Overview
Paperpile is a reference manager that resides entirely on the Web. There’s nothing to download except a Chrome add-on, and no account is needed aside from your existing Google account. Unlike reference managers that charge you extra to cloud-host your PDF files, Paperpile makes use of cloud storage you already have—Google Drive—and with 15GB of free storage, you won’t run out of space quickly. This means that once you upload your PDFs to Google Drive via Paperpile, you can access them from anywhere.
Paperpile describes its Features here.
Cost
Free 30-day trial
Academic: $2.99/month
Business: $9.99/month
Strengths
Can be accessed anywhere you can access your personal Gmail account
Seamlessly integrates into Google Docs using Google Chrome once PaperPile's Chrome extension is installed and logged in
Citations can be imported from RIS files or added from any web page
Organize, annotate, and save PDFs with Paperpile's tool or an external tool
Easy to use with explanatory text in the app to help
Allows you to import metadata and PDFs from your browser (similar to Zotero’s one click import) and asks you if you want to add the item (PDF and details) to Paperpile
Colorful and easy annotations feature
When the PDF is not encrypted, if you highlight the text it will copy the highlighted text into notes with your annotations that you can then copy and paste when writing a paper
Provides look up to find similar journal articles to what you are researching, which allows you to do research through the app, especially if you’re doing research from science databases
Limitations
Fairly expensive, especially compared to free options like Mendeley and Zotero
No offline capability
A plug-in is in the works for MS Word but as of now, it is heavily reliant on Google and Google Drive
New product and some features need to be worked out
Paperpile does allow you to share papers via a link so people without a Paperpile account can still view the list, but they can't work collaboratively on the list like they would be able to if they had a Paperpile account
Paperpile Help
- Paperpile Help CenterIncludes help categories for: Using Paperpile, Getting Started, Account & Billing, and FAQs.
- Paperpile ForumA place to ask questions and get information in the Paperpile community. Free but requires you to sign up and log in to use.
- Paperpile LibGuidesPaperpile has created a suite of LibGuides, or research guides, on a variety of research, writing, and citation topics. This is a directory of their LibGuides.