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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 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

(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

The new name of SciPlore MindMapping is… “Docear”

One month ago we asked our users to send us suggestions for a [fusion_builder_container hundred_percent=”yes” overflow=”visible”][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][intlink id=”help-us-finding-a-new-name-for-sciplore-mindmapping” type=”post”]new name Read more…

By Joeran Beel, ago

Help us finding a new name for “SciPlore MindMapping”

Over a year ago we started the development of SciPlore MindMapping. So far the response in the academic community was overwhelming. We get almost daily emails from users telling us how much they like the software and download counts are steadily increasing. Now, I am very pleased to announce that in the near future we will continue the development of SciPlore MindMapping as an independent tool from SciPlore. The focus of “SciPlore MindMapping” differs just too much from the goal of “SciPlore” and despite, the name “SciPlore MindMapping” is just too long anyway.

So, what we do need is a new name for SciPlore MindMapping and we want you help finding it!

There are few (but tricky) demands to the new name: (more…)

By Joeran Beel, ago

Good by FreeMind, welcome FreePlane

When we started the development of SciPlore MindMapping about a year ago we decided to use FreeMind as code base. That means we used FreeMind`s source code, modified it slightly, and added some new features. It was a straight forward decision: for many years, FreeMind was bascially the standard choice if you wanted a free open source mind mapping software and it was written in Java, our preferred programing language. However, time is changing and FreeMind unfortunately is not. Since a long time, the FreeMind team is releasing new versions very slowly, not to say the development of FreeMind almost pauses.

Therefore we decided to switch to Freeplane as code base in near future (around July 2011). (more…)

By Joeran Beel, ago