Puneet Varma (Editor)

Docear

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Operating system
  
Cross-platform

License
  
GNU GPL

Platform
  
Java

Developer(s)
  
Joeran Beel, Stefan Langer, Marcel Genzmehr, Bela Gipp

Stable release
  
1.2 / December 2, 2015 (2015-12-02)

Type
  
Mind Mapping, Reference management software, Bibliography manager

Docear is what the developers call an “academic literature suite”. Comparable to Microsoft Office, which bundles several applications for office workers, Docear bundles several applications for academics. As of now, these applications are BibTeX based reference management, mind mapping, and some pdf management capabilities. For the future, Docear is supposed to integrate a word processor, PDF editor and academic search engine.

Contents

Docear is written in Java, licensed under the GNU General Public License and based on the open source software Freeplane and JabRef. The term ‘Docear’ has two meanings. First, it is pronounced similarly to “dog ear”, the folded down corner of a paper page. Second, “docear” in Latin means “I would be taught”.

History

Docear is the successor of SciPlore MindMapping (aka FreeMind Scholar) which was originally developed by Joeran Beel and Bela Gipp as part of their PhD projects in 2009 at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg and University of California, Berkeley. In July 2011, Joeran Beel and his colleagues Stefan Langer and Marcel Genzmehr received a grant to re-develop SciPlore MindMapping, since then being called Docear. While SciPlore MindMapping was based on FreeMind, Docear is built upon the mind mapping software Freeplane and the reference manager JabRef. The first version of SciPlore MindMapping was released in May 2009. The first private Alpha of Docear was released in December 2011, the first public Beta in February 2012 which was later presented on CeBIT.

Features

Docear has two key features not always offered by comparable tools. First, Docear lets you import PDF annotations (bookmarks, comments and highlighted text). This way, a document’s most important information can be easily organized. If more information is required than the bookmark or comment itself provides, Docear can open the PDF on the page the bookmarks points to. Second, all information is structured in a mind map. Information management in a mind map is more effective and efficient than using a simple list or social tags.

The features in detail:

  • Integration of all major components required for literature search, organization, and creation into a single application
  • Academic search engine / digital library with free full-text access*
  • Research paper recommender system*
  • Reference manager
  • PDF reader*
  • Information manager (Mind mapper)
  • MS Word, OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and LaTeX add-on*
  • Import and managing of PDF annotations
  • PDF bookmarks
  • PDF comments
  • Highlighted text (with limitations as it requires a PDF viewer that automatically copies highlighted text into a comment on the highlight, currently only PDF exchange viewer for desktop and Foxit mobile for android does this)
  • Structured information management in a mind map instead of simple tables or social tags
  • Using standard formats wherever possible (FreeMind/Freeplane XML, BibTeX, Adobe PDF)
  • Usable instead or as a complement to existing reference managers like JabRef, Zotero, or Mendeley,
  • Full control over your data: No registration required and no data is stored on our servers except you allow it explicitly
  • Free and open source
  • PDF Metadata extraction
  • Optional storing of Metadata directly in PDF files (XMP Metadata)
  • Monitoring for new files
  • Full reference management capabilities due to complete integration of JabRef
  • Full mind mapping capabilities since Docear is developed as add-on for the mind mapping tool Freeplane
  • Platform independent (runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS)
  • Online backup space
  • Synchronization of all data between different computers*
  • Backup of data including versioning*
  • Read (and partly edit) data on Android and iOS devices*

    • * Not yet implemented, or in combination with third party applications

    References

    Docear Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA