is available for download. There are many minor changes and enhancements. For instance, your existing PDF reader (e.g. Foxit) is automatically pre-selected, handling BibTeX files from Mendeley improved (you can automatically resolve duplicate BibTeX keys), and we did many bug fixes. But, there is one major improvement: Docear Beta 4 offers free full-text literature recommendations.  In your workspace panel you find a link “Show Recommendations”. If you click this link, a tab will open with a list of research papers that might interest you. If you are a long-time user of Docear and also used SciPlore MindMapping, you might remember that we already had recommendations in SciPlore MindMapping. And you probably remember that they were… well, let’s face it, they were really … crappy. Docear’s recommendations are way better. From my experience I would say they are quite decent and let me tell you that the recommendations will become even better in the future. However, the quality of recommendations also depends on the field of your research. Most of our papers are the field of computer science, accordingly recommendations in this field probably are best. But maybe the best thing about the recommended papers is – they are completely free. Just click on them and they will be downloaded to your literature repository or open in your web browser. Please note, to get recommendations you must have used Docear for a while and must have added at least a few papers to your literature repository.

We are very interested in your opinion: What do you think about the recommendations? How good or bad are they? How important are recommendations for you?

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Docear4Word is on its way (CSL based Microsoft Word Add-On for BibTeX)

It’s half a year ago that we announced the development of a Microsoft Word Add-on to insert BibTeX based references in the same way as Zotero, Mendeley, Endnote and other references managers do. A major requirement for the add-on was to use the citation style language (CSL) which allows using over 2,000 citation styles. Well, it has been (and still is) a long and hard way to go (maybe we will elaborate on this later). However, I just want to let you know that the work on Docear4Word is going on and we are just before a first test release – I hope that in two or three weeks the first demo is ready to be released (for the beginning we probably make it available to registered users only, so register now :-)).

For now, here is a little teaser to give you an idea what is coming: the first screenshot of Docear4Word. Please let us know your ideas for the Add-On: What should it be able to do? What do you like about the MS Word add-ons from other reference managers? Probably we won’t be able to consider your wishes for the first version but maybe for Docear4Word 2.0.

Docear4Word - First Screenshot

Docear4Word – First Screenshot

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Seminar on Academic Search Engine Optimization

Have you heard of ‘academic search engine optimization’? If not, you maybe should attend our seminar ‘Academic Search Engine Optimisation (ASEO): Suchmaschinenoptimierung in der Wissenschaft‘ (in German). The seminar is based on our publication Academic Search Engine Optimization (ASEO): Optimizing Scholarly Literature for Google Scholar and Co. in which we defined academic search engine optimization as

“the creation, publication, and modification of scholarly literature in a way that makes it easier for academic search engines to both crawl it and index it”

We believe that ASEO should be an important part of your publishing process because it helps significantly to increase the visibility of your work in the academic community. When we published our article back in 2010 virtually no one even thought about that topic (as far as i know we were the first ones writing about search engine optimization for academic articles). Meanwhile, the idea of ASEO became more popular and several institutions adopted the guidelines from our paper (e.g. SAGE, Wiley, and York University) and, as covered in the seminar, the experience from the past years clearly shows the benefits of ASEO techniques.

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Dreaming of an integrated Java PDF Viewer for Docear

Maybe the most disturbing thing about Docear is the lack of a proper PDF reader that creates comments, bookmarks and highlighted text that can be imported by Docear and that runs on all operating systems. Personally, I use Foxit Reader and create bookmarks to remember important statements but it can’t highlight text properly. PDF XChange Viewer could be a great alternative if they had persistent object numbers – but they don’t (read here for more details).

Due to the lack of a truly proper Java PDF viewer, we are considering to develop our own PDF viewer. There are plenty of Java PDF libraries out there. However, I had a look at them and none of  seem is really suitable. Aspose PDF, iText, jPod Renderer>, PDF Tron, Big Faceless Java PDF, CABAReT Stage, jPDFBookmarks, JPedal, PDFBox, ICE Pdf, ReMarksPDF, and Qoppa’s jPDFViewer all have some shortcomings. Either they have many features but are commercial (e.g. Big Faceless Java PDF), or they are open source but do not offer the required feature or have serious bugs (e.g. PDFBox).

So, my question: Do you know of any other Java PDF libraries or even better a fully functional Java PDF viewer? Our requirements are:

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By Joeran Beel, ago

New Docear release: Beta 3 with update-check, information retrieval, licence, and several bug fixes

The third Beta of Docear was released today (download here). Besides several bug fixes, the major changes are:

An automatic update-check which informs you when a new version of Docear was released. We also have a proper licence now you have to accept when starting Docear for the first time. Of course, the main licences still remains GPL2+ but we now have additional terms of service for using our online backup etc. We also implemented an optional function to transmit your mind maps to our servers so we can use them for our research (read here for more details). We would kindly ask you to activate this function because it allows us to perform our research on mind maps and the more and better research we do, the more likely we will get additional funding from the German Government to further develop Docear. As stated in our terms of use and data processing terms, we are bound to the very strict German data privacy law and try everything to protect your data. However, if you feel uncomfortable having your mind maps analyzed by us, please just deactivate the options that are shown on first start. You can then use Docear without any data being submitted to us. Finally, you can directly register a Docear account when starting Docear the first time. This account is required if you want to backup your files to our servers. We would highly recommend this since you never know what happens to your computer and you can also access your mind maps through our web interface if you are not at home. Read also here for more information about the backup and alternatives.

Here are all the changes:

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By Joeran Beel, ago

Docear goes CeBIT

From 6th to 10th of March 2012 we will be at the CeBIT in Hannover, Germany. CeBIT is the digital industry’s biggest and most international event and always worth a visit. We will be at Halle 9, Stand A 10 to present Docear. You are welcome to visit us and get to know the Read more…

By Joeran Beel, ago

First public version of Docear released (1.0 Beta 1)

Today, on February 15th, 2012 we released the first public version of Docear. It’s a Beta version and still has some bugs and missing features but overall it will give you a thorough impression of what we consider an academic literature suite to be.

The main idea behind Docear is that you annotate everything you consider important in a PDF. That means, you highlight text, write comments, or create bookmarks in the PDF. To create bookmarks and comments, you can use almost any PDF reader (highlighting text is a bit more complicated). These PDF annotations are then imported by Docear to a mind map. In this mind map you can organize all your annotations into categories, create further nodes and add more text. With the integrated reference manager, bibliographic data can be added to each of the PDF annotations (and all other nodes in the mind map). Then, you can create a new mind map, drag e.g. a research paper, copy your annotations to the draft and if you need more information you just click on the PDF annotation and the PDF will open on the page the annotation was made. Watch this video to get a better idea of what Docear can do (watch it in full-screen mode). (more…)

By Joeran Beel, ago

Experimental Releases

We decided to make our internal test releases public. Every one or two weeks we will publish an experimental release of Docear in our forum. Those releases are not thoroughly tested but have the latest features. You can subscribe to the forum to be notified about new experimental releases (we won’t Read more…

By Joeran Beel, ago

(Bachelor) Students: Do a (Paid) Internship at Docear in Magdeburg, Germany or Berkeley, USA

We are happy to announce that we can offer paid internships to German, British, and North American (USA & Canada) Bachelor students, in cooperation with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Some of the internships are in cooperation with our partner SciPlore or for our project Mr. DLib. However, all results will be used by Docear, too. These are the internships we are offering (all in the field of software development).

Docear Internships (preferably in Magdeburg, Germany)

PDF Header/Metadata Extraction

Creating a Recommender System for Docear

Joined Internships by SciPlore/Docear/Mr. DLib (preferably in Berkeley, US) (more…)

By Joeran Beel, ago