Sciwheel
The intelligent research suite for automated reference management and collaborative academic writing.

The Academic Literature Suite for hierarchical knowledge mapping and reference management.
Docear is a comprehensive 'Academic Literature Suite' that uniquely integrates the three most critical components of academic research: reference management, mind mapping, and document organization. Architecturally, Docear is built upon a modular framework combining a customized version of Freeplane (for mind mapping) and JabRef (for BibTeX-based reference management). In the 2026 landscape, Docear positions itself as a 'local-first' and privacy-centric alternative to cloud-based research tools like Mendeley or Zotero. Its primary technical advantage lies in its ability to import PDF annotations (comments and highlighted text) directly into a hierarchical mind map structure, allowing researchers to visualize the relationship between different papers and concepts rather than viewing them in a flat list. Despite its legacy interface, its open-source nature ensures data sovereignty and extensibility, making it a favorite for researchers who require offline-first workflows and deep structural control over their literature reviews. It supports the BibTeX standard natively, ensuring high interoperability with LaTeX-based publishing workflows and modern citation processors.
A bidirectional link between Freeplane's visual nodes and JabRef's bibliographic entries.
The intelligent research suite for automated reference management and collaborative academic writing.
The ultimate open-source BibTeX-native reference manager for LaTeX-driven research workflows.
The intuitive reference manager for modern researchers, deeply integrated with Google Workspace and AI-driven workflows.
The only all-in-one knowledge organizer for professional academic research and manuscript structuring.
Verified feedback from the global deployment network.
Post queries, share implementation strategies, and help other users.
Uses heuristic algorithms to extract titles and authors from PDF files and cross-references them with web databases.
Parses the PDF internal structure to extract 'Highlight' and 'Comment' objects directly into the map.
Uses XML-based .mm files and text-based .bib files, making it highly compatible with Git.
Organizes all project-related files (PDFs, maps, data) into a single logical entity.
Ability to handle multiple BibTeX databases simultaneously within a single project view.
Native BibTeX storage ensures that the bibliography is always ready for TeX compilers.
Managing hundreds of papers makes it difficult to see how arguments connect.
Registry Updated:2/7/2026
Use links to create a narrative flow for the final paper.
Ensuring all inclusion/exclusion criteria are met and documented visually.
Long-term (3+ years) projects often lose data or context over time.