[boyband6666]

Zotero has improved a lot, though sadly it still has a way to go on the user experience of Mendeley. My main gripes are

- The way that it still doesn't play nice with cloud services (syncing the directory and its just a matter of time until you get database corruption. It takes a lot of wonky setting up to get it to kind of work, which just shouldn't be the case

- The lack of developers and thus slow pace of improvement. I'm a researcher not a programmer - which I think describes most people using it. That means unfortunately we are reliant on one or two volunteers to improve the product. The pace of improvement is slow, and theres also no way to meaningfully advance it - be that through offering bounties for someone to implement certain features, just inputing lists of bugs/feature requests (the list is already v long, and doesn't move much), or anything else.

It's a really good bit of software (and I don't want to sound ungrateful), I just know it still has a lot of quirks. This means it can't always do what you want, and it isn't an easy obvious choice for new researchers - Mendeley is certainly more familiar and easier to use.

[zwaps]

It is a good idea to get some Zotero cloud storage. The sync works perfectly for me. Since any serious library will be over the Mendeley free limit, I think it's a fair comparision.

Of course Zoteros development is less funded and less agile. Given that, I think they have worked on many shortcomings. The interface is now good, the group-based sharing works, PDFs are read and meta-data is added well. The import plugin is better than that of Mendeley.

Mendeley has an advantage in that it has a great PDF viewer and editor. But since you can not do anything with these PDFs and annotations, like export them or send them anywhere, it's now pretty much useless.

Switching is not easy, but in the long run I don't think you'd be faced with much issues going from Mendeley to Zotero. It was certainly worth it for me.

As it stands, you can still import from Mendeley to Zotero, so I'd at least do that now, until Elsevier finds a way to shut this down completely.

[dstillman]

> The lack of developers and thus slow pace of improvement [...] we are reliant on one or two volunteers to improve the product

I'm not sure why you have that impression. Zotero has amazing, invaluable volunteers, but there's a paid, full-time dev team working on Zotero every day. In the last year, we've added:

- Google Docs integration [1]

- Unpaywall integration [2]

- A new, greatly improved PDF recognition system [3]

- Faster citing in large documents [3]

- A much more powerful saving interface [4]

- Mendeley import...

- ZoteroBib, a free web service for generating bibliographies [5]

- A barcode scanner for iOS [6]

- Regular updates and bug fixes [7]

[1] https://www.zotero.org/blog/google-docs-integration/

[2] https://www.zotero.org/blog/improved-pdf-retrieval-with-unpa...

[3] https://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-5-0-36/

[4] https://twitter.com/zotero/status/991052142717886464

[5] https://www.zotero.org/blog/introducing-zoterobib/

[6] https://www.zotero.org/blog/scan-books-into-zotero-from-your...

[7] https://www.zotero.org/support/changelog

(Disclosure: Zotero developer)

[boyband6666]

I didn't realise there was a full time team as well. As I said I am grateful it exists, and advocate for Zotero to be the preferred option for nearly all opportunities.

It is fair to say though that it isn’t as well resourced as others, and is also starting from behind. As long as that momentum continues it should eventually be the de facto solution (iff Mendeley are going to make user unfriendly choices), but as yet I don't think it is comparable to the behemoths like R that have maturity and continuous development and thus are superior in every possible way to the paid alternatives (Stata, SPSS).

[burtonator]

I have an app similar to Zotero (Polar) and we don't sync with cloud services either.

It's a bit of an anti-feature. We can't really control the data store if you're monkeying around with it under the hood.

Polar already supports cloud sync so we encourage users to use that. Same with Zotero I imagine.

- The lack of developers and thus slow pace of improvement.

Do you mean the dev pace of Zotero is slow? I wonder if their legacy infra is slowing them down.

[montalbano]

> The way that it still doesn't play nice with cloud services (syncing the directory and its just a matter of time until you get database corruption. It takes a lot of wonky setting up to get it to kind of work, which just shouldn't be the case

I'm using Zotero's $20/year for 2GB space membership and it was quick and easy to set up. Works great too.

[boyband6666]

My library is about 4gb, and will probably hit 6 or 7gb in the next year as I make sure I have a copy of all papers in it. I'm already paying for G Drive however (previously I had One Drive), and would rather have one bill, and everything in one place (control over my own data, and all that).

[xarthur]

For me, it is better to separate the file sync into other professional software (such as dropbox) as they do it more professionally. Use Zotero only for handling index and metadata, and you'll also get much larger space, more stable service for a cheaper price.

[boyband6666]

Fully agree. This is exactly what I've been trying to do :-)

[Libbum]

What cloud service are you attempting to connect to? I'm using my universities' box.com account - which generally has pretty appalling support (on linux at least). Zotero has managed this flawlessly.

[boyband6666]

So I work over a home PC, work PC, and a laptop. I'm already paying for limitless Google Drive, so want to use that. It kind of works, but is not a simple option - you have to set certain directories to sync, and not others (otherwise: corruption). I'm guessing box is similar?

[Libbum]

Hmmm. No, I have none of those issues. I sync via WebDAV, automatic sync & full-text content selected. My three computers all have different library paths.

Having never set it up with Google Drive, I'm not sure of anything else that could help your situation. In that sense your original point is quite valid then - this must be a quirk that still needs ironing out.

[boyband6666]

Looking at it, yes Box works that way, but G Drive does not without some kind of third party integration, and even then for limited storage: https://www.zotero.org/support/kb/webdav_services

My system does seem to work pretty well, I just prefer it when things are very much plug & play. It stops you screwing anythign up, and makes it easy for non power-users to get things done.