Academic tool suggestions

[joekilner]

Anyone made any progress on this front?

For me the ideal tool would integrate with CiteULike. You should be able to synchronise your pdf library with the server (although there would be some issues with annotations) and keep a synchronised bibtex library that you can browse and maybe edit on the iliad. The killer features would be pushing back to CiteULike those papers that you have actually read and when you read them as well as an OCR'd version of your annotations as a private note.

The more I think about it the less work this seems (apart from the OCR which isn't really needed, it's mostly just a bit of logging, synchronising files and scripting some HTML gets and puts - it could mostly be done on a PC and then just copied back and forth) and the more useful it could be...

But I don't even have an iliad yet, never mind a working knowledge of what is and isn't possible on it, so this is all a bit pie in the sky...

[nekokami]

See this thread: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22261

[nekokami]

This never worked out on the iLiad, so now I'm trying to get someone interested in developing it for the Android platform (or iOS). Just thought I'd see if any of the interested parties from the earlier discussion would like to chime in at the new thread:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=1002924

[davidspitzer]

Originally Posted by nekokami

As I've commented elsewhere, I'm a doctoral student, and I'd like to use an eBook reader as a tool in my academic work. I spent a little bit of time thinking about what my "ideal" software for this purpose would look like. Here are my suggestions. I post them here in the hopes that others with similar interests and needs can help refine them further (or possibly suggest existing software that can be used for these purposes).

Purpose of tool: to allow review of literature, as well as entry and analysis of qualitative data, entry (and possibly analysis) of quantitative data, and possibly creation and/or editing of drafts of research reports

Literature review/analysis:

• Read PDF, txt, rtf, html, and (perhaps with conversion) doc
• Allow each document to store metadata sufficient for generating MLA and APA formatted references (i.e. author, title, year of publication, publisher, etc)
• For paginated documents, maintain awareness of original pagination. The easiest way to do this is probably to ensure half-page views of PDF, e.g. A5 size screen, with automatic page panning. Also allow entry of a start page offset number.
• While reading a document, the reader should be able to:
  • highlight text for quotes, with metadata tagging
  • make notes (e.g. in margins), also with metadata tags
• Export mode allows selection of specific metadata tags, and within those tags, specific entries may be selected/unselected
• Export mode produces output list of all comments and quotes with MLA or APA formatted references
• Bonus: include a decent RTF (at least) text editor so drafts can be created or edited on the device

Entry/analysis of qualitative data:

• Freehand note writing, including sketches - will require HWR either on device or on base computer
• Ability to highlight notes and tag with metadata, including multiple tags per entry and overlapping highlight "chunks"
• Tool/view to search, group and sort entries by metadata, including hierarchical groups, boolean search, context search, and "sounds like" search, with search logs
• Tools to search for strings in text and count occurrences of strings, create concordances, etc.
• Tools to create cross-links between categories of metadata, classify codes/metadata
• Bonus: semantic network tool allowing entries to be linked to nodes and nodes to be developed into networks illustrating relationships
• Bonus 2: apply coding tools to audio data as well as text
• Bonus 3: export to a wiki-compatable format for sharing with the research community

Entry/analysis of quantitative data:

• creation and implementation of entry forms
• Data-collection mode using entry forms, simple database to hold results
• export to standard statistical packages (export field headers/codes as well as data)
• Bonus: port R to the device (http://www.r-project.org)

It seems to me that the iLiad has the hardware necessary to meet these needs, because it has a stylus entry mechanism, but other vendors may also have (or be developing) appropriate devices.

Comments?

I may have missed it in one of the posts but I did not see anyone mention the ipad. I am a law student and it has been pure manna from heaven - all my pdf's and books in one location with full annotation, real web browsing, text creation, Bluetooth keyboard support, tons of third party apps, the list goes on. I love eink for linear reading, but for asynchronis activities like researching, annotating and combining multiple data streams, I feel the iPad is far superior.

Perhaps the ipad would fit your bill it seems to me it is the closest of what is currently available other than a full blown tablet. With regards to tablet PC's, to be pragmatic though most of the tablets especially the cheaper ones have dismal battery life. I have found the ipad outlasts them buy a factor of 5 or more. I have a motion tablet I use for work that set my company back $3000, it has dual batteries weighs in significantly more than the ipad and does not even last half as long. If i go all day with intense reading and internet, I am usually at about 60% still at the end of the day on my ipad - i would be happy to demo any of your pdf's on the ipad if you want to see what they look like

ps since I purchased my iPad my Motion tablet has not left its doc on my desk and has now become an overpriced and underperforming desktop

David

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by davidspitzer

I may have missed it in one of the posts but I did not see anyone mention the ipad. I am a law student and it has been pure manna from heaven - all my pdf's and books in one location with full annotation, real web browsing, text creation, Bluetooth keyboard support, tons of third party apps, the list goes on. I love eink for linear reading, but for asynchronis activities like researching, annotating and combining multiple data streams, I feel the iPad is far superior.

You could very well be correct -- see my sig line. iAnnotate looks very promising, but what about tagging and collecting quotes and notes? Are you able to do this, and if so, how?

[davidspitzer]

Originally Posted by nekokami

You could very well be correct -- see my sig line. iAnnotate looks very promising, but what about tagging and collecting quotes and notes? Are you able to do this, and if so, how?

within iannotate, you have full markup capability with highlight bookmarks and margin notes. with the full web you can access info sources and bookmark/annoatate them via pages as a text list or perhaps use something like this might help

http://mekentosj.com/papers/ipad/

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by davidspitzer

within iannotate, you have full markup capability with highlight bookmarks and margin notes. with the full web you can access info sources and bookmark/annoatate them via pages as a text list or perhaps use something like this might help

http://mekentosj.com/papers/ipad/

I've looked at Papers. It does almost half of what I need. iAnnotate does almost half of the rest. The bit inbetween is the ability to tag the annotations (whether highlighted text or scribbles) with terms that I can then use to search or build lists.

Let's say I read 12 journal articles. As I read, I highlight especially helpful quotes, and I tag some of them "cognitive development" and some "learning theory." I also make some margin annotations. I tag some of those "learning theory" and some "constructivism." Then I go on to the next article, reading, marking, and tagging.

At the end, I need to write a paper about learning theory. I want to poll my entire journal article set and ask for all the annotations or highlighted quotes that are tagged "learning theory," and get a list with:

- The quote or my annotation (scribble would be ok, HWR would be cool)
- The document title the snippet comes from
- The page of the document that the snippet comes from
- If at all possible, the document should be registered in a system (like Papers) that contains the author's name, journal name, volume, date, etc. and a bibliography entry should be generated for all the snippets I select and export.

So I run my query using boolean combinations of tags, check or uncheck a few of the items to get exactly the list I want, hit "export," and get an RTF document containing my snippets at the top, each followed by a correctly formatted inline citation, and an alphabetized list of bibliography entries in APA format.

I'd also like to be able to save searches for re-use or later reference.

Does that make sense?

[davidspitzer]

Originally Posted by nekokami

I've looked at Papers. It does almost half of what I need. iAnnotate does almost half of the rest. The bit inbetween is the ability to tag the annotations (whether highlighted text or scribbles) with terms that I can then use to search or build lists.

Let's say I read 12 journal articles. As I read, I highlight especially helpful quotes, and I tag some of them "cognitive development" and some "learning theory." I also make some margin annotations. I tag some of those "learning theory" and some "constructivism." Then I go on to the next article, reading, marking, and tagging.

At the end, I need to write a paper about learning theory. I want to poll my entire journal article set and ask for all the annotations or highlighted quotes that are tagged "learning theory," and get a list with:

- The quote or my annotation (scribble would be ok, HWR would be cool)
- The document title the snippet comes from
- The page of the document that the snippet comes from
- If at all possible, the document should be registered in a system (like Papers) that contains the author's name, journal name, volume, date, etc. and a bibliography entry should be generated for all the snippets I select and export.

So I run my query using boolean combinations of tags, check or uncheck a few of the items to get exactly the list I want, hit "export," and get an RTF document containing my snippets at the top, each followed by a correctly formatted inline citation, and an alphabetized list of bibliography entries in APA format.

I'd also like to be able to save searches for re-use or later reference.

Does that make sense?

yes it sure does. i know i can search for tagged terms in a document ill try doing a global search and get back to you

[nekokami]

Thanks, that would be very helpful. (This is in Papers, right?) Can you get an exportable list, even from a single document? Even if the search/export function has to be done on the desktop version, that would still be a huge help.

[davidspitzer]

Originally Posted by nekokami

Thanks, that would be very helpful. (This is in Papers, right?) Can you get an exportable list, even from a single document? Even if the search/export function has to be done on the desktop version, that would still be a huge help.

i have not purchased papers as iannotate does what i need for law school but i tried it in iannotate and you can globally search for a tagged term and the list of all docs with that tag come up you have to go into each doc then to see the search hits but it carries the search term into the doc. I am not sure if it is exactly what you need and there is probably other more elegent ways (perhaps in papers) but I am pretty sure that the ipad is the closest you will get to your requirements list of any of the readers.

[nekokami]

It certainly sounds like it. Thanks for checking!