Introduction
Standard Mind Mapping Features
Special Features for Researchers
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
History
Licence

Back to the Homepage of FreeMind Scholar

Introduction

Standard Mind Mapping Features

Special Features for Researchers

FreeMind Scholar enables you to assign a unique document identifier (e.g. a BibTeX key) to the entries in your mind map. FreeMind Scholar supports the following reference management tools:

• BibTeX Based Reference Managers (JabRef, Referencer, BibDesk, etc.)
  Currently, FreeMind Scholar assigns BibTeX keys via linked PDF files. That means, your mind map's entry needs to link to the same PDF file as the entry in your reference tool. Only then FreeMind Scholar can assign the BibTeX key. To enable FreeMind Scholar doing so, specify your BibTeX database in the menu via FreeMind Scholar -> General Preferences. Whenever you changed your BibTeX file you need to choose FreeMind Scholar -> Update BibTeX Entries in Current MindMap.
  
  

• Zotero
  Zotero is currently not supported by FreeMind Scholar. But you could export your Zotero database to BibTex and proceed as described in the previous paragraph. If you are interested in supporting us and help us to integrate Zotero into FreeMind Scholar, please contact us.
• Endnote
  Endnote is currently not supported by FreeMind Scholar. But you could export your Endnote database to BibTex and proceed as described in the previous paragraph. If you are interested in supporting us and help us to integrate Endnote into FreeMind Scholar, please contact us.
• Others
  Other reference managers are currently not supported by FreeMind Scholar. But you could try to export your reference database to BibTex and proceed as described in the previous paragraph. If you are interested in supporting us and help us to integrate your favourite reference manager into FreeMind Scholar, please contact us.

First, we will explain how we manage our eletronic documents (mostly PDFs), and then it should become clear why importing PDF bookmarks into a mind map is a very usefull functionallity.

1. Whenever we find an interesting PDF in the internet we store it on our hard drive.
   
   
2. We then read the PDF and highlight all interesting passages and create bookmarks for them (we use Foxit Reader 3, it's free and fast).
   
   
   
   
3. Usually, when we found a couple of interesting PDFs we want to organize their main statements, results and ideas in a mind map and here is where FreeMind Scholar comes in. Instead of typing all relevant information into the mind map, we just import the PDFs into FreeMind Scholar (FreeMind Scholar -> Open PDF Bookmark Importer) and then drag&drop the bookmarks into our mind map. That's it :-)
   
   

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

• Can you manually add a BibTeX Key to a knot in the mind map?
  No, not yet, sorry. But this feature is in our todo list.
  
  
• Why do you use FreeMind 0.8.1 for FreeMind Scholar and not 0.9?
  Currently FreeMind 0.9 is only available as Beta version. As soon as the version is stable we will use it.
  
  
• Does FreeMind Scholar run under Linux or MacOS?
  In theory it should. In practice we haven't tried yet. Please, if you have tried to run FreeMind Scholar under Linux or Mac OS, tell us your experience.
  
  
• There seems to be quite a few bugs and typos in FreeMind Scholar. Are you such bad software developers?
  Well, FreeMind Scholar is in an early development stage. That means we would really like to hear from you what we could do better, what you like and what you don't like. If you insist on almost perfect software, please wait for the 1.0 release (it's only a matter of years ;-).

Licence

History