# ReadCube Reviews **Vendor:** ReadCube **Category:** [Reference Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/reference-management) **Average Rating:** 4.4/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 174 ## About ReadCube ReadCube is an all-in-one research management software designed to empower researchers, academics, and professionals in organizing, accessing, and analyzing scientific literature more efficiently. With advanced AI-powered tools, ReadCube transforms literature workflows, improves discoverability, and streamlines literature management, enabling researchers to focus on critical analysis and breakthrough findings. Built for research-driven organizations, particularly in life sciences, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals, ReadCube's intelligent features support comprehensive literature review and seamless reference management. The platform's AI-enhanced search and personalized literature monitoring keep users updated on relevant studies, significantly reducing manual work and saving valuable time. Key features include: - Reference Management: Organize and sync references across devices, making it easy to access sources anytime and anywhere. - AI Assistant: Interact with individual PDFs or entire libraries to clarify complex terms, identify research gaps, translate content, and more. - AI-Driven Literature Recommendations: Discover relevant articles specific to your research interests, streamlining the discovery process. - PDF Reader: Annotate, highlight, and share insights within PDFs for collaborative research and review. - Literature Monitoring: Receive personalized alerts and notifications to stay updated on the latest publications in your field. -SmartCite: A user-friendly citation tool that connects your library to your writing platform, enabling seamless citation as you write. As part of the ReadCube ecosystem, Papers provides a sophisticated reference management solution specifically designed for academics and students. With Papers, users can organize, explore, and even engage with their references, ask questions, collaborate with colleagues, and cite effortlessly using SmartCite. ReadCube and Papers' AI-enhanced literature management solutions support thousands of organizations and millions of researchers worldwide, helping them get back to the breakthrough work that matters most. ## ReadCube Reviews ### 1. Amazing application for research paper management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Prashidha K. | Software Development Engineer II, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 05, 2026 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** It supports multiple platforms (web, android, ios). But the best thing about Papers is the annotations you can do on your papers. I like to annotate mypapers a lot and you can easily do annotations and review your highlights. I used Papers 3 (legacy) a mac application during my PhD which was already awesome. the New Papers app is even better because of its multi platform support. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Papers is best when you have a pdf of the paper. When you don't have the pdf, i sometimes find it bit hard to extract references as it lacks copy past (bibtex) based import. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is one place to save all of the research papers along with notes and annotations on the papers. We can directly annotate the PDF from any platform and they all sync up. All the highlights are easily accessable and searchable. App is very intuitive and easy to organize thousands of research papers. ### 2. Unreliable Desktop and Web Apps: Key Reference Features Keep Breaking **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Iain M. | Senior Clinical Safety Specialist, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 20, 2026 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** The search functionality is effective, both within my own library and across external data sources. Importing references is straightforward, and the library of reference styles is extensive. It’s also easy to categorise references, and the display can be configured to suit my preferences. Overall, it provides very effective reference management while working on a manuscript. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Neither the desktop app nor the web application is reliable, and key features repeatedly stop working. For example, the preferred reference style and the display of articles often fail. There is also a limited selection of reference types, and the PDF markup tools are very poor and not very usable. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Unfortunately, there are very few (if any) alternative applications that can manage large reference databases (I have >6,500 in mine) and still be as effective at handling references within a manuscript. Adding or removing citations, and switching citation/reference styles, is extremely easy. That said, this used to be an absolutely fantastic product before the original developers sold out. ### 3. Excellent literature sorting app **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 06, 2025 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** ReadCube is highly user-friendly and intuitive, significantly assisting me in organizing my extensive collection of papers. I appreciate its capability to automatically download papers along with supporting information. Additionally, I can establish folders to maintain an orderly system. It also has AI-integrated tools to prepare a summary. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** By now, nothing, I really like how things are set. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** It maintains my library in order, facilitating the organization and retrieval of my papers. I recently began utilizing the AI-integrated tool to extract the main ideas from various works, which functions very well. ### 4. Really great app to manage my papers and citations **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Samuel A. | Member of the organizing committee of “Postdoc Work-In-Progress” of Postdoctoral Association, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 26, 2021 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** The aspect of the program is clean and articles look very organized. It is very easy to upload a file and highlight it, take notes, etc. Moreover, I can create my own collection of papers grouped by different topics. Finally, I like the option of read a paper on my iPad and everything is automatically updated on my laptop version. In the last versions, they have improved the stability of the app a lot and also the search option. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** One think that I don´t like very much is the need of installing an extension to Word program to insert citations. My institution has blocked these extensions on Word and now I am not able to insert citations there. They should do this in other way to avoid this problem. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** The new version also looks cleaner and more robust. I hope they continue working into improving small details and not increasing the cost of the program. ### 5. A step backwards from earlier products **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** One thing I like is that the papers are stored on the Cloud, so I can access them from my home office, my work office, on when I am traveling. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** I used Papers 2 and Papers 3 for many years, and enjoyed the functionality and ease of use. In particular, it interfaced very well with arXiv and with MathSciNet and made importing papers and bibliographic information very easy. The new version ReadCube has lost a lot of the functionality. The user interface is clumsy: in particular, importing papers and then adding bibliographic information is a pain. It is very hard to create special libraries for projects. For instance, I wanted to create a library of all my own (100+) publications, but the only way I could figure out how to do it was to move them one at a time. There are now multiple duplicates in my archive--cleaning them out is too much work. And when a paper gets updated (e.g., when the authors post a revision to arXiv) there does not seem to be any easy way to replace the existing file with the new one, which leads to all these duplicates. I only use the online version now, as the program on my computer is way too clumsy to be of serious use. I do not like the fact that it cannot search easily for names with diacritical marks. For instance, I have papers by an author named Hästö, and half of them got indexed as Hasto. Therefore, to find anything, I have to search twice. Other databases (such as MathSciNet from the American Math Society) let me search for Hasto. I never use the program to export bibliographic information: what it produces in the BibTeX format requires so much clean-up that it is easier to go online and download the citation information elsewhere. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** It lets me keep track of 1,000s of papers. ### 6. A repository for medical and scientific papers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michelangelo P. | Cardiologo, Aiuto Ospedaliero, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Readcube /Papers is a useful repository of scientific and medical papers. Before RC I added the papers using my Evernote account, creating tags and folders. However in RD the opportunity to make the search directly in the various databases. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The organization in folders should be easier and more powerful. Also it should be very useful to export and /or share paper citation in the most used and common formats, to let the citations easier to use writing papers and bibliography. Also a more powerful pdf editor should be very useful (for instance to cut and paste titles. Graphs or figures to use in slides). Another useful function could be having two or not so much sub accounts. I'm thinking for small groups, having the same bibliography but saved under different folders and tags. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** During medical practice I used RC to find guidelines references and specific or particular diagnostic flowcharts or treatments. Priceless utility!! ### 7. Excellent work tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hugo T. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Readcube accompanies you on all journal websites. It is present in the most popular text editors (Word and Google Docs). You can search for articles directly in its search engine, you can choose from many styles, you can use your library code to access articles, you export to many formats, you save your pdfs online, you highlight and annotate. It is multiplatform. In fact, it has everything I need to keep my citations organized and to generate the cited literature for my works. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** There are few things I don't like. One of them is that it doesn't allow you to see a preview of the citation styles. Also, in the old Paper I think I could identify a PDF more easily to add its metadata, now it's more complicated and it tends to make mistakes. The rest makes me very happy. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** ReadCube keeps my scientific reference library in order and helps me find and insert bibliographical citations in my scientific projects. It also makes it easier for me to read and add them to my database. ### 8. Papers is the best reference management software for me! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Inka L. | Associate | Attorney-at-law and public notary, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 15, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Papers is super straightforward to use - importing and organizing literature is so seemless, I never need to actually sit down and catch up on any structuring, I just do it on the fly. I also love the mobile app where I can always find papers super quick to share with someone. The best function though for me is being able to save, read and highlight my PDFs inside Papers and the marked sections being searchable. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** It would be nice to have an option so save more searches, ie create more types of smart lists. It would also be great to have options to visualize connections between paprrs in my library. And finally, if there was a way to use my digital pen in the reading mode, that would be life-changing... **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** storing, organizing and finding my references and pdfs with highlights and comments ### 9. Literature Management Made Easy **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Summer J. | Coordinator, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 17, 2025 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Makes sharing resources easy. Fosters collaboration within my team. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Website lacks clear explanation/demo of product **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Finding resources for the classroom ### 10. It's all you need **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** S Shiraz A. | PhD Student, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** ReadCube's Papers is just brilliant. I am a historian and I have been managing my library on it for a few years now. And it's been a game changer. I can access the material and my annotations from anywhere. The search feature scans through the library cross-sectionally! The new AI feature is also pretty decent. So is the latest UI. I recommend it to colleages and students pretty often. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Nothing, really. Or I guess the company can improve the icon design for the annotation sticky (when it appears on a page). **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps me store, manage, and access my library quite efficiently. ### 11. The best research management tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Viktor C. | Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 01, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** I have been using Readcube Papers since its first stable release in 2019. But I have actually been using its predecessor Papers since around 2014, so for over ten years. What I can report about my experience is that the software is extremely easy to use and at the same time very sophisticated. I organize all my research with Readcube Papers, manage my PDFs, create shared lists with my master's and doctoral students, and record my notes while reading the texts. The support is extremely attentive and really implements solutions that we demand. I simply could not manage my research today without the powerful help of this tool! **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The downside is the high cost, especially for students and researchers from the Global South. Perhaps a specific discount policy for these countries could be applied. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Readcube Papers basically allows me to accumulate a huge library of articles and allows advanced research in an accessible and fast way. In addition, it has a great recommendation system. ### 12. Excellent product **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Karl G. | Distinguished Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** I was a long time user of the old Papers (when it was under Mekentosj). I was a bit nervous about the upgrade and having to pay a subscription, I have been bitten before when a company has purchased an indie dev software I have used. However it was wonderful - works great and better than before and I like the web based access. It does everythign well and I use it every day. iPad apps also work nicely and sync to the cloud. A very good product and well worth the cost. For the record I am a senior Professor at a University with a library of hundreds of papers. Customer support is also excellent, I've commented on a few issues, some of them have been fixed but all are very positively and quickly replied to. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** I'd like to see improved arXiv integration, i.e. to automatically bring in the metadata based on the arXiv number. It seems that sometimes this does not work and one has to wait a few weeks for a new arXiv posting to sync to whatever databases are used. But for me this is a very minor issue, mostly it is automatic but when it is not fixing it manually could be smoother, **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing citations ### 13. Very good reference manager with some things that could be improved. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** It is easy to look for references, read them, find immediately the related papers, export citations in various formats. It is helpful that you can retreive paper information on the web and automatically update each record. I use it often as my reference manager software. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** It should work better at find out duplicates and in general housekeeping operations of the database. I have many references, and sometimes it is easy to keep a tidy database. Moreover, the plugin for Safari doesnt work as it should. Last, although the web version has AI integration, the desktop one still fails and in general there are problems with loggin in on the web-based version. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is extremely helpful to store and organise the papers, and to cite them (bibtex export is a great value!) ### 14. Game-changer **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** It is very easy to import papers and organize them. I especially love the feature where it shows the figures, references and data related to the paper in the side bar. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Things that can be improved on are the library search bar, where if you specify the author's name without selecting author from the drop down menu, it will not show you papers related to the auhtor by the name. You will have to sleect the option and specify author"name" for the search engine to find the paper. Additionally, I would like to see if the figures can be opened in a side window along with the paper to make reading and referring to figures easier. All in all, it is a great reference manager! **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** ReadCube helps me keep all my literature in one place with easy access to other references from the original papers. ### 15. A well thought software for reading research article papers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Long C. | Postdoctoral Scientist, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 01, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** I love the import of new articles into the software, it only takes a drop and everything will be processed and formated. Amazing! With AI, Readcube has significantlly increase my productivity at work and really strengthen my knowledge during the reading time. The built-in AI helped me overcome "background" hurdles when reading a new paper in a unfamiliar research area and hence, saving me a lot of times. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** There was a bug due to different browsers that does not allow the import directly from the website due to the link was not connected. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Tremendously as I started using Readcube with my new job. As a scientist who is coming from a quite a different area, for sure, I need to read a lot to build up my knowledge and background for the new project. Readcube streamlines the process of improting and formatting the paper into the software. Everything is in the right place including the title, the notes, and other materials. I love the AI feature that really speed up the whole process for me during the reading time. By interactions with the AI, I made quicker logical connections from a huge pool of information and fast tracking the reading goal and hence feeling quite acheiving. ### 16. Readcube Paers is OK, but needs some fixes **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ola M. | Professor, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 22, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** The database of references and their PDFs is very useful, as is the ability to sync via devices. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The user interface is inconsistent. Eg. if you press delete a recod, you get a dialogue box with yes highlighted, which elsewhere means this is the default option (as the programmer should expect if that is what the user chose). But no, if you press enter, the record is not deleted. In many of the PDF views selecting text is impossible of very difficult. Thee downloading of PDFs still fails frequently evne when they are clearly indicated on the journal page. Very frequently article data are not matched even though they include the DOI. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** It gives me easy access to my most important references (now about 4000) and searching within them. Easy import new pdfs with the uplod folder. ### 17. Very useful, but not quite as its predecessor, Papers. **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Antoine L. | Associate Prof, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** How to organize my references. How to find references. The citation process is fairly straightforward. How the information of reference is automatically acquired by Read Cube is useful. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The search engine in Papers, the predecessor to Read Cube, was far superior. With Papers, I could search for a specific word, which would bring all the references (articles) in which this word occurs, anywhere in the text (i.e., not only in the title and/or abstract). This was useful when having forgotten the specific information about a reference (authors, journals), but still remembering specific words that could be found in the text. Read Cube does not allow such a search. Furthermore, I wish the citation process (how to include references in a Word document) would also function by subject, and not necessarily by using specific information about a specific reference, such as the authors' names. Again, this was a useful feature that could be found in Papers, which reduced the need to remember the names of authors. Only writing a given subject would bring appropriate references. It's funny how so-called progress is often regressed. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** writting scientific papers ### 18. Good Reference Manager, Needs Some Improvement **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jacob D. | Lecturer Faculty, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Papers is a powerful tool I use regularly from my web browser to catalog and annotate published papers (and other files) easily. The lists (essentially, a virtual directory structure) feature makes it easy to organize papers by subject, project, etc... and they can exist in multiple lists without requiring any duplication of files. The feature set is probably a lot more robust than I make use of, but for managing sources and quickly accessing and building references lists, it's an easy to use solution. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The UI design feels inconsistent in terms of everything from where certain menus are to how pop up dialogs are presented. Some simple features the community has asked for are have not been implemented, such as having quick access to a list of recently imported papers (we only have recently read) and also being able to filter by papers that are not currently tagged and/or not currently assigned to any list. These are important features for housekeeping to ensure resources we saved but couldn't catalog right away don't become lost as our libraries grow. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Maintaining an organized list of scholarly publications and references. ### 19. I finally found citation software I can work with **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Paul D. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 10, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** After trying Mendelay, EndNote, and Bookends, none really fitted the way I need to save and create citations. I tried Papers and it finally fitted my workflow. It has a very good and efficient layout, can automatically pick up most papers' details I either drag in manually or save through the Chrome extension. It also saves webpages, reports, books and lot of other styles. And the one thing other software lacked (either by not having the functionality at all or by the functionality being sub-parr) is being able to organise papers by tags. It also allows you to create folder structures, but I find tags far more efficient. I use Scrivener to write and, while it doesn't have a direct widget (yet), it's easy to compile a Word doc and then Papers can insert all the correct citations in the right style and also create my bibliography. Such a time saver! **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Sometimes it can't automatically find a reference which is frustrating but not the end of the world. This happens with all the software I've tried. The Chrome extension could be improved to allow you to add tags or folders when you save. Currently, you save and then go into Papers to organise. Full integration with Scrivener software would be excellent and I believe from their blog that this is coming soon. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** The best way of organising all my papers and reports I've found. Also saves so much time when referencing. ### 20. Excellent Reference Manager **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Veterinary | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 14, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** I love the ability to save PDFs to my library directly from a database, the ability to sort into numerous folders, nested folders, use tags, and create citations in tons of formats easily. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Sometimes when sorting through my entire library, my papers repeat in block sections as I scroll down, so I end up having to resort them multiple times to make sure I can see all of them. Sometimes saving the PDF to ReadCube function isn't available on certain websites (for example, AVMA publications). **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Unsure. ### 21. Improve the reference import **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** yanda w. | PhD student, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** It is very fast on mac, I like it. I has the powerful smart list, very good. I can directly search reference based on title, author, abstract, etc, very convenient. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** I tried to import new papers based on specific paper's reference list within papers, while this process is not smooth. Sometimes the new papers was not imported as an individual paper, but as the attachment of that specific paper, this is not good. Another thing is that I find Papers Help (GPU) occupy too much memory on my mac M1. So I have to quit it and reopen sometimes. One last thing is contibue to improve the import option from website. I find that papers cannot access the paper from website sometimes, although the pdf is open-access. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** first page i answered ### 22. Papers by ReadCube is the easiest tool for reference managing **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jarlei F. | Assistant Professor, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 08, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** What I like the most about papers by ReadCube is how easy it makes to import papers from databases to my own library. A single click and the paper is in the library, with all the data extracted and easy to find, making it very easy to manage the library. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Something that I don't like abour Papers by ReadCube is that the library is only available online. I wish there was the possibility to save my library in my computer and access it as an app. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Papers by ReadCube is being very helpful in organizing my library. I really enjoy the possibility of creating smart lists. ### 23. great tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Oscar M. | Medical Sciences Researcher, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Easy to create and use a reference database. Easy to format and copy in any output style. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** can't integrate directly on mac writing sofware, and the papers extension doesn't work on recent versions of safari. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** references for gransts and manuscripts. ### 24. Must have for any scientist **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Christian M. | Scientific Researcher, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Easy to use, gerat way of organizing papers and minimizong citation errors. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The old version of Papers had an option to drag and drop BibTex cites into LaTeX. Please bring this feature back. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Keeping track of documents and organizing papers. ### 25. Papers is easy to use and helps me organize **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alex E. | Graduate Fellow, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Lots of different ways to annotate the text between highlighting, underlining and adding notes. The chrome extension easily lets you add articles into your library and sort them by subcategory. It was super easy to download and implement and I use it all the time. Very nice to have the app on iphone and iPad to stay connected all the time and on the go. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Sometimes it won't find the PDF of the article added even though the PDF is available so there are some bugs there. I also wish the notes had more customization available **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps me to organize the many articles I need to read and has useful ways to actively read through them such as highlighting, underlining and notes. ### 26. An extraordinary app that continues to surprise me **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Legal Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 09, 2020 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** it gives me the chance to have my whole library at the tip of my finger. The new au function seems unreal **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** This version only reads pdf documents. I am waiting for an update to import other kind of files. In addition the smart importation became less smart against the Papers version. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** My library is so large that before ReadCube I was always carrying an external disk. Now everything is on the cloud. ### 27. Much worse than Papers 2 and older versions of Papers 3 **Rating:** 1.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** It's a functioning paper management software... It can help organizing large collections of research articles, book chapters, and so on... **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The software is missing key features that were present in Papers 2 and 3, making it much less competitive to other paper management programs such as Mendeley. I started using Papers 2 when I was in grad schol (~2013). It had everything that a researcher needed! Ability to download articles from journal websites; parse the metadata; store pdfs for each paper; find duplicate papers, journals, authors; add and modify journal abbreviations; easy ways to manage citekeys and create bibtex files for referencing. I was extremely satisfied with it back then. Few years after, Papers 3 was introduced. Earlier versions were not great with many key features missing and lots of bugs. But the software got eventually better, with many features listed above restored or fixed. Papers ReadCube is a complete departure from the previous versions. Despite several years in production, the program still lacks the basic features that the earlier versions had! For example, it is not possible to find duplicate papers, journals, or authors. Modifying journal abbreviations for batches of papers cannot be done, one has to do that one paper at a time. Try doing this when you have ~10000 papers in your repository! There is no easy way to collect papers for individual authors, other than searching for their names in the search field. What the developers do not realize is that many authors have the same last names and that finding their papers with a simple search does not help. Also, every now and then, one has to modify authors' names. In Papers 2 and 3, one could collect papers written by the same author together, which would automatically correct their name spellings. This feature no longer exists in Papers ReadCube. Another huge issue is supporting special symbols in titles or author names. In Papers 2 and 3, those special symbols would be recognized and converted to the Latex math format, allowing for seemless conversion into the bibtex format. This is no longer the case: Papers ReadCube would simply include the special symbols in the bibtex files without converting into the Latex math format, which would break every Latex compilation. I have found many complaints online with researchers requesting the features described above. However, it is clear that the developers are not listening to these requests. Papers ReadCube is an example of a software that is developed by programmers with complete disregard of their customer needs. The only reason why I kept my subscription in the last two years is that I have a large papers database that would otherwise be difficult to port over. However, with the help of tools like Mendeley and JabRef I will soon be able to stop using Papers ReadCube for good. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Other than allowing me to download new papers and find the ones I downloaded, none. ### 28. Readcube Paper; Hero **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Miguel C. | Estudiante de Doctorado, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 17, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Administration and storage of all my reviewed articles in my research. As well as being compatible with ENDNOTE, giving me superpowers that enhance my skills, providing advantages over my collaborators. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** In general, I like everything, maybe a new renovation that includes AI for the post-production of articles. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Manage the references together with EndNote, visualize and organize the articles in a cleaner way and on all my devices. ### 29. Great app to organize your library **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 27, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** I like the interface. I have been using ReadCube since it started and am very satisfied with its options. It allows me to store and sort my papers with easy online access on the web in case I don´t have my laptop with me. I also use it to read and highlight literature and export citations almost every day. The customer support is very fast and friendly. Once, I had problems exporting the literature from my previous software, and they solved the issue quickly. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** What I dislike about ReadCube is the exporting options for PDF files. Sometimes, I just need to send an email attaching the papers, and by now (as far as I know), it is not possible to export a list of papers. You have to export each paper to PDF independently. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** ReadCube helps me keep my e-library in order. I can easily import literature from a web explorer and sort the information by topic. It is also a great tool to read papers and highlight the most important things. ### 30. Papers/Readcube is almost perfect **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 25, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** There are so many things that Readcube gets right: the unlimited cloud storage for articles (i have > 3100), the search capability for your own library, the recommended articles feature can lead you down a rabbit hole very easily. The PDF annotation option is great, and I love the ability to export my annotations to TXT or CSV. This makes sending my notes to other apps like Obsidian or Apple Notes easy. I realize AI is in beta, but this has been amazing once I figured out how to incorporate it into my workflow. Asking "describe the study design", the PICO questions, "using bullet points, outline the experimental methodology" gives back accurate and repeatable answers and makes overall literature review a breeze. I do like the browser extension, but some open-source articles cant download through it. This is the publishers issue though, not really Readcube's. RSNA journals is a good example of this. The integration between the desktop app, iOS app and web app is seamless. I dont think any other reference manager gets this as perfectly as Readcube does. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** I'm all in on team Readcube, but there are a few things I would like to see: - Software updates seem sporadic. There was a long time (over a year I think) when Readcube/Papers got NO updates and started to feel like abandonware. I think Digital Science got the message and started really working on Readcube in 2023, but now it feels like we're in a lull again. Even if its just small tweaks and big fixes, it would be reassuring to know that there is attention to development. - Although functionally, there is not too much distance between the web version and the app, its definitely noticeable where there is a difference. For example, the AI module is only available on the web. The app is much quicker to show up hits when I do keyword searches in my library, while the web version takes longer to return less results. I can link to articles from Obsidian/Apple Notes/Evernote from the web, but not with the app. - The database search is REALLY opaque. Am I searching Pubmed? MedarXiv? Do I need to use Pubmed syntax? Something else? I have no idea. There's no real answer, and I cant trust the results as much as I could just going to Pubmed or Scopus. I also can't save my searches, making keeping up with the latest articles a function of using Pubmed email alerts. - I wish it used the PDFKit standard. Annotations I might make in another PDF reader do not carry over to Readcube or the other way around. If I do make annotations in another PDF reader, I wind up with multiple copies of the same article in my local Readcube folder, and the cloud storage only saves the Readcube annotations. It's a bit of a mess and makes my workflow a little more convoluted. Switching to PDFKit would also GREATLY facilitate using a program like Hookmark to create links between my annotations. I can do this with the web version, but not with the app. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** It keeps my thousands of articles organized and searchable better than any other solution. Tags, colors and flags make organzining articles into high-value, low-value, to-read, to-review, etc very simple. Cloud syncing is just about flawless. I'm not sure how I would do any kind of literature review without a solution liek Readcube. ### 31. Best references manager so far **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mahmoud A. | Teaching Assistant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 26, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** The user interface is really comfortable along with the integrated PDF reader. I like the thing that it combines many information into one place where you can extraxt figures, see citations along with the context in which the source was cited. I also like the unlimited cloud storage space to keep my library accessible from different devices without worrying about cloning the library of copying my notes. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Openning the clickable links in the integrated web browser and my prefered browser. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing and sorting my library os really good for me. I can manage, annotate, and read all the references in one place. ### 32. Been a great software since years. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Markus B. | Chairman Head and Neck Cancer Center, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Great features in the web and desktop client and sync to my mobile devices. The search function and pdf import works well if not always and the word plugins are good. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** There is a strange emphasis on the limited shared libraries as opposed to importing to the other libraries when you right click. That is kind of annoying. The ai features are a great start but still pretty rudimentary without being able to better work across multiple papers. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has been my main solution for 15 years (papers before that) and I use it for collecting literature and writing. ### 33. Super helpful and great resource for research **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jacqueline D. | Research Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 03, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** I love being able to read, annotate, and group my research papers together in an easy way. ReadCube makes it very convient to organize all of the research papers I read and cite in my own research, making citations a much easier process. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The highlight tool can be difficult to use. It is difficult to highlight the correct part, especially if it goes over to the next page. That is the only drawback I have repeatedly noticed. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** ReadCube makes it easy to organize and cite research papers I use through the course of my own research. I can easily cite papers in my own research paper by refering back to ReadCube. ### 34. All good, but the new UI design is not pretty **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 15, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** It works and is integrated with the web browser nicely **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** All good, but the new UI design is not pretty. The old design is much better!! Also, a bit expensive. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Dayily usages for readin research papers, and writing. ### 35. Works efficiently **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** That i easily manage my pdfs That i can have all my library downloaded on all my devices **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** TV hr function to either include my comments on a pdf o send the pdf "naked" was a good function that is removed I want to store all type of supplementary file on the desktop version of the app **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** It manages my references I use the separate app and se no use of the web version ### 36. Getting better **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Great to download most papers directly from links **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Using some journal links leads to articles not being downloaded correctly with incorrect information. Annotation can be problematic without the undo ability. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Storing papers for future reference ### 37. Well worth it **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Makes it easy to annotate papers and keep these organized. I like that usually figures and supplements are included as well. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** I'm not sure why but papers from some platforms do not include the supplements in in the readcube app and I have to go online to find it myself. Sometimes figures do not download properly to the ZIP file. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helping me keep track of my references and keep all of them plus notes in the same place. Saves me time for literature review, grant writing, etc. ### 38. Not just a citation manager but also a solid reading client **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jan Z. | University researcher, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** I think it's the best combination for 2 important tasks: collecting papers and reading them. I don't want to be reading papers in some Adobe piece of software and juggle pdfs in different foldrs. I know free alternatives exist, but if you're an academic who spends a lot of time reading, it can be worth paying. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** It could be faster (though I do have have over 2000 papers in my local database, so that's surely the problem). **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Collecting pdfs in one place ### 39. ReadCube Papers is what I use and it does what any other citation manager does but more. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 01, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** It's easy to to upload papers and I get better automatic fill of a paper's metadata than EndNote. I also think ReadCube Papers has a much more intuitive way to view and annotate papers, which is something I had wished other software would be able to do. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The student rate for ReadCube Papers is quite good at $3 a month, however, I wish there was more clarity on the cost of ReadCube's other products and that I didn't have to schedule a demo for literature review and literature management. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing academic papers and a citation engine when writing. ### 40. Best citation manager app I've tried **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Research | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Very nice tool to organize one's research papers, intuitively built and self-explanatory. The syncing between tablet and notebook works perfectly, so I can read and annotate on every device seamlessly. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The experience in the software for mac is a bit slow (for example opening papers). And if you clicks on a link in a paper, it should not open in a new tab in papers! I'm sure most people agree with me that opening links in one's favourite browser is better! For these reasons, I often switched to the browser version of Papers, which works perfectly. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** The syncing between tablet and notebook works perfectly, so I can read and annotate on every device seamlessly. ### 41. Readcube Papers is an indispensable part of my biomedical research. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 25, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Ease of categorizing and power of search is by far the most intuitive and accurate means to maintain a library of research articles that one can draw from and even find novel connections between findings. I cannot count the number of ideas that I have had for my research that were initially started with a search of my own Readcube Papers library. It is my most used app on my iPad Pro. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Annotation on all platforms is " so 2004" intead of 2024. It would be so great if the developers would devote some effort to finally upgrade it - at least on iPadOS. Ease of erasure, color choice (too dark), objects (arrows, boxes) could all use upgrading considering what this app is mainly about - research. Another issue is the inconsistent ability to download using EZproxy with my university library. Whatever firewalls and two-factor notification issues exist need to resolved for more seamless workflow. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Connecting the dots between the content of research papers thorugh search and categorization. ### 42. Indispensable for a researcher **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Pedro G. R. | Professor, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 12, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** The integration with MS Word. Seamless! It just works (almost always). **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Sometimes we have to input the reference manually ... and that's a pain. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Organize my academic references. ### 43. Great software for researchers, worth the annual fee **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ranga Rohit S. | Postdoctorate fellow, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Having tried Mendeley for a few years during my PhD, I have shifted to ReadCube recommended by a colleague. The most liked feature for me is the it directly takes you from the references in PDFs to the website and also tells if it is in your library. The SI and metrics are already downloaded and also shows the most relevant research articles in the past few years. The integration across devices is also smooth with software very easy to use. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Only thing is the price, but worth every penny once you start using it. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a academic researcher so this is exactly what is needed to manage the research articles. ### 44. An Excellent way to organize the literature **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew C. | Medical Student Research, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Its a convenient solution to organize my papers and it can be used across all my applications. I have been using Papers and Readcube Papers for almsot 10 years and will never change to anything else. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** The desktop app does not get updated very frqeuently, but it works just fine. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps me organize the papers that I need to read and easily search for the ones that I have read ### 45. Great reference management software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mark C. | Director of Neurology, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 26, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** I've used since the original version of Papers was released, and it remains just as simple, usable, and powerful as before. Search function, ability to link to library, match functions are all excellent. Customer support was prompt and accurate when I used on 1 occasion at setup, when i had a monor conflict through using a differnet user name than originally - they sorted it out quickly. I use it every day, and it integrates semlessley with Word etc. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** I can't think of anything that really troubles me - its very impressive all round **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** searchin gfand downloading relevant literature quickly and effectively. ### 46. Newer versions made the app worse **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** The ability to read and (mostly) highlight in the app, both using a desktop, laptop, or tablet. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Mainly, how they eliminated many of the great options that the Papers 3 app provided and that made it unique and useful, including: 1. The cumbersome process to add an intext citation in Mac. 2. How difficult it is to create a book or book chapter reference or ciatation. 3. The lack of option to differentiate authors' first and last names. When an author has more than two last names (which is often), one of those is automatically included as a first name. 4. Having to pay annually. 5. The app is slow and complicated. I have to use the web-based option. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing and using references ### 47. Very easy to use - Especially for Mac! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John M. | Senior Lecturer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 24, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** I love the annotaion function and that all pdfs are easy to find. A nice interface to use and works well on my Mac in an increasingly PC skewed software environment. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Can crash sometimes when an update is needed **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ref managemt and pdf annotaion , is excellent ### 48. Daiky use of readcube **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tadashi U. | 執行役員　CSO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** Easy download the information of pubilication and pdf files. Just go to the website and import to the library. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** pdf OCR recognition is not equipped, This will help to organize the library When I have scanned document. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Readcube supports time consuming work such as organizing document ### 49. Integrated citation manager with tricks to help you organize **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Biotechnology | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 28, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** I like the multiple features, computer app, cloud app, linkage to word documents, cell phone app. You can easily change how you would like to cite your work and there are multiple ways to organize your citations. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** Linking to microsoft word has glitches, but maybe on the microsoft side. It slows my typing down, so much that I can't use track changes. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reading papers, citing papers, grant writing, publications. ### 50. Great instrument for bibliographic research **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dario B. | Ikerbasue Research Associate, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 23, 2024 **What do you like best about ReadCube?** The program is very for cataloging research articles, including thesis and other material. For some journal, the program downloads the supplementary material automatically. **What do you dislike about ReadCube?** I would improve the possibility of taking notes with the iPad and the personalization of some export features, e.g., to BibTeX format. **What problems is ReadCube solving and how is that benefiting you?** Reading and taking notes directly on the iPad and synchronizing on the Cloud on other devices. ## ReadCube Discussions - [How can I see pdf while editing bibliographic data?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/40201-how-can-i-see-pdf-while-editing-bibliographic-data) - 2 comments, 1 upvote - [Readcube library format](https://www.g2.com/discussions/27563-readcube-library-format) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [In ReadCube Papers, are PDFs stored online *only*?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/in-readcube-papers-are-pdfs-stored-online-only) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [Is there a way to reorganize the interface?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/is-there-a-way-to-reorganize-the-interface) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [How do identify articles that are not grouped](https://www.g2.com/discussions/30106-how-do-identify-articles-that-are-not-grouped) - 2 comments - [View ReadCube pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/readcube/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-14+04%3A48%3A56+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=366d2aa6-4c95-4f15-a246-e41c49723348&secure%5Btoken%5D=ed1617923b02b322ea4cb499077b79e2a122bfc47ef665d3dfff9ab0fbf6de7c&format=llm_user) ## ReadCube Integrations - [Chrome OS](https://www.g2.com/products/chrome-os/reviews) - [Microsoft Word](https://www.g2.com/products/microsoft-word/reviews) ## Top ReadCube Alternatives - [Mendeley](https://www.g2.com/products/mendeley/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (247 reviews) - [EndNote](https://www.g2.com/products/endnote/reviews) - 4.1/5.0 (181 reviews) - [EasyBib.com](https://www.g2.com/products/easybib-com/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (151 reviews)