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Ask Slashdot: E-ink Reader For Academic Papers?

Albanach writes "Recently, I purchased an e-ink Kindle. I like real paper books, but I'm reading lots of academic papers. The Kindle is a nice way to carry and read them, and I went through several documents, highlighting important passages. Now I learn that there is no supported way to actually get a highlighted personal document back off of the Kindle with the highlights intact. I don't need lectures about DRM, proprietary software or anything else along those lines — there are other things the Kindle can and will be used for. What I would like to know is whether there's another e-ink reader that does let you add your own documents, then highlight them and export the altered document. Or does someone know of a way to achieve this using the Kindle itself?"

3 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Uh, yes by orledrat · · Score: 5, Informative

    They exist. Don't pick one that is too weak to display large PDFs or too small to comfortably navigate A4. I'd probably pick this 9.7" Icarus Excel if I had to choose one right now: http://www.amazon.com/ICARUS-R...

  2. Re:DRM by Radak · · Score: 4, Informative

    Last I checked, the Kindle is capable of reading and displaying quite a few non-DRM formats. You're stuck with DRM if you purchase books from Amazon, yes, but nothing about the device itself locks you into DRM.

  3. I think you need a different software solution by astralagos · · Score: 4, Informative

    I think what you're really looking for is a research paper management application, such as Mendeley, Zotero or Papers. I personally use Papers, but that's a very mac-specific solution. There is apparently a Mendeley-specific application called KinSync that should help with using it on the Kindle. In general, if you're reading a bunch of academic papers and you don't have a manager like this, I recommend getting one.