ReadCube Papers

I created an account to write a review on this app. Yes, really. This app is unbelievably horrible. I have never known any paid service (or even free) that is this bad. It cannot recognize pretty much anything that is not in the most standard journal format, e.g., book section, proceedings, conference paper, you name it. It doesn't even recognize Google scholar references properly. Something is seriously wrong with this product. I wouldn't consider this product if it was free. Can't believe this charges $60 per year and is still in business. I kept using it because I already paid for a yearly subscription but it has constantly amazed me how bad a paid reference program can be.

The once GREAT and BEST Papers 3 app is ruined. I cannot believe people could do it, and others let them do it and even paid for it...

I switched from the original Papers, which I had used from Papers 1, with some trepidation. I have now used ReadCube Papers for almost a year, and have been very happy with it. Other reviewers have complained about the matching being clunky, but I use the document doi which works well. The citation manager works well for manuscripts, and my large >7k library is fine. The help desk is helpful and prompt.

Like pretty much every other reviewer I've read, I also despair at the change from Papers 3 to Readcube Papers. I used to like Papers 3 - it did what I needed it to do, and I built up a database with it. I tried out Readcube Papers but even after testing for 15 minutes, many drawbacks were evident. It just doesn't have a lot of the functionality of Papers 3. Even something as simple as setting document type - Papers 3 had a lot more options to chose from, which are missing in the new version. Papers 3 allow browsing via thumbnail mode, the new app does not. The list goes on! Oh and the move to a horrible subscription model! They have massacred a good app which is now no longer supported and constantly crashes with the latest OSX. Shame on them.

I have been struggling with the upgrade for a year now. After many emails with ReadCube I have essentially given up. The upgrade ruined what was a great reference manager. I am beyond figuring out how to fix it. What else is out there to take its place?

This upgrade is a disaster. On so many levels it sickens me to think I've invested so much time in the Papers software over many years and now find core functionality missing. Match is completely deficient, no longer allowing the search across different databases that Papers 3 was so good at. Papers 3 also populated entries with Title AND subtitle. I have hundreds of books in my library which use the Papers 3 system of naming. Now Papers 4 has removed subtitle! So my books are now missing half of their title! I'm now wondering in what way ReadCube Papers is even useable as research software, especially for books and work in the humanities. So disappointing.

Sadly, the best detailed features from Papers3 are missing in Readcube Papers (2021, v4.25.3). Don't upgrade, keep your old Papers3! I'd been using Papers (v1, v2 and v3) since ~2006 or so, about 15 years. The features that made it easiest to use, mainly the automatic matching (autofilling title, author, journal metadata) directly from the publisher's website, pasting URL's, just don't work. My new paper entries look like a mess - no metadata, just an ugly PDF filename. I have to manually fix each paper's title/authors/metadata like back in 2006! The search function Is also lacking - I can't search only my library, or only Google Scholar etc. These are the two features that made Papers3 so fast to use, putting it ahead of other products. Now it is probably on-par with Mendeley.

I've been using Papers for over a decade. Its been overall a good experience with some occasional hiccups. Now I've moved to ReadCube Papers and that's changed. It no longer matches any of my humanities books and seems completely oriented toward scientific research databases, ignoring books altogether. Their support are quite up front about this, stating that this is still a work in progress. Papers 3 handled multiple research databases including ACM, Gutenberg, Google Scholar options etc. That's all gone now and if I do get a match, then the detailed information that would automatically populate the synopsis ends up being a generic sentence describing the publisher. What a disappointment.

this readcubepaper works very slow when you expend the folder list. This is not the only reason I give a 0/5 score to it. The support can not give usefull help at all. Besides the technique limitation they have, they dont listen to what I said. I said it is slow and may freeze the app when expending a folder list. In their response email they would change the discription to "couple of seconds" waiting time which is fine and normal.

ReadCube Papers has been around for a while now. I will focus on one aspect: matching. The latter worked pretty well in Papers 3, although some implementations, such as with Zotero are still superior, in my opinion. Finding and retrieving meta data is important since manual entry is a time-consuming task. Now, often, the data needs fine-tuning but a basic look up is highly desirable. ReadCube Papers fails miserably at this task. Unless there is a readily detectable DOI, RCP finds nothing. If you have mostly recent science and medical papers, that might not bother you that much, but for people who are in humanities and also add books, it's a desaster. They recommend putting author and short title. That has never worked for me, not ever, not a single time; I've got thousands of papers. RCP doesn't give you look-up options, i.e. specify libraries etc. Zero. Even entering a DOI manually or an ISBN returns no results. None. Compare that with Zotero that gives me a 90%+ return on ISBNs. This is just one aspect, but a crucial one. This is unacceptable. I'm currently giving ReadCube Papers a second try and have even bought a plan. It syncs well with iOS, that's really the only positive aspect. However, if the matching desaster isn't bettered, I'll be out again. A final tidbit, whenever I quit RCP (normally), MacOS reports it 'crashed'. What does that tell you? They can't even get the shut down right. This is banana-software. Sold unripe to the customer, left there to ripen over time. It's been such a long time now, that the banana is becoming foul and putrid.

I must agree with the other negative comments- this is the worst software "upgrade" I have seen. The ease of use and functionality was completed disrupted. I want to go back to version 3, but can't due to Mac OS incompatibility. I will probably migrate back to endnote, and I was a Papers user since version 1.

I was forced to do this upgrade. I did an upgrade to my iOS to Sur Big and following that Readcube Papers has disappeared from my laptop. I agree with all the negative comments.

It is unbelievable how bad the transition from Papers 3 to Papers 4 is. The user interface is basically new requiring familiarization, much functionality is missing, and most importantly the citations that were used in writing previous articles on Word with Papers 3 are now lost and have to be re-entered from scratch. Utterly shameful for a forced transition that did not support the update. Extremely unhappy user and the forced transition to a subscription model for an INFERIOR and INCOMPATIBLE product is utterly unacceptable. ZERO ZERO ZERO starts.

I need to join this growing chorus in resounding my utter dissatisfaction with what has happened to Papers. Like many others I have been a long time user of Papers 3 and have tried to keep using until Readcube stopped supporting it. With the most recent Big Sur update, Papers 3 has become unstable and was forced to upgrade. What a mistake. It's hard to imagine how new software versions are meant to improve on the previous, but this is the opposite with Papers 4. Quite a few features we are familiar with have changed: - The data storage model has shifted to the cloud. So this means each time you use the desktop app or the web app, Papers 4 needs to contact remote servers and download your data. This can sometimes be slow depending on your internet connection and how responsive Readcube servers are at that time. - The fields do not auto-populate. In the previous version, you can do a few things: enter the title or DOI for instance, and Papers automatically searches and returns a list of possibilities, which you can then select and complete the data entry. Not anymore with Papers 4. You'd be lucky if Papers 4 fully saves everything you've manually entered. - No more database normalisation. Commonly reused fields like journal name, author and editor names are well managed in Papers 3. The system is smart enough to detect, as you start typing in the first few letters in these fields that they are already in your database and then offer to choices for you to select. Not anymore with the new version. You'll have to type in the field each time in full. There are more useful features in Papers 3 that have been removed from Papers 4. But for me the worst possible thing is that while exporting my data from Papers 3 to 4 went without a hitch, Papers 4 went on to loose over 90% of my entries. Yes, I had 1800 items. Both the desktop and web apps showed that they were all there right after the export. But then when I ran the apps again the next day, I could only see 120 of them. So be extra mindful when upgrading.

At least it has only one star - but zero stars would be more appropriate. Papers lost all of its functionality and I hate ReadCube for this.

Really? I can easy import tools from your desktop and other reference managers, wow)

I’ve been using Papers since version 3, and was essential part during my work routine After it’s acquired by ReadCube, many functions haven’t been implemented properly. The biggest problem to me is its citation manager they have added. It has no use! I can't recommend it for now. Hopefully their support team will fix all the glitches and make it work smoothly again.

I will add to the flow of bad reviews. This is truly and without exaggeration the worst piece of software I have come across. I have been a power user of Papers 3 and since the last Big Sur update had to move to ReadCube's takeover version. Nothing in terms of dev rules is respected with this app, let alone basic Mac OS conventions. This surely feels like a textbook example on how to destroy an app. I would sincerely be willing to make myself available to ReadCube's dev team would they want my inputs. For the time being, there is much to be ashamed.

With Papers 3 stop working (it keeps crashing after I upgraded to MacOS 11.3.1), I tried very hard to integrate ReadCube Papers into my workflow just as I used to when using Papers 3. But I'm discouraged with two most frustrating features of this software: 1. When I edit the pdf file using externally PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat, it will automatically replace my edited version with a clean slated new PDF file so all my edits are gone next time you open it from the ReadCube Papers library! 2. There is almost no hotkey whatsoever in this software. Even the simple CMD+W (close window), CMD+H (hide the window), CMD+C (copy reference), CTRL+Tab (switch tab) do not work. Many hotkeys that used to work with Papers 3 are all gone. It remains as a disaster. I'm now in this void space where there is no replacement of Papers 3 , which was seamlessly integrated into my workflow.

A complete desaster. I cant use my papers 3 anymore and most of my papers were not transferred to read cube papers aka papers 4. I can't find anything and have no idea how to finish writing my current paper. What can I say it's catastrophic how bad this new software is. GIVE ME BACK MY PAPERS 3!!! - I love it soo much and I would pay you ten times the price that you ask for ur useless subscription plan of papes 4.