Load papers from a distant server, shared by different users and comment

Help
1

I am new to JabRef and would like to try it to better use the papers.
There are some papers shared by users on a distant server in scattered places. Is it possible that JabRef refers to all of them, specifying where there are and also having the possibility of each user to write comments and interact with each other ?
It would be ideal, that double clicking on a paper from JabRef would open the paper inside or outside JabRef.
Comments by each user could be written from JabRef, and saved in the database.
Is this possible ? If yes, how ?

2

Hello Baptiste,

  1. What “distant servers” are you refering to?
  2. You can share a library with other users using various methods. See Share - JabRef. I would recommend storing your library on a server all members of your team have access to, e.g. via dropbox, syncthing, github, gitea etc. and employ a version control system like git or mercurial.
    JabRef also works with a shared SQL database, but I personally have never tried using it like that.
  3. Yes, you can add links to entries and if you click on the link, your default browser will automatically open the website.
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    Alternatively, you can link to documents, e.g. pdf or txt documents and open them from within JabRef.
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  4. Yes, JabRef has the “comment” and “comment-user” features.
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3

Many thanks.

  • Is there an example of loading papers to a postgreSQL database ?
  • Isn’t it redundant to use both Syncthing or dropbox, and git on top of this ? I don’t understand the use of git in this case.
  • Is it possible to annotate a document, and highlight some parts ? And have this content shared with all users ?
4

I don’t think so. Some users of JabRef are utilizing PostgreSQL, so maybe one of them will comment here.

You don’t have to. It is just one of the options. Git allows you to easily go back in time to a prior commit and you to easily see who made what change and when.

You can comment an entry (but not a linked file) within JabRef and share or you can annotate a document outside of JabRef with your favourite document editor software (If we are talking about pdf, this could be for example Okular) and share.