ReadCube Papers Reviews & Product Details

I used for 1 year and i am using downgraded version now but its sufficient given i am always on web version. I tried to explore other reference managers

Mendeley: now moving towards online ( web edition) which will take time and present version is slow

Citavi: very strong desktop edition but web edition just started development in 2021.

Endnote, etc : too expensive

Even in trial version, no restriction on cloud storage unlike mendeley and endnote

Cross-reference is probably best and might take years for others to catch up. Best output of readcube is in web version. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Would like to have additional tabs or sections with subsections. Update pdf to latest versions of articles automatically. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The reader, the folders and the UI seem great. I could divide every paper I've read into different folders and also create folders into folders, which means I can organize my references really well. I need that because I want to be able to sort things out by subject and be able to reach back when I need something. Apart from that, the built in reader is fantastic: I could highlight important parts and make comments on it, all with different colors. The most useful feature I've found is that when I add a highlight or note on the paper, it shows the notes I've made on a "notes" menu, with the modification date and the ability to search and sort them. This has proven really useful in finding things quickly when I need to cite them. Something that stands out is that it has no major bugs. I mean, most of the reference managers I've used had major bugs, but this seem stable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Having to input book references manually. Other than that the experience was really good. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I love that Papers recognizes citations within articles and provides a direct link for me to find them and add to my library if I choose. The fact that I can do this so fast in papers is really a game changer because it helps me stay focused on the task at hand while also building my library. All the metrics that are provided for my articles are extremely helpful as well. I can easily learn about the impact they have had in the field and where they have been referenced since being published. Papers is so user-friendly. I am a big fan of the simple design and the seamless syncing across multiple devices. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One area that I think can be improved is tab management. Each paper that has been opened is assigned an individual tab at the top. When I have several papers open at the same time, I can easily become lost trying to figure out which papers I had opened and where the particular one I want is in the row of tabs. It definitely can cause frustration at times. I think this can be remedied by either allowing me to open multiple Papers windows at a time (I am on Windows 10), so I can designate each window to a particular thread of research I am working on, or some other tab management tool. Perhaps keep the tabs the way they are, but give me the alternative option of opening a tool that displays clearly which papers I currently have opened so I can navigate them more easily. This could also open up more opportunities to provide useful statistics, such as when I opened that paper, how many annotations I have added to it, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The ease of use! I like the new version of ReadCube Papers because you can add any paper from any journal to your library and cite them fast.

You can use the app to read, mark, and write a comment on any paper.

Easy access in Microsoft Word. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Honestly, I like it, but I think with more improvement it can be better and better.

Text editor and snapshot could be added to the app.

Option to copy and paste figures to make a presentation.

Download the figures in Microsoft PowerPoint format. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I had always used the predcessor "papers3" based on my daughter's recommendation and really liked. When ReadCube came out with the online- there was no computer based offline app. Now the online and the computer app are completely synchronzied. I love it when I am searching for paper and Readcube Papers recognizes that it is a new reference and offers to add it to my library. Most of the time I can add the pdf right within the window. There are a few times we I have to download than import into ReadCube Papers that is effortless. It is easy to generate bibiliographies and citations in whatever style you need. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are a few times we I have to download than import into ReadCube Paper. It can be hit or miss on accessing my University Library for downloads. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I subscribed to Papers to solve a problem with other methods of reading PDFs: I wanted all my notes as well as the full text of the articles to be accessible by search within a single interface. Papers solves that problem well, and organizes articles with competence. The web app is on par with the desktop version; both handle themselves beautifully. Although some functionality has been disappointing, recent updates have brought improvements. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some features of Papers have been less than completely successful in my experience. Directly adding a paper to the library from a web page generally does not work for me because of my institution's proxy. Papers doesn't recognize most Academia pages as sources for PDFs. And the citation manager is not as flexible and powerful as Zotero's. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I am using ReadCube for last three years. I found Readcube so useful. It has all necessary tools to annotate the PDF files that are very useful to mark desired texts for reading and for reviewing purposes. I can check for supplementary files if any and I can also check for the article metrics which is indeed very useful option that I never found in any other PDF reader/editor . So, I feel like, Readcube papers is specially designed for the research purposes.

I can not imagine my studies without Readcube papers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I only would like to download my particular folders. Which I am confirmed from the support them that they are working on it and I will have this feature in coming future. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I particularly enjoy the Google Chrome extensions that help you easily find all the information you need during your research. When I'm researching and looking for a new resource, ReadCubes is always there available to obtain that source quickly. Additionally, it obtains all the information from the resource and creates a citation for the work you may be writing. Finally, it provides important information about the resource you may be looking at such as supplemental information, reviews, information about authors, etc. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There seems to be a bug for some journal articles that appear to occur often. When one is attempting to download the article, in some cases there is an error in the download. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Search is really great. I find it pretty easy to use search directly to find papers I’m looking for, and I have hundreds (maybe thousands?) of references. For more organization, I’ve learned to use tags and folders, and those work well too.

I rarely have to input reference info directly, for many repositories, Papers finds the info automatically. If it can’t, I can usually download a reference file and import that. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The automatic reference info extraction isn’t great for Computer Science journals. It works fine from arXiv, but not from the primary journals.

I would like a little more interface consistency between the mobile version and desktop version, but it’s a minor point. It would be nice to have more search options in the mobile version; right now it is just Google Scholar and PubMed, I think. It would be nice, for instance, to go straight to a journal webpage. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

syncing..................................... Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Nag screen on Paper 3 attempts to bother existing paid users into upgrading. No way to disable it, just get nagged all the time, over and over. If they will do this to a long-time paying customer, they will do it to you. So, just anticipate that when the company wants your money they will find a way to bother you and not stop until you give the what they way. They have basically taken hostage the peaceful, known work flow that all existing users paid for and have come to depend on and refused to give it back. This is the epitome of selfishness and greed and should not be rewarded. Cannot recall in 30 years of using Apple computers a software that did this until now. Reprehensible behavior. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Easily organizable library, search features, links to citations to make finding additional papers easy, annotating the PDF directly, and the BEST part: the SmartCite for Word add-in! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It was a bit buggy in the past, but it seems like a lot of those issues have resolved in the past year or so. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

All my sources are at my finger tips and so accessible. Whether I am at work home or on the go, the web app has all my papers stored in the cloud, with highlights, lists, supplemental materials, and notes ready to augment my studies. The inline citations and citing articles provide insights into the next works to read and easily add sources to my library. The number of tools at my disposal just continues to grow. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Searching for authors or keywords has not been consistently great. Sometimes an obvious word from the title wouldn't bring up the correct result or a slight misspelling of an author name leaves me searching for the article for 5 minutes. This has been much better recently, so they are actively rixing this issue. The other biggest problem for me right now is version control on preprints. I need to update these manually once they move from preprint to published and usually the article undergoes revision so my highlights and notes are not ported. It makes me hesitant to use Readcube Papers with preprints. But then again, I really have no better choice. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is a lot I really like:

1. That its simple! Organization of the library, importing papers from the journal site or PubMed, PDFs is very easy and citation work not only in MSWords but also Google Docs and, with some efforts, on Pages and others. Noteworthy, I use med360 for searching literature every day and it works great with papers too.

2. It works on all platforms and comes with a very nice desktop version as well. So, no matter with what you work, it works great. We use a Mac desktop, MacNooks, PCs, and Windos-Notebooks, multiple Chromebooks, Android tablets and apple/android phones and it works great everywhere.

3. Its affordable: I share it with my entire team and this with a truly reasonable prize. Its also great, that some competitors, new OSs on the computer/devices do not require paid upgrades from ReadCube Papers like in some competitors.

4. Layout: I like its layout right from its beginning.

5. The team really helps you and respond to queries!

6. The team improves the service continuously and listen to the users.

7. One can highlight in the PDFs and comment and write some notes that can be fast seen in the list.

8. Because, handling and reading and commenting the PDFs is so easy and can be done on so many platforms, I stopped printing out the papers and work almost paper free with ReadCube Papers! Can you imaging printing and storing thousands of PDFs? Thanks to ReadCube Papers, I stopped it 5 years ago and never regretted it.

9. Last, but clearly not least, ist rock solid! I have >13.000 papers as PDF and it works very smooth and fast on all platforms.

I am not sure what features others share or not as I stopped using the others a year ago. Because I learned that ReadCub Papers is reliable and reasonable prized and comes with a very motivated team! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Actually there are two things I am missing:

1. There are still some minor bugs that are enervating sometimes. E.g. The citation key is generated by the desktop version but does not do it automatically despite one can select the option. But its easy to generate for new imports and takes just few seconds.

What I miss:

1. That I can colorize the folders and lists for easier search within the own library. I have many lists and categories, so color code may help.

2. Citation import into MSWord/Google Docs: I would dream that one simply selects that in the desktop program and not using the Add-ins feature. But the very good thing here is, the Add-in shows the entire structure of the library, so its simple to find the right paper. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that I can annotate all my papers with highlights, underlines, and notes, and even add floating sticky notes. I like the color options for annotations and that I can have a main "summary notes" section. It's my main use of Readcube: to organize and read and annotate papers. It's the most basic function of a reference manager and Readcube lets me do it very well. I also like that it's constantly improving in terms of features, like a browser plugin to add papers to my library, and citation software I can use with Microsoft Word. User interface is also great. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Some papers are not formatted well and this trips Readcube up in terms of annotations, where I can't select certain text or it highlights funny. I also don't like that with many papers, Readcube is terrible at finding the right paper to fill out the metadata. Often only the DOI works. Once you put in the paper's DOI, the metadata automatically fills. But Readcube is bad at finding papers if you just give the title, authors, and/or journal. This is only for the few papers in which the metadata doesn't automatically fill. In general, I have very little problems with Readcube automatically filling out the metadata. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's very convenient to track a published paper, how it was cited and by who. It's amazing to add a reference from the software to the library directly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Now it could not make annotation on the pdf file and save it if the file is opened by another ePDF readers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The reading, annotation and reference-tracking experience.

The highlight with different colours is helpful complemented with the note-taking alongside it. Even better is the direct preview of notes to get a quick revision of the paper.

The recommendation feature to helps a lot in tracking down similar papers to what is in a group, a timesaver.

The integration of Altmetric and Dimensions is very helpful in getting a quick feel of the impact of a paper.

The supplementary sections and the collective look of figures in papers are dealt with ease for quick access.

The addition of dark-themed options puts a smile on my face always. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The inability to locate orphan articles easily is hindering.

The absence of an option to locate a pdf directly to a reference.

The mobile app hasn't the ability to add pdfs too from the phone to the app.

I wish the payment could be subsidised for those of us in developing countries because of the difference in currency value. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Syncing to the web for access across multiple devices is very useful.

New article recommendations were handy and appropriate. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

No major problems using ReadCube Papers so far. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Literature searches, reprint collection and organization, and reference management all in one place. I've used it for years (before the cloud version) and I rely on it heavily. I rarely read a paper other than through Papers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Very little! Occasionally hard to download pdfs. And a more usable way to sort papers into folders would be nice. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Automatic import and addition of meta data from files placed in "Watch Folders" makes keeping papers organized simple. The ability to add tags, color marks, flags, and sort papers into (sub)folders makes finding things easy. The PDF reader is feature packed and makes following and downloading citations really easy. It will tell you if the paper is already in your library and gives you the option to import it if it's not.

The browser plugin (Firefox for me) is also really nice for making sure you get proper meta data for papers directly from the web. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Occasionally, finding the meta-data for a paper, even with manual intervention can be frustrating if ReadCube Papers can't seem to find it -- even if it the only hit on an identical Google Scholars search. It's support for BibTeX seems rather shallow at times -- it will export with unsupported characters and you cannot import meta data for a paper from a .bib file.

The search feature seems to not work that well. I can put in an exact match to a paper's title and it will return 20+ entries with the proper one buried somewhere within. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

(1) It's a cloud based application, accessible through a web browser and through an app (that syncs across mac and PC)

(2) The in-built PDF annotator is a great feature!

(3) You can add papers straight from the browser (i.e. from the PubMed website) and it'll download it through the proxy for your university.

(4) ReadCube seems to be responsive to ideas from the public and update the service with new features frequently. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

(1) I found the MS Word citation manager wasn't great, and could be improved. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Convenient with paid version if using Chrome (in theory) Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Features don't work well in chrome and work even less in Firefox. Overpriced compared to how Papers was, and the unpaid version has been rendered useless - so if you decided to stop paying subscription your app is not usable for future work and there is no way to export to use different app. They trap you. We need to disincentivize these business models or we'll be stuck paying out the nose to many small companies in the future to do any work at all. Bring back a Papers model that is supported and a one time purchase.

They even admit the desktop version of the app isn't worth using. The browser is the reason to use it and it is not ready. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The cloud-based structure allows easy access to, and management of my references, from anywhere. Clean interface. Allows annotations. Allows sharing with other members of my group. The "#tags option is great. Matching tools are also highly useful and work most of the time. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Not so much 'dislikes', but a more direct access to the PDFs themselves would we appreciated (maybe a button within the "read" window). Or, being able to read PDFs in an environment that resembles more that of "Preview" (Mac) would greatly improve the experience. Also, I can't seem to properly harness the Search functionalities. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.