Ben Humphreys

Papers vs Mendeley

I’ve been using Papers for a few years, but I decided to try Mendeley again as Papers seems so slow in releasing new features. Here are some points I considered and which I thought was better.

• Search - Neither - Papers has a huge number of search engines, none of which return results that I can actually download. I almost always end up going to Google Scholar, and choosing the links with PDFs. Papers seems to miss these and go for ones behind paywalls. Mendeley desktop doesn’t have a search feature. Their website does, but it seems broken at the moment.
• Interface - Papers - More flexible, Mendeley is Java and has some issues being non-native code.
• Speed - Papers - Mendeley is written in Java, and seems to use their overly slow website for some stuff.
• Price - Mendeley - Free. You even have to pay seperately for Papers on the desktop and iOS.
• Backup - Both - I backup Papers using Dropbox, Mendeley seems to offer an equivalent service.
• Organisation - Papers - Has automatic folders, more organisation/tagging options.
• Metadata - Mendeley - Papers is a pain for managing metadata, Mendeley seems to be better at guessing/importing details.
• PDF Annotation - Mendeley - Papers desktop still doesn’t have the ability to add highlights/annotation to PDFs. (Update: See Mek’s comment below, Papers 2.1 due out early December should have this feature)
• Social Stuff - Mendeley - Livfe on Papers is useless, Mendeley’s alternative seems usable. There’s even a Machine Learning for NLP group.

Conclusion

I’m sticking with Papers. But if you haven’t chosen yet I’d give Mendeley a try. The annotation, search and social features seem better. The features are in the roadmap for Papers 2.1 but who knows when that will be out.