Presentation from the "Google Apps for Education European User Group meeting" GEUG 2014 in York/UK

1. Paperpile
Reference management
in the age of Google Apps
Google Apps for Education European User Group meeting
University of York, June 23rd 2014
Stefan Washietl, Founder

2. Reference management: an evolving software category
● What is reference management?
○ Collect and manage references to articles and
books and cite them in a word processor
○ For academics as fundamental as the word
processor itself.
○ Most popular solutions have been designed for
the desktop and the web is only an afterthought
● 100% of universities are de facto
Google Apps institutions
○ Google Calendar as shared group
calendar
○ Institute emails are forwarded to
Gmail
○ Google Docs is used to collaborate
on documents
○ 60-70% of academics use Chrome
as their primary browser
20072006 2008
Papers
Springer
Mendeley
Elsevier
Zotero
George Mason
University
20011989
EndNote
Thomson Reuters
RefWorks
ProQuest
2011 2012
Chrome
OS
Google
Drive
First version
of Chrome
Chrome most popular
browser world-wide

3. A new take on reference management
Correct and reliable
Intuitive and efficient
Enjoyable

4. Collect papers: PDFs

5. Collect papers: Publisher websites

6. Collect papers: Google Scholar

7. Collect papers: PubMed

8. Is PDF Is Website Is database entry
Rule based crawling
for meta-data
Database
lookup
Find original
website
Combine results for
best possible data
Rule based
crawling for PDF
Download PDF
Local cache for immediate
viewing
Google Drive
Persistent storage and universal
access
Analyze PDF for
meta-data
Meta-data PDF

9. Publisher coverage

10. Manage papers: Labels

11. Manage papers: Real-time search

12. Manage papers: Share

13. Manage papers: Meta-data

14. Read papers...

15. ... everywhere

16. Collaborative writing: Word+EndNote does not scale

17. Write papers: Citations and Bibliographies

18. Google platform technologies in Paperpile
Technology Use and benefits in Paperpile
Google Login / OAuth No new passwords at risk, no registration required to try out
Paperpile
Google Drive Generous storage space (30 GB), data accessible from other
applications and on all devices
Google Contacts Easy sharing with colleagues whether or not they are using
Paperpile
AppScript Citations and bibliographies in Google Docs
User interface extensions (popup, right-click menu) Context sensitive UI for importing data
“Content scripts” Enhance popular databases with import buttons
Network APIs Download PDFs from client IP to access restricted resources
FileSystem API Quick access to files without re-downloading them again
Clipboard API Quick export of formatted references or BibTeX
Chrome/ChromeOSAPIs

19. We’re just getting started...
● Incremental improvements (feature update on average every three weeks)
● Site licenses - available August 2014
● PDF annotation - most frequently requested feature
● Android app - missing piece in Paperpile’s long term strategy
Thank you!
Stefan Washietl
stefan@paperpile.com
Visit us at our table at the Ron Cooke Hub until 5pm
Roadmap