The best system I’ve found for keeping track of all those research papers is http://www.mendeley.com/
It has a website where you can store all your pfds and organise them, and also a desktop program which can automatically find files you’ve downloaded and import them.
The best feature is the bibliographic export function that exports the information in several different formats (APA etc) so it’s easy to add to your reports.
I forgot to add that one of the best features is that you can share pdfs in a group that you make and invite people to.
I created a group there call MSc E-learning and added a paper as a test.
http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1868731/msc-e-learning/
If you are interested in sharing your papers and having a bit of a chinwag there please follow the link and join up.
Only 9 places available!
Keith
Mendeley is indeed a useful tool. Although I think that one does have to have a concern about copyright issues; that one doesn’t inadvertently share a paper to which one only has individual reader access. Just give an eye to :
http://www.mendeley.com/copyright/
I would also add (for the Mac users) Papers; which I would describe as “iTunes for PDFs”. It is a very powerful reference manager, PDF archive, and resource discovery tool, all rolled into one. But it does *cost*.
Hamish
Further, on copyright and Mendeley :
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2010/01/is-mendeley-heading-for-copyright.html
Hamish