BibDesk is a flexible tool especially designed for managing academic papers. The application provides an intuitive platform for importing publications from local as well as online sources and exporting them as HTML, RSS or PDF file types. With this tool, you can keep track of all your publications within different types of groups, which are directories that have a static or dynamic behavior.
BibDesk includes a few features for working with LaTeX files in particular (like a TeX Preview tool) which are widely used in academia.
The Publication Editor (manual method for adding papers in the database) has multiple field presets for storing different types of documents; for example, I added a PHD thesis that requires the completion of the author, title, school, year, address, month, type and keywords form fields.
The Web Search mode (look-up publications online from within BibDesk) can automatically detect and import documents from the websites you visit.
The application also acts as a document exporter as it can convert to XML, HTML, RTF, RSS, DOC and PDF formats.
Considering the amount of effort put into managing academic papers, BibDesk does not include backup or synchronization options. None the less, BibDesk is considered a thoroughly versatile tool that can interest users working with LaTeX files or academic publications.
v1.5 [Apr 24, 2010]
This release updates BibDesk for TeX Live 2012.
Bugs Fixed
Update release documentation
Rewrite BDSKTask internals using fixes from Tex Live Utility
Allow all file types for new publications from file action
Improve title sorting
Work around a WebKit bug
Prevent crashes occurring when closing main window in Lion full screen mode
