I'm in the middle of my PhD and switched from printing papers to reading them on my iPad roughly two years ago.
There are some things I miss from paper but overall I found the pros to overweight the cons.
I haven't found that flipping back and forth on iPad is that horrible, to be honest.
Not sure how helpful this will be but I'll share what I've been doing for now.
I use the following apps:
* Mendeley (to organize papers)
* PDF Expert (to annotate PDFs)
* GoodNotes (mostly when working out the maths)
My usual workflow is:
* Read through the paper
* Annotate in the paper using Apple pencil as I read through
* Figure out the maths on the iPad when needed
* When I get back to a computer, upload the annotated file to Mendeley and type summary notes in Mendeley
A few things that I like/dislike about iPad when compared to paper.
+ Search for information on the web while reading paper more easily
+ Check notes/annotations quickly from my computer
+ Share notes easily
+ Search notes easily
+ Clean desk =D
- More context switching needed when I need to scramble something
- Mendeley misses some basic features on iOS (e.g. attach PDF to existing paper) so need to context switch with computer at some point after reading the paper
I would say that for 90% of the papers I go through, where I don't dive that deep in the paper, the experience is just as good on iPad. For the 10% of the papers I read where I go in-depth, redo proofs, etc, it's a little more tedious.
While it's for sure not perfect, given the above pros, I can live with the cons.
I would avoid Mendeley. Firstly, they are trying to create a researchgate-style social media spam network layer. Secondly they are owned by the maximally vile Elsevier. Thirdly, their software quality is poor eg. they couldn’t get sync working properly for maybe 5 years (until I gave up).
It would be nice if you did not initiate a download on my behalf when I merely visit the "download" page via the main navigation. I would expect at least prompt for confirmation before you push a 180 MB binary to me.
I'm a huge Polar fan! I'm considering buying an iPad just for using Polar, but I was wondering about the ReMarkable as well, since I like e-ink better for reading.
Do you have any recommendations for a tablet to use with Polar?
What app do you use for Polar? I used Polar for a bit on my Mac but gave up because I do most of my reading on an iPad. Would give it another shot if I could get Polar running on iPad.
I just use it on my laptop and desktop (Mac/Linux). I think I'd prefer to use a tablet though as I'm not a huge fan of reading on computers. Currently looking around and I've seen your sentiment about Polar and iPads before. Hopefully better support is coming in the 2.0 release though.
There are some things I miss from paper but overall I found the pros to overweight the cons.
I haven't found that flipping back and forth on iPad is that horrible, to be honest.
Not sure how helpful this will be but I'll share what I've been doing for now. I use the following apps:
* Mendeley (to organize papers)
* PDF Expert (to annotate PDFs)
* GoodNotes (mostly when working out the maths)
My usual workflow is:
* Read through the paper
* Annotate in the paper using Apple pencil as I read through
* Figure out the maths on the iPad when needed
* When I get back to a computer, upload the annotated file to Mendeley and type summary notes in Mendeley
A few things that I like/dislike about iPad when compared to paper.
+ Search for information on the web while reading paper more easily
+ Check notes/annotations quickly from my computer
+ Share notes easily
+ Search notes easily
+ Clean desk =D
- More context switching needed when I need to scramble something
- Mendeley misses some basic features on iOS (e.g. attach PDF to existing paper) so need to context switch with computer at some point after reading the paper
I would say that for 90% of the papers I go through, where I don't dive that deep in the paper, the experience is just as good on iPad. For the 10% of the papers I read where I go in-depth, redo proofs, etc, it's a little more tedious. While it's for sure not perfect, given the above pros, I can live with the cons.