Best Ipad App for Reading Scientific Papers

There was a fourth dimension people printed papers for reviewing. Double-spaced text with tables and figures at the cease. Well, with devices like the iPad, people need not impress papers anymore. If paper is better for you lot, that'due south ok, I understand, but at that place'south no longer a "need to print". Today you have apps where you lot tin can read PDF files, make annotations and export them. The question is: what app is best to review a scientific paper?

I've been using several over the years and confess none of them fully satisfies me. My perfect app for reviewing should

– be able to pop-up figures with a click when they're mentioned

– make notes linked with a certain line or range of lines in the text

– ability to make free comments, every bit almost already practise

– write equations using LaTeX

– utilise markdown language as well

– and finally, and most of import, be able to export these comments in a unproblematic and easy to read fashion, allowing me to copy and paste into the boxed reserved for this at the journal's website.

My purpose in this post is not to make an extensive review of the apps I used, but share my feel and why I inverse.

iAnnotate

In the early days of the iPad, I reviewed papers with iAnnotate. One of the principal advantages was selecting a office of the PDF, like an paradigm, and re-create/paste information technology side by side to the part of the text mentioning the figure. Thus, when I read the authors assay, I could easily access the figure to see the results. I could add together notes, and write in the margins, as in nigh PDF note apps. An interesting feature is the ability to go directly to a page farther away, see a figure for example, and go dorsum to the folio where I was reading, similar we do with webpages with hyperlinks. Just…

If I wanted to export my notes, I couldn't. This ways I needed to divide my screen into the annotated PDF and a Notes app where I compiled my comments. As well, the handwriting trace became sluggish with a few updates and I looked for alternatives.

PDF-notes

This is when I tried PDF-notes. Information technology was faster than iAnnotate, the handwriting trace is amend, and I could easily write something in the text by double-tapping the screen to zoom the area where I wanted to comment something. However, I lost the ability to accept figures accessible. Fifty-fifty so I tried to recoup with a small page scroll at the bottom for an easier access to the images.

I used this app for a long fourth dimension, simply the method for compiling my notes was however the same and some features I had on iAnnotate were no more. However, the experience compensated these lacks because I didn't render to iAnnotate. But then something happened.

PDF Expert

For some reason I became tired of PDF notes. Maybe some operations demanded besides many steps, and I looked for a different experience. This is when I constitute Readdle's PDF Practiced. 1 of the major advantages was the sync betwixt the iPad and the mac apps. This fabricated compiling the notes much easier. In fact, a practiced synching was the major problem I experienced with PDF-notes.

The app had all the features for quality handwriting, comments insertion, it is fast and the page filigree view makes accessing whatever page easier without intermediate steps uploaded the annotated file to a cloud like Dropbox. I all the same miss the epitome capture characteristic of iAnnotate, the double-tap to zoom of PDF-notes, but the synching and user experience compensates that. Until I found some other surprising app.

LiquidText

This app is out-of-the-box. Information technology's nonetheless non my perfect paper reviewing app, simply closer. Finally, I got the figure capture feature back. I'm able to brand annotations relatively to a part of the text, or costless comments. There's this neat feature of pinching to compress the PDF (hard to explicate, you need to see it!) assuasive me the access to a effigy while I read the authors analysis. Free handwriting on a side area independent of the document. Merely these are non the most important feature.

Export!!

Finally I tin can export or re-create to the clipboard my comments, including the page in the certificate. This is a major modify in the hard-compilation scheme I had and the main reason I changed. Synching to deject services could exist better, but not a problem considering of the export feature.

I focused on apps for the iPad because that is my ecosystem, but I'm certain at that place are like apps in other platforms. If you have an experience with reviewing papers with apps in Android or Windows, share your experience in the comments for others.

QUESTION: Practice you have a not bad newspaper reviewing experience with one of these, or any other app you'd like to share?

Best Ipad App for Reading Scientific Papers

Source: https://author.miguelpanao.com/what-is-the-best-app-for-reviewing-scientific-papers/

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