BibDesk-like software for Windows
JabRef is an open-source, cross-platform BibTeX reference manager with much of the same functionality as Bibdesk. In particular, it can download PDFs and link the bibliographic entry with the downloaded PDF (this functionality is contained in the "File" field of the "General" tab of the BibTeX entry editor).
Mendeley
From Mendeley website:
Mendeley is a free reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research.
- Automatically generate bibliographies
- Collaborate easily with other researchers online
- Easily import papers from other research software
- Find relevant papers based on what you’re reading
- Access your papers from anywhere online
- Read papers on the go, with our new iPhone app
From Alternative.to:
Mendeley helps manage and share academic knowledge: Mendeley Desktop is free academic software (Windows, Mac, Linux) for organizing & sharing research papers and generating bibliographies with 1GB of free online storage to automatically back up and synchronize your library across desktop, web and mobile. Mendeley Web is a free research network which lets you manage research papers online, discover trends & connect to like-minded academics. Mendeley tracks usage data on over 40 million research papers in real-time, thus creating a network of people using and sharing millions of scholarly articles - helping to shift research into the 21st century world of collaboration and openness. Mendeley is engendering a revolution in the way research is conducted and disseminated, changing the face of science.
With Mendeley you can view and annotate PDF files. The PDF exported along with the comments can be readily viewed in Adobe's Reader.
I use Zotero, which is a powerful open source Firefox plugin that keeps a database of your references, including local copies of PDF files and websites. It can export references to different formats, including BibTeX.