Problems with the new version of Refworks
I am writing to you because I have been using Legacy Refworks for more than 12 years for my work as a university professor and researcher in the field of scientific production and bibliometrics.
It has always been my essential support for managing documents. They have been trying to get us to use the new version of Refworks for several years and have set a deadline for us to use the old version. Years of failed versions that erased all the data I had.
And now in the new version, since I have to switch to the new version by force, there are three items that make its performance still much worse than the old version.
1. Slowness. Refworks Exlibris is much slower than the old one and I have not seen any desktop program to be able to work from the computer avoiding the data in the cloud. It would be much faster. In databases with thousands of documents it becomes unbearable to manage data with the new version.
2. Remove authority control. Refworks Legacy had a very good authority control that allowed us researchers to create a main author record, set filters and unify names. Now, I do not know why, it does not exist. This makes it impossible to perform multiple jobs that used to be easy.
3. Save advanced searches. In the old Refworks there was the option to save searches configured with different filters and it is also a first-rate tool for bibliometric research. Now it does not exist.
Honestly, it seems to me that they have wanted to upgrade to look like Zotero, Mendeley or other bibliographic managers, but they have fallen in the middle. They have lost the data management capability that Refworks Legacy had that made it a leader in bibliographic managers, they have lost speed and on top of that they are far behind in usability with the managers mentioned before.
Either they reform the program soon or they will be left without anyone using it. I think that after 4 or 5 failed attempts of the new program it still has many serious flaws.
I hope they rectify and we can continue to enjoy Refworks.
Sincerely yours. Joaquín Durán