JabRef before version 3 was pretty compact and snappy. It's essentially editing a text file for taking notes, except you can search through, download arxiv and journal articles (with LocalCopy extension), launch the associated PDFs.
I'm not sure if I would ditch Zotero. Using grep over a bib file is nice but I guess you are opening the DOIs in browser every time?
The reason I like Zotero is because I can use it offline, have my all documents synced (the backup feature is one of the best things) when needed and I can organize my papers according to project/paper I'm working on. Actually one thing I do wish Zotero would add is tab groups which will allow me have papers open but grouped by project. It's based on Firefox which does support this so I hope it's a matter of time.
I just finished importing and sorting thousands of PDF research papers, about 50 GB I've accumulated over the decades. Originally, I was sorting them in file system directly, but the whole thing got out of hand at some point, and thus the Documents folder became a dumping ground for PDFs. So I decided to take control of the situation and use Zotero to manage all this stuff. First I used Claude Code to generate all the BibTex files for the PDFs, then sort them into categories (still on the filesystem). Then created a master bibtex file that lists all the docs in each category. I used that to bulk import in Zotero, which then normalised all the file names once imported. What's really cool is that you can use Zotero built in web APIs to get an external tool to manipulate your collection directly. I've also setup WebDAV to sync the entire collection across multiple machines. Can you do all these without Zotero? Absolutely. And I did, but can't say I'll be looking back any time soon.
> First I used Claude Code to generate all the BibTex files for the PDFs
I think this has an unnecessary risk of hallucinated bibliographic data. For anyone doing something similar in the future, it would be more reliable to make a LLM generate a list of DOIs and have Zotero import the DOIs.
I have always stayed away from additional software for bibliography management for similar reasons that the authors cites. However, while I do not use Zotero the software, their ZoteroBib (https://zbib.org/) has been a huge time saver. No login or account needed; just copy the URL or DOI and it generates the BibTeX entry. I find it far more accurate than Google Scholar.
I tried to use Zotero so many times... and then I just tried a few other options, and in the end I realised that Zotero is the standard for academic writing... and I just could never got into it... in the end I used a text file, a literal text file and I am quite proud of my academic writing, I don't wish to do it again, but in the end, what worked for me was a literal piece of crap txt file.
These frontends are necessary however because researchers in non-computer related fields are not trained/proficient at command line tools. Many of them need help installing software. Many of them don’t use raw text files much either. They use MS word files instead etc.
This sells Zotero short in so many ways, but you do you, I guess. Have fun hand formatting between the dozen citation/reference formats every other journal chooses, seemingly at random
Why would you need that? 99% of the time, you'll just grab the BibTeX from where you're getting the paper (Google Scholar, arXiv, ResearchGate, etc.) and paste it on the .bib file. LaTeX will take care of formatting it when you \cite.
The reason I like Zotero is because I can use it offline, have my all documents synced (the backup feature is one of the best things) when needed and I can organize my papers according to project/paper I'm working on. Actually one thing I do wish Zotero would add is tab groups which will allow me have papers open but grouped by project. It's based on Firefox which does support this so I hope it's a matter of time.
I think this has an unnecessary risk of hallucinated bibliographic data. For anyone doing something similar in the future, it would be more reliable to make a LLM generate a list of DOIs and have Zotero import the DOIs.
These frontends are necessary however because researchers in non-computer related fields are not trained/proficient at command line tools. Many of them need help installing software. Many of them don’t use raw text files much either. They use MS word files instead etc.