BibDesk vs Qiqqa
BibDesk
bibdesk.sourceforge.ioQiqqa
jimmejardine.github.ioSide by side
| Figure | BibDesk | Qiqqa |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $6.67/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Android | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Citation Management Software | 7.9 (#15) | 8.7 (#2) |
| Collaboration | It supports sharing bibliographies with colleagues and exporting them to HTML and RSS. | Group libraries support administrator, contributor and viewer roles, shared metadata, discussion walls and private download links. |
| Integrations | The maker describes native citation autocompletion integration with most LaTeX editors and mentions PubMed access through protocols including Z39.50 and Entrez. | Import is supported from Mendeley, Zotero, EndNote, JabRef and other BibTeX exporters, with Word, BibTeX and LaTeX export options. |
| Search | It supports instant filtering, full-text search of associated PDFs, and smart groups that show publications matching keywords. | Full-text search supports ranked results, wildcards, fuzzy matching, proximity queries, Boolean operators and filters. |
| Support | The homepage links to a help book, wiki, user and developer mailing lists, bug reporting, and feature requests. | The maker lists a support forum, manual, screencasts, and direct contact by email as help options. |
Plans
In their own words
BibDesk
BibDesk has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Qiqqa
Qiqqa is a research and reference manager for finding, reading, and annotating PDFs and turning research into bibliographies. Its library tools include document previews, duplicate detection, automatic PDF import, OCR, and full-text search across multiple libraries. It imports references from Mendeley, Zotero, EndNote, JabRef, and other BibTeX-exporting programs. Expedition groups library contents into themes, while citation, author, keyword, and related-document tools help locate papers. The PDF viewer supports highlights, annotations, and free-form drawing, with reports that can collect abstracts, notes, and marked passages. Qiqqa InCite supports Microsoft Word citations and bibliographies using community-contributed styles, and can suggest papers from a library while writing. Users can share libraries, assign roles, and collaborate on annotations and metadata. A free Android companion app supports offline viewing, annotation, and highlighting. The open-source repository describes a Windows tool and says commercial Web Library cloud sync ended in 2021. Premium costs $6.67 a month; Premium+ costs $41.67 a month.