How is the new sidebar add-on different from Paperpile’s existing Google Docs integration?
When you use the Paperpile web application and have the Chrome extension installed you will automatically see a “Paperpile” menu and icon in your Google Docs. These functions provided through the Chrome extension let you insert and format citations and bibliographies.
In addition, you can install the new Google Docs sidebar add-on from the Google Docs Webstore. It will add a menu “Paperpile” under “Add-ons”. To open the sidebar click “Add-ons > Paperpile > Manage citations”.
Will it replace the existing plugin? Do I have to switch?
No, the sidebar add-on is optional and is not meant to replace any of the functionality of the Chrome extension.
So why should I use the new add-on?
- The add-on is free, works on any browser and does not require a Paperpile account. Everyone can add citations and collaborate with you even if he or she doesn’t want to use Paperpile as their reference manager (yet).
- The sidebar gives you a better overview of existing citations in a document and makes it easier to cite multiple papers from the same search result.
- Full EndNote compatibility. You can export a document and its citations in a format that is understood by EndNote so you can seamlessly continue to work with Word and EndNote (we don’t judge…)
- You can export your document and citations to LaTeX and BibTeX.
- You can create a clean copy without any Paperpile specific citation markup.
- The “Unformat” option allows you to revert citations back to the blue placeholders making them easier to spot in your document.
Why can’t I do X in the sidebar?
The main purpose of the sidebar add-on is to enable everyone – Paperpile user or not – to collaborate with you. So it offers a very basic set of features most of which are not meant to replace the much richer feature set of the full Paperpile application you already know.
That said, the add-on offers many new technical possibilities to improve the experience also for Paperpile users. We’ve already added some frequently requested features (see above) that were technically impossible before.
We have plans to add more functionality once we see how the add-on is adopted and used in the wild. Any feedback is of course more than welcome. Just post in this forum.
So how does the new export to Word/EndNote actually work?
Here is a short guide: Export to Word/EndNote