ALANTERRA  I have used Sente 5 for almost a year now, and am just upgrading to Sente 6.

Pros--powerful management of references for reading, browsing, filing, and including in bibliographies. Able to take large databases in a single bound! Great support for downloading papers from the web. All-in-one solution for management of references, including web references, journal papers, books, scans of xeroxes. And now including synchronization of libraries between computers.

Cons--occasional user interface glitches, undo not fully implemented, no comprehensive user manual.

While I still have not used all the parts of Sente, it has changed my life researching various topics. I right now have 3,000+ references, and this is growing quickly. My research is in various old corners of the biological world, so I can't use PubMed, and Sente's integration with Google Scholar is great. (In spite of all the data problems in Google Scholar). I often am using old journals, and I xerox the articles and scan them, and it is easy to add these to Sente. Integration with JSTOR is great.

Sente 6 now has "keywords" and "tags", keywords being supplied by the author and skimmed from the journal's online site, and tags being supplied by the user. Not the most obvious solution, but I think it is pretty common. You see the same solution in Papers.

I am not using the synchronize feature, but the word is that it works well, but causes some limits on how other programs can link with saved pdfs (because Sente needs to copy, rename and delete pdfs behind the scenes to implement synchronization).

I just spent a few hours looking at some of the competition, and here are some comments:

Papers: Nice but incomplete. For instance, you can't add books to the reference database. And, while you can add tags to references, you can't add the same tag to multiple references at a time. Reading their forums, it is obvious that many people want these features, but the authors have not had time to implement them yet.

Papers focuses on reading pdfs, not compiling and filing them. While it is useful, it might be just as useful to use the Finder + a good pdf reader like Skim.

Mendeley: I couldn't transfer my Sente database to Mendeley--the pdfs did not transfer (meaning that I would have to drag and drop 2,000+ pdfs one by one). Other fields that I use in Sente to organize my database (like Status, or Library Call #) also didn't transfer. It seemed like a better solution for a lab that is working mostly with recent documents, not a person who still uses a physical library like me. Mendeley is still in beta, but the price can't be beat (free), and Mendeley is cross-platform.

For me, the time I have saved keeping my references organized in Sente is more than repaid by the cost.  
(Version 6.0.19)

GOODWILL :)  I fixed the problem by simply do a permission repair. So, I retract my comments above.  
(Version 6.0.17)

GOODWILL :)  Another bug: when a local pdf file (downloaded by app other than Sente) is added to the library, it can only be read inside the Sente window but not by external app such as Acrobat. Nevertheless, pdf file download within the Sente can be opened either way.   
(Version 6.0.17)

GOODWILL :)  Compared to Sente 5, I noticed a much higher CPU usage in Sente 6. Anybody else have similar experience?  
(Version 6.0.12)

EMCHATEAU  For me also the best i've tried (and i've tried almost all of them). Because of the mac interface, it's a really easy soft for mac users. But it is also very powerfull and truly manageable.

I really enjoy the keywords system and the smarts collections. PDF meta data are easy to receive and it makes it really easy to add a new ref from the pdf on your computers.

Compared to Zotero, it's really more powerfull and easy to use but it doesn't have the export of library on the web and share collection that zotero gives.

Anyway the data are exportable in different formats so you can go from one system to anotherone witch makes your data really safe.

I regret it doesn't support different language for the date citation as i'm french. But i hope they'll change this very soon.

As i'm an historian, i also miss the circa citation in the date field.

Even of that, i'm still using it, because it's so great !  
(Version 5.7.5)

KEYBOARDPOUNDER  THE best research application around.

I have tried them all, and Sente is amazing.

The interface: like a Mac, so easy.

Tools: all the features you will ever need.

Get it and compare, that's all I can say.

My hat's off to Third Street Software, you've made a true fan out of me.  
(Version 5.7.5)

KEYBOARDPOUNDER  I have just now downloaded Sente 5.7.5 and I must say that I am soooo happy. I have tried them all, let me tell you, but NONE of them even come close to this amazing application. Seriously. The user interface is so intuitive for Mac users that you're up and running in no time at all, unlike many other programs that require the user to devote their lives to an entire course on the program, and that's just to do the basics!

Sente is not like that all. The app just makes sense and is a pleasure to use. All the features a scholar, writer, educator ever needs is in this amazing program.

Thank you so much Third Street Software for Sente!

...I am a lifer for your program.  
(Version 5.7.5)

JUST A USER  I like it, took some time ti figure out how to use it, but it has all the features I need and it works great.  
(Version 5.7.5)

ASDFASD  Without any doubt EndNote is still the best reference manager ever!

You can share entire libraries between PCs and Macs, and this is essential for someone that works with both platforms, or when you collaborate with people that uses different OS. The integration of EndNote with Microsoft Word is great and now it can also work with Apple Pages.

EndNote its ugly and it has a really bad GUI when comparing to Papers or Sente, but it works a lot better than those two together when you need to write a paper or a thesis.

So do not even bother in buying Sente, it is expensive and it lacks the most essential feature on a reference manager the integration to Word and Pages...   
(Version 5.7.5)

ALANTERRA  I haven't explored all the features of Sente, but it seems to be head and shoulders above its competition. I spent the last few days looking at Sente, Papers, Zotero, and one programs that I didn't even bother to look at due to bad reviews (EndNote).

For my needs, Sente is the best. I am trying to organize a couple of thousand pdfs (and a few other kinds of documents), and continue to research various areas from that base. Sente seems to have a strong emphasis on medical research (it uses PubMed as a default database to look for things, and I haven't figured out how to change that). But the tools of being able to look up bibliographic data automatically in Google Scholar, use keywords, and browse pdfs from within the program make the program exactly what I need.

As of Feb 2009, the developers are giving some insight into the next version of the program, which looks to be a useful improvement. It will be a free upgrade to anyone who purchases the program after Jan 1, 2009.  
(Version 5.7.3)

RACHAEL GARRETT  If you are a student is affordable if you purchase a group license for 10 users and then split the costs!! Plus a lot of schools will reimburse you for half of the cost of the software.   
(Version 5.7.1)

ZEBA  One more thing... this is the price for 3 licenses. I need only one license for most of my programs, as most of other users (students) do, but developer is not willing to offer that in their business model.  
(Version 5.6.16)

ASDFASD  It aims to be used in academia, but at US $89.95 it's to expensive to be used by students!

So two thumbs down.  
(Version 5.6.13)

ERNIE BEAL  Can't wait to see which one (Sente or Bookends) ends up implementing direct support for OpenOffice 3.x.   
(Version 5.6.13)

LEV  Gosh, Sente and its competition Bookends don't need reviewers; at the moment, they need a sports commentator. Sente just pulled into the lead with totally customisable conditional fields ("print X unless field A is empty, in which case print Y"). Can't wait to see Bookends' response. Except perhaps I should do some work, instead of watching Sonny Software and Third Street doing *their* work...)  
(Version 5.6.4)

SIMONM  Although you get an initial generous 30 day trial period, after this has expired you can no longer assess future versions of the software! How can we test out new features if the developer won't allow us to trial the software again???  
(Version 5.6.3)

LEV  For those of us in the (non-MLA) humanities, life just got a bit more difficult.

With Sente’s latest iteration, we now have two first-rate reference managers (Bookends being the other) and no excuse for sticking with the lamentable gouging corporatism behind EndNote ($100 a year, more or less, for “upgrades” which consist of bug fixes (more or less)).

Sente now offers “tabbed browsing” -- an onboard WebKit browser with “data detectors” that enable you to home in on, for example, a JSTOR paper and grab its reference and PDF. It has great note-taking capabilities, RTF file attachments viewable from within the app., easily-customisable references for footnotes and in-text styles, and an excellent UI.

The choice is hard.

Bookends is probably a gnat’s-whisker more customisable on the citations front (particularly with its ability to force, to some extent, the behaviour of a citation when an element is missing) and allows the user to rename the same field for different reference types (“Book title” in Books, the same field called “Article title” in Journal Articles, for example). Sente is a bit more authoritarian in this respect.

For online searching and grabbing of references, Sente has the lead. Neither of them has two great killer features -- the ability to copy a note or a quote and have it appear in the target document complete with reference and pages cites, and the ability to link references/notes/quotes to other references with some cognitive functionality, as in the great and lamented Papyrus which never made it to OS X.

(In Papyrus you could link My Great Book to His Lousy Book with the link “Cites” and lo!, His Lousy Book would be linked to My Great Book with the link type “Cited in”. Marvellous).

But I imagine these things will come. The Sente guys and Jon of Sonny Software, author of Bookends, are now engaged in an excellent battle for mastery and for once the end-user is really benefitting from competition. Hooray!

The only thing I can say is: try them out and decide for yourself. But for heaven’s sake, do *decide*. Do *not* follow my example and end up with a Bookends database and a Sente database and *no real clue what’s where*. The end decision will be down, as always, to personal choice. But it’s really good to have such a difficult choice to make.

Kudos (kudoides?) all round.  
(Version 5.6.1)

LYNREID  Sente's 5.4 upgrade takes it from amazing to phenomenal.

This program (in version 4.x, if I recall) single-handedly converted me to a Mac. Nothing manages your searches, keeps you up to date on the literature, organizes your pdfs and other documents, AND functions as your citation manager. Sente does all that, and with the 5.4 upgrade you can now do your search, select a reference delivered by PubMed, and with one click, there's your imported, renamed, stored pdf. Sometimes you have to click twice. (If you're old enough to remember going to the library to photocopy an article, clicking twice is okay. Even if you're not that old, clicking twice is okay.)

Just so you know going in, it's still only amazing if you work mostly in WoS; it's phenomenal properties are for PubMed. But "amazing" is still pretty good. I.e. on WoS you still have to go download the pdf through your own search, and then drag it onto the reference in your library to be automatically renamed, organized, and linked to the reference.

This new release gives Sente many of the features that Papers has and Sente didn't. (Papers doesn't do the citation manager part, but it has some cool tricks that might have tempted you away from Sente. Now Sente has those cool tricks too.)

It can sometimes be a little rough around the edges (I can't get the references to behave as reliably as in RefMan or EndNote), but the other features are so mind-bogglingly useful and easy that I don't mind doing a bit of tidying up.   
(Version 5.4)

LEV  My earlier comment about footnotes is out of date and should be dismissed. Sente now does them, and seems to do them fine, although I've only just had a quick look at it.  
(Version 5.1.9)

ODYSSEUS  This is now the golden standard of bibliography management programs:

1. Sente appears to have the cleanest, best-designed interface. For example, you can do *all* your work in the main library window - no need to open up a reference window, switch between tabs within that window, etc.

2. Sente is unique in that it doesn't force you to use arcane character codes and field names in order to produce working formats -- it's all done in a graphic interface, with popups and checkboxes.  
(Version 5.0.19)

LEV  No ability to format references in footnotes (despite "improved" functionality with Mellel? In that case, still no use in much of the humanities field. Sorry. But I'd love to know what's do very hard about the problem that we're on version 4 and still no progress.  
(Version 4.2.1)

SCOTTG_  Sente is by far the best bibliographic program that I have used. It even runs on my poor old 400MHz G4 laptop. Some of the reviews on this site seem to be for quite an old version of Sente- now it inserts citations into documents and builds bibliographies- but I think it's real strengths are in the way that it organises papers, and makes everything so searchable. The automatic download of pdfs based on pubmed or doi search is an added bonus.   
(Version 4.1)

SHERMAN  An academic reference manager that STILL can't format bibliographies according to APA standards. When will this get fixed?  
(Version 4.1)

STONEMAN  Nice app, but it only handles parenthetic citations, not footnotes. For that the only option is still Bookends.  
(Version 4.1)

JIBBE  Sente is great but ...

Please, please, multilingual support !  
(Version 2.2.1)

ANONYMOUS  For legal research see Past Efforts X!  
(Version 1.3.0)

DANIEL FICK  Save time and increase productivity...boy have I heard that before. As a researcher I have converted a number of colleagues to the Mac platform and Sente has been the clincher for many.

Often overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of our reading lists just keeping up to date, I find Sente helps identify relevant articles quickly by allowing me to skim abstracts. I then use the PubMed Linkout option to retrieve the articles deemed relevant.

The Bibliography function is a welcome addition in communicating with others in the research group who do not have Sente....just export thru mail.

If you're serious about a literature review then try Sente...   
(Version 1.2.3)

MICHAEL SIDORIC  Sente's filtering, speed, stability and ease of use are unrivaled by any competing propduct I've tested.

While I understand concerns about student pricing, it is well worth the price -- and when you consider the time you can save (student time isn't free) -- Sente is truly a bargain.  
(Version 1.1.1)

GRAD STUDENT  I've found Sente to be an easy and intuitive way to execute, organize and review Medline searches. However, as a graduate student, the $50 cost of the program is hard to justify when most of us already own and use some version of EndNote that effectively accomplishes the same functions as Sente (if perhaps not as efficiently). I hope 3rd St. will consider lowering (at least) the student cost of the program.  
(Version 1.1)

KRISTI  Good program but I agree with Joe , I wouldn't pay more than 10$ for it.  
(Version 1.0.3)

JOE  I think this is a very useful program for every graduate student in biomedical sciences. I like the browser option: very clean interface. What I failed to understand was the steep student pricing! 50$ is way too much for this program. It costs me just a bit more to get Endnote 7 which has the same options, and in addition, and more importantly, allows me to insert citations into my manuscripts.  
(Version 1.0.3)

MICHAEL SIDORIC  Sente is an essential tool for anyone in bio-medical research. The interface is simple, and elegant, yet powerful -- and superb filtering helps narrow searches without having to re-run them again and again. The beta version was an awesome achievement -- and this latest release is even better.

Third Street Software has done an impressive job, and with their aggressive pricing -- Sente should become an essential tool for anyone in medicine or bio-medical research.  
(Version 1.0)

ANONYMOUS  This looks really quite useful. Perhaps linking in with ref software (eg BookEnds or EndNote) would maks this a great alternative to digging through the PubMed website.  
(Version 1.0b5)