Perhaps not the best choice of words - but let’s say “career academics”. All scientific staff in Germany has to sign the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundesdatenschutzgesetz , the Data Protection Act, which explicity prohibits putting data or informtion that belongs to the organization on third-party servers (such as Google Docs). As such, using Google Docs for any serious work is out of the question.
We have two PhD students writing up their theses, and have had a few masters students do the same, using Google Docs. Works quite well actually. I myself have written multiple papers using it (+ Paperpile of course!).
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That’s interesting. Can you elaborate on that? Who has to sign what exactly? Your link goes to the actual law. Every country has some sort of data/privacy protection legislature. But I would be interested what you sign and if that is a national thing (as opposed to federal state or university specific agreement).
I’m from Austria and have worked closely with scientists from Germany for years. It’s the first time I hear about it. It would mean no scientist could use Gmail for their work (which I’m sure many do).
Thanks for engaging the discussion.
There’s clearly large potential for bias in your data: you run what has always been a Chrome-only service. You can’t use your own visitor numbers to estimate your potential user base in the alternate world where you did have Safari support without some big error bars. Many of us visit in Chrome because we’re required to, not at all because we want to or because that’s our primary browser. Also, the “battery issue” has been getting “fixed” according to the chrome issue tracker for years now. They make small incremental progress, but so does Safari, and the difference remains stark in my experience.
Also, the notion that, because you see similar usage of Safari and Firefox in your (biased) data, if you support one you’d “have to support [the other]” does not follow. You can put your resources towards whatever you want (including exclusively chrome).
That said, I’d be very happy with mobile + native desktop apps, and a much more light-weight browser integration for Safari (and MobileSafari, I hope!) Indeed, I’d personally prefer this to the current large browser-based app for my own usage.
Please do keep in mind those of us who don’t use Word, Docs, or any other word processor, though. 100% of computer science, math, and much of economics, at the very least, are done typesetting our own LaTeX, which we write in text editors. The good news is that integration with this world can be far less engineering-heavy than with Word or Docs.
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I’m happy to engage in this discussion. One thing you have to be aware of, however, that this is not an academic discussion.
I’ve done my fair share of data analysis in my previous life as scientist. So I’m not unaware of the potential of any sort of bias in any data. It’s even more severe now because if we misinterpret our data we put our business at risk (instead of repeating an analysis for a revised version of a paper).
The potential selection bias you mention does not affect the overall results.
Also, the notion that, because you see similar usage of Safari and Firefox in your (biased) data, if you support one you’d “have to support [the other]” does not follow. You can put your resources towards whatever you want (including exclusively chrome).
You’re right. What I meant was basically that if we go beyond Chrome we would first support Firefox before we support Safari. Again that’s a no brainer mainly because it can also be used on Windows and second because it’s open source and many universities use it on their networks as officially supported browser.
Also, the “battery issue” has been getting “fixed” according to the chrome issue tracker for years now. They make small incremental progress, but so does Safari, and the difference remains stark in my experience.
It has to be seen but it seems that version 53 makes significant improvements. At least it does for me on my Mac Book Pro.
Finally, we will never forget LaTeX/BibTeX users. I’ve used LaTeX for more than 10 years exclusively while doing science. We are busy with Word at the moment because it’s tricky to get right but we will come back to LaTeX again with the goal to make Paperpile the best reference manager for LaTeX users.
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A Paperpile desktop app would make all the difference for me — I’d use it immediately.
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Awesome discussion here. @stefan thank you for being so transparent with respect to the expected development directions. I still hope you will consider developing for Mac-apps too. Personally I prefer to work with one system only, in my case macOS-based apps. One of the advantages being the good integration with iCloud, and the other with iOS. So, I’m still a bit reluctant to work with PaperPile - it currently disrupts a work-process which is completely macOS/iOS based.
That said, great to hear about the Word-plugin efforts. And I’m looking forward to the iOS and macOS app.
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I have to say that I am surprised to see the reticence toward Safari support. I work at a large R1 and do a lot of interdisciplinary work, and the top two browsers are far and away Safari and Chrome. Anecdotal evidence, I know, but even at conferences and such seeing someone running Firefox is rare. It seems to me that supporting Safari and Chrome would capture most of the academic market. Perhaps a desktop application will solve all of these issues.
Two further comments:
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Running a full version of a reference manager on iOS is quickly becoming a must have–the first company to successfully do that will have a distinct advantage. What is out there currently is focused on reading articles, but more and more people are using their iPads for so much more. The ability to handle (i.e. read, import, manage, and cite) ebooks, websites, pdfs, and to a lesser extent audio/video material on iOS would be huge.
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Word integration is a serious sticking point. I really do think that Paperpile is the best when it comes to gathering research and organizing it. When it comes to citing, though, it works great in Google Docs but doesn’t go beyond that. For a variety of reasons, many will simply not use G-Docs. It is a testament to the strength of Paperpile that I am using G-Docs as much as I do (which isn’t much). Most of the time, I use Paperpile to gather/organize material and then do something else when it comes time to write and cite. That works okay for now, but I can’t see doing that indefinitely.
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For what its worth, I would also very much appreciate a safari and firefox extension!
First of all, on a new MacBook Pro I noticed massive battery drain using Chrome (and yes, the newest version!).
The integrated MacOS energy app shows chrome as using significant energy and it takes up massive amounts of ram - about double the amount of 3 R sessions.
Second, our institution (LMU Munich) blocked the usage of Chrome completely. This means that on no institutional computers paper pile can be used. Which is a shame as I told my students to use PaperPile and most of them don’t have private laptops to circumvent the block. So this means none of us can enjoy the awesomeness of Paperpile anymore. Which is really a huge loss as the alternatives are terrible. I will sadly need to look into Mendeley or Zotero, none of which offer the usability of paperpile.
I would also expect a bias from your user data (showing no users with safari or firefox - maybe the reason for that is that you simply don’t support them?).
Having built quite a substantial library in PaperPile I very much would appreciate to hear that you guys consider making a turn and integrate into Safari and FF, otherwise I need to look for an alternative ASAP.
Thanks a lot!
Sebastian
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Is there any way to visit just the paperpile webpage in safari without the plugin?
Nope - and thats a big shame!
Chrome’s energy drain is a real problem. When I need to get more battery life I switch to Safari and use the open other browsers plugin which allows me to quickly open a link or tab in Chrome to use Paperpile. Not a real fix, but it does make my battery last a bit longer…
Pinging this thread for 2019 … Paperpile admins, are there any plans to make it possible to use Safari with paperpile? thanks,
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So it seems Paperpile works for Safari but they disabled it? I can open the page and see all my papers. I can copy the link from Chrome to open a paper in Safari.
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A good part of Paperpile’s functionality relies on the extension. Unfortunately Safari decided not to support the same extension system as Chrome, Edge and Firefox agreed on.
On Safari it’s necessary to have a native macOS App that provides the extension functionality. That’s not an easy undertaking. Still, we actually spent quite some time and effort to do exactly that. Our upcoming Word plugin is a native Mac application and will allow us to evaluate full support for Safari going forward. It’s not on the immediate roadmap but clearly on our radar.
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Thanks for your reply, Stefan. I am curious which part of Paperpile does not work in Safari yet. For me, as long as I can search and open paper in Safari, it is good enough. I can use Chrome to add paper to Paperpile.
BTW, any update on the desktop version? I would love it. Thanks!
It is better to use Safari in Mac OS and if you face any issue using peperpile in safari I suggest you open it from safari secure mode. You might be thinking that safari can’t establish a secure connection to server but the thing is not like that you will be able to use it. Yes, you might have been heard by using that sort error occurs but that error can be fixed by doing some simple methods that are described in the article.
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Given the fact that Safari can now import extensions for Chrome, will you be porting over the Paperpile extension to Safari?
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@Chet_McLeskey we’re looking into this but not as a current priority, although I understand the update makes it a much more feasible possibility. I’ve added this feedback to your existing +1 on the topic on our internal tracker to bump it up.
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