paperlib: Manage and Organize Academic Papers

Overview

Paperlib is an academic paper manager for researchers who need to keep a searchable library and reuse references while writing. It addresses a common metadata problem, especially for computer science conference papers whose publication details can be difficult to find through identifiers alone.

It is a fit for people who want focused paper organization alongside metadata scraping and writing integrations. The app runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows, and its extension system can add capabilities such as LLM-based summaries and semantic search.

Key Features

• Scrape and edit publication metadata using multiple scrapers, with support for custom scrapers.
• Search paper full text and metadata, and organize collections with tags, folders, ratings, flags, and smart filters.
• Store notes in Markdown or plain text and manage associated PDF files.
• Follow research topics through RSS feeds and locate or download PDFs from the web.
• Copy references into writing workflows, including integration with MS Word.
• Sync a library across supported desktop platforms.
• Extend the app with add-ons, including options for LLM summaries, automatic tagging, and semantic search.

Use Cases

• A computer science researcher imports conference papers and checks or corrects metadata that is hard to retrieve from standard identifiers.
• A graduate student builds a growing literature library and uses tags, folders, and smart filters to organize reading.
• An author searches saved papers and copies references into a draft while writing in an editor or MS Word.
• A researcher follows new publications with RSS feeds and keeps relevant papers and PDFs together.
• A user who wants AI-assisted summaries or semantic search adds extensions to an existing paper library.

Getting Started

Download the desktop app for your platform from the official download page. For setup instructions, see the quick start guide and the repository README.

Considerations

• Paperlib is distributed under GPL-3.0, which may matter when redistributing or modifying the software.
• The README notes that Windows installers are not code-signed, so Windows may display a security warning during installation. Download only from the official site or repository.
• Some capabilities, such as LLM summaries and semantic search, are described as extension features rather than core app functions.
• The project is actively maintained according to the supplied repository data, but the README says the maintainer is seeking another person to help with development.