Software for managing citations
March 3rd 2007 04:03
Signature Tune
This sounds like serious stuff and it is.
For those who are meticulous about everything they do and like to keep immaculate records, this is for them.
I'm much too lazy to cope with this sort of thing but maybe it becomes easier with repetitive use.
Perhaps it is not for everyone but for certain people I think they would regard it as a blessing.
This is for serious readers if I can manage to attract them.
Published by tobias.escher November 10th, 2006 in DPhil
Concerning some recent discussion on which software to use for managing citations (or whether at all), here some information that I gathered during an one hour OUCS session which compared the two standard products (?): Endnote and RefWorks....... here is a quick overview:
What the software can do for you:
* it is essentially a database of all references (e.g. to books, journal articles, URLs etc) that you have used or that you want to use in your written work
* you can add to this database manually by typing in author, title etc information, but its great plus is that it can automatically interface with various library catalogues. That is if you find a book on OLIS, you can just import the information about the book into your database and don’t have to type a thing. It will also take care of duplicates in your database.
* the good thing is: it can format these references in all sorts of styles (or you create your own) as to satisfy the requirements of whatever journal you want to publish in the work you write.
So there is no question that such software is immensely useful as you will never forget to include an author in your bibliography that you’ve been referencing in the text and with a click you can format it in the way you want. Brilliant. But which one to use?
In short:
Endnote is something like the great old man of the citation software and it is essentially a program you run on your computer. That is, the reference database is stored on your computer. That enables a very comfortable interface with MS Word (or potentially other word processors?) but it gives you the inconvenience of having to install Endnote on every machine you use to write your stuff and you have to manually keep your reference database up to date on all of that machines. You should be able to get a copy free of charge from OUCS or via the department, otherwise it will cost you about 135 Pounds.
RefWorks seems to be the up and coming solution for the always-on Internet age as it stores the reference database online. So you don’t have to install any software on your computer and can use it from any computer you like. However, the resulting disadvantage is that it is not so nicely integrated with word processors, e.g. you have to upload your final document to the website, where it is processed (i.e. a bibliography is created) and then you download it again. Not very convenient. What is more, during the demonstration the site seemed to have some serious bugs but the most discouraging feature of the software will be its price. As a member of Oxford University it’s free but once you loose that status these people are going to charge you 100 Dollars a year (!!).
Well, so you can decide for yourself. As a side note: I do not understand why there is no Free Software/Open Source solution to this problem. The online reference database is clearly the way to go and the whole process is dead-simple (it’s just a database with some stylesheets that should be able to connect to some catalogues…). However, I haven’t checked on that thoroughly so hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.
I also ought to mention that other people use BibTex which is a tool to format references in LaTex. LaTex in itself seems a bit complicated but loads of people insist on it’s worth getting into it as it will format your thesis as professionally as possible. Seems like you need some basic programming skills (although there are also some helpful editors I’m told, have a look at LyX). However, as far as I understand it BibTex does not come with a reference database. Instead all your references are stored within an ordinary text file. This means you can not automatically import from library catalogues and it does not check for duplicates in your database either. So more work on that side I suppose although I’m happy about comments pointing out other tools.
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