Software Alternatives & Reviews

JabRef VS BibDesk

Compare JabRef VS BibDesk and see what are their differences

JabRef logo JabRef

Graphical Java application for managing bibtex (. bib) databases.‎JabRef · ‎JabRef Help · ‎JabRef | Blog · ‎OpenOffice/LibreOffice .

BibDesk logo BibDesk

BibDesk is an organizational software created to help you edit and manage your bibliography. It keeps track of your bibliographic information as well as said information's associated web links and files. Read more about BibDesk.
  • JabRef Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-29
  • BibDesk Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-08-02

JabRef

Categories
  • Research Tools
  • Information Organization
  • Document Management
  • Reference Management
Website jabref.org

BibDesk

Categories
  • Research Tools
  • Information Organization
  • Document Management
  • Reference Management
Website bibdesk.sourceforge.io

JabRef videos

Jabref (Reference Manager) for Latex Quick Start Tutorial

More videos:

  • Review - Tutorial 7: Exporting/ Importing from Jabref to Zotero

BibDesk videos

Automatically importing publications to BibDesk based on DOI and anystyle-parser

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to JabRef and BibDesk)
Research Tools
64 64%
36% 36
Information Organization
65 65%
35% 35
Document Management
66 66%
34% 34
Reference Management
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using JabRef and BibDesk. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare JabRef and BibDesk

JabRef Reviews

Top 5 Free Reference Management Software for Research
JabRef is a cross-platform, open-source citation and reference management program. Its native formats are BibTeX and BibLaTeX, and it is therefore commonly used for LaTeX. JabRef is an acronym for Java, Alver, Batada, and Reference.

BibDesk Reviews

We have no reviews of BibDesk yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, BibDesk seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 2 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

JabRef mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of JabRef yet. Tracking of JabRef recommendations started around Mar 2021.

BibDesk mentions (2)

  • A doctoral dissertation build system
    What struck me was "Copyright © 2018–2023 Sean Whitton" on the dissertation. 5 years? Ugh. True story: While writing my philosophy dissertation, I dropped out of grad school to become a Mac developer, and a key factor was the open source Mac bibliography app BibDesk. https://bibdesk.sourceforge.io/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • BibTeX Tidy
    Https://bibdesk.sourceforge.io/ for Macs uses .bib natively. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing JabRef and BibDesk, you can also consider the following products

Mendeley - Easily organize your papers, read & annotate your PDFs, collaborate in private or open groups, and securely access your research from everywhere.

Zotero - Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research.

Qiqqa - Qiqqa is a free research and reference management software. It can be used in many organizational projects from the academic to the personal to the business endeavor. Read more about Qiqqa.

Citavi - Citavi is a program for Microsoft Windows that manages literary references and organizes organizational knowledge.

Docear - Docear

Paperpile - Clean and simple and reference management for the web. Sync your PDFs to Google Drive and cite your papers in Google Docs.