Zotero or endnote

[theferry]

I think this has probably been covered before, but I’m unsure how to organise my research material for a new project. I’ve never used referencing software before, but would like to be more organised going forward. I’m in the Humanities.

I’ve figured so far that it comes down to:

• endnote desktop (provided by uni)
• endnote online (would be basic account)
• zotero (basic account)

in particular, I want to be able to read and annotate PDFs on my iPad and save them so I can also access them on my laptop (not an Apple).

Can anyone give any advice?

Sorry, a follow up—thinking about this a bit more, I think the main thing to get right is how to annotate PDFs. I’m even more lost as to how best to do this!

In adobe acrobat we can add (& save) yellow sticky notes to pdfs. Is this an option?

i still take my own notes in a word doc with hypertext link to the original URL.pdf. Less to store & keep track of that way.

I dunno Zotero. We all seem to use Endnote desktop. It can be tempermental, but seems to be praised by people who have used Zotero or Mendeley.

zotero is good and free. not sure on the annotation because I don't use that.

I like Zotero’s plug-in for your browser which allows you to import a reference with one click. Dunno if there’s an EndNote equivalent of that. Don’t have anything helpful to suggestion on the PDF annotation, sorry.

Zotero allows annotation and has an ipad app. Why not download it free and see?

Endnote can import pdfs, hundreds at once if you want.

I used to use Zotero. I now use Bookends which I like and which integrates with Scrivener, which I use for drafting, and which I’ve found much better for importing and annotating pdfs. Not sure about on iPad as I don’t use one.

Another vote for Zotero here. It's simple, there's a small app to install or you can use it via a browser (or both at the same time, if you wanted to), there's an MS Word plugin and, best of all, a browser plug in for instantly adding references. The included set of biblio styles is good (and customizable), you can import your references from Endnote, Refworks, etc., sort references into folders and even tag them with themes/topics.

I've used it for over 12 years now, wouldn't use anything else now. It's not flashy, but it gets the job done, absolutely reliable.