Introducing PaperShip
New iPad/iPhone Mendeley client brings the Sparrow-Mailbox/Gmail paradigm to science
PRESS RELEASE
Lyon, France.
Start-up Shazino releases PaperShip, an iPad and iPhone client for the Mendeley reference manager software which allows Mendeley users to access their account from everywhere.
Mendeley, the free reference manager and academic social network, offers a useful way to manage and share scholarly papers. Built on an open ideal, Mendeley plays an important role on the Open Access movement and aims to share its data notably by providing developers with an Open API (Application Programming Interface). To contribute to the Mendeley desire to enhance scientific sharing, Shazino previously released and open-sourced its MendeleySDK, a software development kit for the Mendeley API. To continue in this direction, Shazino is today releasing PaperShip to give Mendeley users read-and-write access to their account wherever they are.
Designed for iPad and iPhone, PaperShip syncs with user’s Mendeley libraries to give them access to all papers stored in it. To find new references, it also searches directly into the global Mendeley database and automatically downloads full text PDFs when available. To meet the expectation of academics using the Mendeley reference manager on mobile devices, each paper can be annotated and highlighted, then stored back within the library with every modification saved. Annotated paper can also be shared via email, text message, Facebook and Twitter.
Moreover, PaperShip gives academics information about the significance of a paper by providing web-based metrics known as altmetrics. Thus, online activities around a scholarly work are taken into account, such as the number of times a paper had been downloaded. So, with PaperShip, even non peer-reviewed literature impacts are measured, including Open Access papers. For such needs, the donut-shaped graphic from the Altmetric company is added to the PaperShip interface. This was achieved through the use of the Altmetric API.
Finally, PaperShip is very easy to handle with a user-friendly interface designed as an email inbox. In fact, each new paper is saved within the library and organized in chronological order from the one downloaded most recently to the oldest. Each one of them can be marked as “read” or “unread” as well as favourited. When a user is done with a paper, it can be archived in different folders or subfolders for ease of management. A search feature with the possibility to filter by titles, authors and keywords is also available. When selected, an overview of all pages within a paper can be chosen to rapidly go where needed.
Dr. Julien Thérier, founder of Shazino, explained:
Like the Sparrow or Mailbox apps which enhance the email management capabilities by using the Gmail API, we wanted to facilitate the way scientists do literature review by using the APIs provided by Mendeley and Altmetric. Through this, our goal is to supply academics with the necessary key resources to achieve optimum research management. In this spirit, we also open-sourced the software development kits we developed for the Mendeley and Altmetric APIs. Our motto is Open Source for Open Science!
PaperShip is now available for free in the App Store. To expand its management potential, it also offers in-app purchases to enhance the annotation features (notes, highlights and drawings).
Shazino is an independent start-up not affiliated with the Mendeley and Altmetric companies.
-ENDS-
For more information:
Dr Julien Thérier, CEO/Founder, Shazino: julien.therier@shazino.com, +33 672 649 239
PaperShip website: www.papershipapp.com
PaperShip video: http://bit.ly/PaperShipDemo
Twitter: @papershipapp
About Shazino:
Shazino is a Lyon-based start-up which provides innovative platforms
and apps for biological scientists. The company was founded by biology and
computer science researchers dedicated to improving workflows in research
labs. In addition to the PaperShip app, the young company has
released a set of iPhone and iPad apps (Fast Counter,
Laboratory Timer, and Plasmid.io) that facilitate lab
bench work, as well as a web application for research and laboratory
management, Hivebench. Shazino is also involved in the
Open Source movement with the release of two open sourced software development
kits MendeleySDK and SZNAltmetric.
About Altmetrics:
The development of the social web leads to new tools for the research world to
measure the impact of research. Added to the traditional level metrics
predominantly based on peer-reviewing and citations metrics, these tools are
known as alternative metrics: the altmetrics. They gather mentions of
scholarly activities from online platforms such as science blogs or social
networks.
About Open Access:
The Open Access movement provides academics a free access to scholarly papers.
Generally free of most usage restrictions, it also allows them to re-use the
paper to enhance the growth of science. Two different ways exist in the Open
Access. The green Open Access self archiving provides not necessarily
peer-reviewed papers published in some repositories, while the gold Open
Access provides peer-reviewed articles publish in Open Access journals.
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter