sinfull folder structure for "papers"

[Trala-la]

Hi there,
I'm starting a phd and I plan to use Calibre to manage all the scientific dokument ("papers") that I'll collect. That means lots of short texts and a lot of pictures. For this reason I'll stick to pdf... Anyway...

I've read that for Ebooks you'd normally create a folder per authgor ans subfolders for the books. In case of a paper, this is not possible since a paper can have several Authors. Until now, I have my papers ordered in folders according to topics. This means that in one folder I might have a lot of papers.

Could this be a problem for Calibre?
Is this a sinfull folder structure for papers or you'd sugest another one?
Do you have tips on managing Papers?

cheers!

Trala-la

[Gaurnim]

Welcome to MR, Trala-la.

Originally Posted by Trala-la

Until now, I have my papers ordered in folders according to topics. This means that in one folder I might have a lot of papers.

Could this be a problem for Calibre?

You have to be aware that Calibre creates his own folder structure to store copies of the ebooks you import in it.
So you can have your papers stored by topic on your side, but Calibre will automatically store a copy of them in another location with folders by author.
You would then be able to find all papers on a topic in Calibre by assigning tags to the papers according to the related topics.

In case of multiple authors, I think the folder name is the author string, meaning the full list of authors entered for the document.
This would have to be confirmed by someone who has a Calibre version running close to him. I'm currently at work and say this only from memory.

[Trala-la]

Hi Gaurnim
Thanks for the Reply.
I just checked out how the document copies are saved and you are right.
The new folder has just the name of all authors as string. If the document "Compueranalysis" was written by John and Michael the folder looks like this:
\John_Michael\Computeranalysis

Since Papers have a main topic, you could create a folder using this tag. In case of multiple tag, you could use the first (main tag) for the directory. If the Author is needed, you might eben be able to write his name as first tag and have the folder created with his name.

Is there a way to "pimp" the software in order to create the directories according to, lets say, the first Tag?

cheers!

Trala-la

[Abisha]

Hello Trala-la. I'm in a similar situation as yourself. I too struggled to find a good solution for organizing all the peer reviewed journals, articles, papers, etc., most of which were all in PDF. The solution I've found that works best for me, is as an open source free application being developed by the George Mason University called Zotero.

Here's a truncated feature list pulled directly from the Zotero.org website:

Features

• Automatically capture citations
• Remotely back up and sync your library
• Store PDFs, images, and web pages
• Cite from within Word and OpenOffice
• Take rich-text notes in any language
• Wide variety of import/export options
• Free, open source, and extensible
• Collaborate with group librarie

• Organize with collections and tags
• Access your library from anywhere
• Automatically grab metadata for PDFs
• Use thousands of bibliographic styles
• Instantly search your PDFs and notes
• Advanced search and data mining tools
• Interface available in over 30 languages
• Recommendation engine and RSS feeds

I've been using this application for about a year now, well the last two semesters anyways. Normally I would say, stay away from "beta" versions; but the beta builds of Zotero are feature rich and very very stable, in two semesters I've never had a single problem.

-Abisha

P.S. At this point in time, Zotero requires the firefox web browser. Firefox 3.5 was just released. Ciao.

[Landrovan]

Like Gaurnim said, Calibre create it's own directory structure. This structure is for use by Calibre only, you shouldn't go check this yourself.

The best way I see this is put a tag for the subject. When you need a specific subject, just do a research with the tag.

[Gaurnim]

Originally Posted by Trala-la

Since Papers have a main topic, you could create a folder using this tag. In case of multiple tag, you could use the first (main tag) for the directory. If the Author is needed, you might eben be able to write his name as first tag and have the folder created with his name.

Is there a way to "pimp" the software in order to create the directories according to, lets say, the first Tag?

Kovid Goyal, who is a member of this forum, is the creator of Calibre.
He is the one who can answer about feature requests and modifications to the program.

Although I suspect that he will tell you that this folder structure is only meant for internal Calibre use and should not be used or modified by any other mean.

[Trala-la]

I read some post from Kovid, where he said, that the Structure is going to stay as it is.
The problem with the actual structure, ist that everything ist copied into the new Calibre folder instead of just saving a Link to the actual file.
I wouldnt minfd using the Calibre structure, but for multiple author dokuments its just too complicated.

[Abecedary]

I'm with Abisha--use a tool more suitable for the task. While Calibre is a great program, it's strength is in managing and converting ebooks, which usually have a single author (or at most a small few). Something like Zotero is specifically designed for cataloging, managing, and citing research papers. I'm sure you can shoehorn Calibre into your workflow, but there are better tools for what you want to accomplish.

[Jellby]

JabRef can be another option, especially if you are going to work with BibTeX.