I love Paperpile and have moved 100% off of Zotero… until today. I am co-authoring a book and my co-author uses Zotero and I use Paperpile. I had to go back to Zotero for this project because there is no way for my co-author to have a free Paperpile account that can access my library (as a paid subscriber). We chose Zotero because she can have her free account and I can host our group folder with my paid account that has a lot of storage. She does not have to pay anything to access this, as I am “hosting” all the storage. She can add to and edit the Zotero folder from her free account. And, she can use the Google Docs add-in with her free account that is connected to our shared folder. If this is possible with Paperpile, I could not figure out how to do it. I think this sort of set up would be a great option for collaboration with people who do not want to pay for Paperpile (after all, they are only using to collaborate with a paying customer). Just a suggestion! I would have loved to use Paperpile for this project (and I had to copy over my references to Zotero which took some time).
Thanks for the feedback, @DRPRW77. While shared folders are indeed read-only for non-Paperpile users, they can use our free sidebar add-on to add Paperpile-formatted citations in a shared document. If needed, you can then add those references to your library and the shared folder (the link will update on your collaborator’s end as well).
The request to consider more options for collaboration with unsubscribed users has come up before, so I’ve added your +1 to the topic on our tracker. Although it is not something we’re prioritizing at the moment, upcoming improvements to our sharing structure will put us in a better position to consider the topic in the future.
Although this thread is a bit outdated, I am currently seeking a similar solution. I recently completed my PhD, and the final chapter is still unpublished. My advisor intends to assume responsibility for its writing. I have utilized my PaperPile subscription to compile the existing manuscript, but my advisor does not utilize PaperPile.
If it is not feasible to implement a collaborative writing or sharing feature for non-paying users, perhaps the ability to convert a document containing live citations into a more universal format that can be imported into Zotero or another reference management system would be beneficial. I acknowledge that this may not be a practical solution, as you do not have access to the internal workings of Zotero or other reference management systems. But not providing this feature could push people toward using Zotero from the get go since they have collaborative writing options.