researchhelper / research-helper

THE reference manager with features including PDF reading/annotating, Markdown/Excalidraw note-taking, project/note linking, and more...

Accelerate Your Research

English | 中文

Sophosia Has Been Released！

Thank you all for supporting Reasearch Helper. In the year of 2023, I received many useful suggestions, and the beta version of the Research Helper had accomplished its goal, there will be no feature updates in the future. The new version, Sophosia, will be the version with continuous support and updates. The main differences between the new version and the beta version are:

1. The new version removes the PouchDB database, all data is text-centric.
2. The new version uses Tauri instead of Electron.

There will be a few benefits:

1. By removing PouchDB, users can choose their favorite tools for cloud syncing.
2. Being text-centric allows users to choose their preferred text editor for note-taking, without worrying about data consistency between different softwares.
3. The new version becomes very lightweight (~15MB).

I hope everyone continues to support Sophosia!

Research Helper

Research helper is a paper/book management tool. It is a reference management tool with various useful functionalities such as: built-in PDF reader, live markdown note and excalidraw note.

Reference Management

References can be managed in library page.

• Favorites, folders, tags, search, etc. All essential functions are there
• Able to one-click-retrieve meta information and related reference by providing identifier such as DOI

PDF Reader

Research helper has a built-in PDF reader.

• Able to adjust page layout, light/dark mode and more
• Support markdown comment (also latex) in annotations
• Able to preview internal links in hover windows

Note-taking System

Due to the flexible multi-window layout, it is never this easy to take notes while reading.

• Support WYSIWYG markdown note and excalidraw note
• Able to cite other references/notes in markdown note
• Support math(latex), code block, mindmap and more in markdown down

Contribute to Research-Helper

Research Helper uses QUASAR as framework. In this project, the combination of Vue.js3 and Electron is used.

Install the dependencies

yarn # strongly recommanded
# or
npm install

Start the electron app in development mode (hot-code reloading, error reporting, etc.)

yarn dev # start electron app in development mode

To build the app

yarn build # build the app
# or
yarn debug # build the app with debugger

Tests

yarn test:unit:ci # backend unit test
yarn test:component:ci # vue component test

Acknowledgement

This project is made possible by the following open source projects.

• Quasar
• Electron
• Vue.js
• citation-js
• cytoscape
• golden-layout
• pdf.js
• vditor
• Pouchdb
• Excalidraw

License

This project uses AGPL license.

research-helper's Issues

Ink tool for annotating PDF

• Enable ink tool
• Able to change properties of ink tool
• Able to Load ink tool properties
• Able to save ink tool properties
• Able to save ink annotations
• Able to load ink annotations

Enhance建议

软件很不错，阅读文献的基本功能都具备了，甚至比zotero好。但还是有几点建议希望作者采纳。

• 有开发者在obsidian笔记软件上开发出类似于research-helper的插件，但体验感不如你这个，但是不同md笔记间引用的引用力度非常细(可以具体到一篇md的一段话并在当前md文件下引用且显示)
• 可以开发出ipad版吗？
• 希望能支持webdav同步
• 兼容zotero的插件

Windows环境下点击连接好像没有窗口显示

Select projectRow in library page when mouse down

• Select projectRow immediately when mousedown, so user can drag a single projectRow
• Do not wait until the user clicked the projectRow

use

I can't understand how to use it

QQ群

非常不错的平台，基本功能有了，希望进一步发展。能建个群吗？

无法执行'yarn build'命令

在package.json中也不存在build命令？

No active project if projectTree is not shown while user opening projects

• OpenPage function does add projectId to stateStore.openedProjectIds.

Button theme mismatching interface issue

There seems to exist different interface style between 'zoom in' button and 'zoom out' button, and between 'enter full screen' button and 'exit full screen button.

Wanted feature: render basic HTML tag like <img> or <table>

Embed HTML rendering provides fine-grained control than Markdown.

Need to initialize pluginManager after storagePath is set

This causes white screen in macos since pluginManager is trying to create folder with absolute path .research-helper.

Planning plugin system

User

• User can download, delete, update, and enable/disable their plugins within the Research Helper.

Developer

• Develop their plugins using research-helper-api
• Build the plugin into the one single js/ts file, a manifest.json with plugin meta (id, name, author, ...) is also needed, and finally a style.css for styling the plugin.
• Pull request to the repo hosting a plugin lists with their plugin name, version, id, etc...

File structure for plugin

目录删除

我第一次打开的时候,直接选中了我保存论文的目录
后来又在设置中,改成了一个新目录
然后我发现本来的目录不见了
里面的paper也没有了

RIS导入后英文标题识别到中文翻译然后显示为中文

问题描述

RIS的TT这个字段有标题翻译导入后标题全是中文

个人想法

1. 最好中英文是分开的，原文不变，因为原来的RIS最后可能会用上，比如导出统一格式(参考endnote或者zotero，endnote导出格式较好点)
2. 然后中英文希望可以设置个按钮来翻译，如下Zotero的翻译插件的示意

改进的建议

我在ubuntu20.04上试用了2.0.1-beta版本，确实很好用，特别是pdf阅读功能很强大。但是，在试用的过程中我遇到了以下问题

1. (bug) create entry by file时，有时候会显示出错，但是文件还是被添加了
2. (feature) 希望能够增加更多fields用来排序文件，比如zotero就提供了publication， date added等fields
3. (bug) 从pdf阅读界面切换到library界面的时候，library界面的排序功能，详情功能都无了
4. (bug) 每次点开详情界面，都需要重新点击一下文件才能显示文件详情 (即使文件已经高亮显示)
5. (feature) 希望能像zotero一样增加一个显示已有标签的功能，比如我想给一个文件增加一个tag，输入时可以显示已有的tag

希望作者可以继续加油！

implement research-helper-api

Abstract necessary functions/types/classes for plugins. Similar to obsidian-api.

• registerXXButton
• registerXXView
• more...

对中文支持好像不好

好像很容易卡死,不知道是不是非原生的原因

Better memory performance needed

Need to reduce memory consumption.

很棒很棒，提几个建议

1. 文章的详细信息可以增加文章所在的分组
2. 将文章添加到左面的分组时，希望可以多选，不然一个一个拖动有些慢
3. 如果能加入文献翻译功能（类似知云），就更好了（可能有点困难昂）

希望软件可以越做越好，加油

Features request

Thanks for making this available! I would like to see the following features that could improve the usefulness of this software.

1. Meta info - journal title, conference, publisher, editor are missing. Zotero is more completed.
2. Bibliography generation which requires more metadata information.
3. The current list of items window has two columns (title and author). More columns are better. If columns could be customized, that will be great.

By the way, I am studying your code and will contribute to this project later.

Thanks

加载网页内容

希望可以出一个类似obsidian的custom frames的功能
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1QB4y1p733?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=6c30604a2547ec514cd1727f3a89df81

原因：
1.快速追上流行文献管理软件的一些功能：如果让research-helper能够加载网页内容，那么很多浏览器中好用的功能只需一个网址就能够集成进research-helper。例如ChatGPT、网页版Excalidraw、各大翻译网站、在线笔记软件（notion、飞书、我来等等）、RSS订阅网站、Todoist待办事项使research-helper获得一些速记功能、在线思维导图功能等等。
2.一定程度上避免了重复造轮子：通过各种网站能够实现的功能就没必要重复造轮子了，酌情筛选后的优质内容可以内置到软件中，有些不方便通过网站实现的或实现效果不好的，咱们再集成到软件中
3.获得网页剪藏功能并能够预览：zotero快照功能很好用，但是无法进行预览，如果让research-helper能够加载网页内容这一问题也随之解决了。windingwind/zotero-pdf-preview#85

Implement the plugin system prototype

1. Make a hello-world plugin with a single js/ts file
2. Dynamically load the script.
3. Send functions and data from electron's main process to Vue through electron-preload script.

Plugin system UI in the app