| I'm in the middle of my PhD and switched from printing papers to reading them on my iPad roughly two years ago. There are some things I miss from paper but overall I found the pros to overweight the cons. I haven't found that flipping back and forth on iPad is that horrible, to be honest. Not sure how helpful this will be but I'll share what I've been doing for now.
I use the following apps: * Mendeley (to organize papers) * PDF Expert (to annotate PDFs) * GoodNotes (mostly when working out the maths) My usual workflow is: * Read through the paper * Annotate in the paper using Apple pencil as I read through * Figure out the maths on the iPad when needed * When I get back to a computer, upload the annotated file to Mendeley and type summary notes in Mendeley A few things that I like/dislike about iPad when compared to paper. + Search for information on the web while reading paper more easily + Check notes/annotations quickly from my computer + Share notes easily + Search notes easily + Clean desk =D - More context switching needed when I need to scramble something - Mendeley misses some basic features on iOS (e.g. attach PDF to existing paper) so need to context switch with computer at some point after reading the paper I would say that for 90% of the papers I go through, where I don't dive that deep in the paper, the experience is just as good on iPad. For the 10% of the papers I read where I go in-depth, redo proofs, etc, it's a little more tedious.
While it's for sure not perfect, given the above pros, I can live with the cons. |
On the other hand, I love https://paperpile.com/app