You save papers to browser bookmarks. Three months later, you need that study about X. Was it in the "ML Papers" folder? "Research 2024"? "Misc"? You give up and just Google it again.
Your grad student needs the 12 papers from last semester's seminar. You email a Word doc with links. Half are broken. They ask for the list again. You can't find the file. Repeat next semester.
Your lab mate found a breakthrough paper last week. You don't know it exists. By the time it comes up in lab meeting, you're three weeks behind. No way to stay current without constant Slack messages.
Important papers are scattered across Mendeley, Zotero, Google Drive, email, Slack threads, and 7 different folders. Your team wastes hours searching for references everyone's already found.
Create shared reading lists for your lab, seminar, or research group. Team members vote on which papers are most valuable. See what your colleagues find essential vs. tangential. Peer-validated research collections, not just one person's opinion.
Categories, tags, drag-and-drop ordering, and full-text search. Organize papers by topic, project, semester, or methodology, however your research brain works.
Share collections with your lab, research group, or class. Multiple contributors can add papers. Permission controls for private research vs. public reading lists.
Team members vote on essential papers. See which studies your colleagues find most valuable. Focus on high-signal research, skip the noise.
Follow your colleagues' research collections. Get notified when they add new papers. Stay current without constantly asking "what are you reading?"
Share reading lists via one link. Put it in your course syllabus, lab wiki, or email signature. Students and colleagues always have access, no broken links.
Keep collections private for ongoing research or make them public to share with the academic community. Toggle privacy anytime.
Create a collection for your seminar. Add required papers, supplementary reading, and recent publications. Students vote on which papers sparked the best discussions. Next semester's students see what worked, no more emailing PDFs.
Curate "essential papers" collections for new grad students or postdocs joining your lab. 30 foundational papers organized by topic. New members follow the collection and get notifications when you add important new studies.
Organize papers for your lit review by theme, methodology, or chronology. Tag by subtopic. Search when you need to find "that one paper about transfer learning in healthcare." Share with your advisor for feedback.
Multi-institution research collaboration? Create a shared collection for your project. All collaborators can add relevant papers, vote on priority readings, and stay synced. No more scattered email threads with broken attachment links.
But:
Use Both:
Keep Zotero for citations and PDFs. Use Shelfy for sharing reading lists with your team, students, or the academic community. They solve different problems.
Zotero/Mendeley are citation managers, built for organizing PDFs, creating bibliographies, and integrating with Word. Shelfy is for sharing curated reading lists publicly or with your team. Think: Zotero is your private library. Shelfy is your public-facing booklist. Use both, they complement each other.
Not directly (yet), but you can use our bulk import API to add papers programmatically. Export your Zotero collection as a list of URLs, then batch-import to Shelfy. We're exploring native Zotero integration based on demand.
Yes. Collections are private by default. Only people you explicitly share with can view private collections. For public collections (e.g., course reading lists), you control what's shared. Your data is never sold or used for training AI models.
Invite team members to a collection with different permission levels: viewer (read-only), contributor (can add papers), or admin (full control). All collaborators see updates in real-time. Perfect for research groups, lab teams, or seminar courses.
Follow any public collection with one click. When your colleagues add new papers, you get notified. See what experts in your field are reading without asking. Discover papers through peer curation instead of just algorithmic recommendations.
Perfectly. Create a collection for your course, organize by week or topic, add required and optional readings. Share one permanent link in your syllabus. Update the collection anytime, students always have current reading list. No more broken links or lost email attachments.
Yes. Completely free forever for researchers, students, and educators. Unlimited collections, team collaboration, all features included. We're building tools for the academic community, not extracting rent from underfunded researchers.
Absolutely. Export your collections at any time as JSON, CSV, or a simple text list of URLs. Your data is never locked in. We believe in academic data portability.
Join research teams using Shelfy to organize papers, share reading lists, and stay current with colleagues' work. Free forever. No institution required.
✓ Free forever for academics · ✓ No credit card · ✓ Data export anytime
