I opened Endnote 9 on my Mac the other day and realized why I hardly ever use it. I want to add another column to the main display so I can have more information on the screen, but that feature is only available in version 10, and it will cost me $100 to upgrade. I’ve had it with expensive upgrades for an application that seems so limited and behind the times.
I’m now on a mission to find something better, which on the Mac looks to be Bookends or Sente, though some swear by JabRef. Reading discussion forums and reviews also reminded me that many academics prefer to write in a program other than Word (e.g., LaTeX, Mellel, Scrivener, etc.) and that certain word processors and reference managers get along better with each other.
I haven’t made up my mind yet, and I think many of us would like to know which tools others are using to finish their dissertations and churn out publications, so…
How do you do it? What apps are a part of your work flow? Which ones do you recommend? You can let us know in the comments.
17 comments ↓
LaTeX all the way! I didn’t realize how comfortable I am with LaTeX until this week I had the opportunity to throw together a quick draft of a 40+ page document in Word, if I so chose. I thought about it. Easy cut and paste of images and text. Make up headings on the fly, linking between different parts of the document.
Then I thought about how much of a pain working with Word styles is, and how every time I tried to format a Word document, I would have to keep redoing it from the top, because one little change would make weird things happen. Add to that the fact that nobody really understands sectioning in Word, or styles. And, I’d be using Word 2007, which I’m not quite familiar with yet.
Ugh. I ran back to my LaTeX right quick. The annoyance of creating eps files for my screenshots was way out-weighed by the fact that the formatting would be perfect. And easy.
So, LaTeX (whatever flavour you like for Mac; I’m using LEd on my PC) and JabRef. I’ve used several different programs for my bibliography *.bib files, including a home-grown Access database for a couple of years. JabRef blows them all away.
Thanks for getting things started, GTD Wannabe.
I should give LaTeX a closer look. I’m not wedded to WYSIWYG word processing (especially as I’ve done more and more blogging in HTML), but I imagine LaTeX would feel funny at first since I’m so used to Word. I suppose there are plenty of tutorials out there that could help someone get the hang of it.
i use endnote x with word - to make bibliographies and to manage my notes and articles. i’ve been really happy with it but had a *crisis* this past week while working on a grant proposal. the working version of the text had been edited by several other people (in word) using track changes, and it involved a lot of cutting and pasting. the night before it was due i realized that endnote had scrambled the references throughout the entire document - in no discernible order. i ended up having to fix them all by hand based on an old version of the proposal. so my enthusiasm for endnote x has been seriously dampened. am looking for recommendations myself!
You might want to peek at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.....t_software
I use Endnote X + Word 2003. I’ve seen Word 2007 and it has a citation manager built in as a feature now.
A semi-related question: what do you think about http://www.webcitation.org/ for URLs in academic work? It basically archives a web page so that URLs don’t go stale.
jt: Yikes! That’s the kind of trouble I’m hoping to avoid. Sorry to hear about it.
redpeace: Thanks for the links. I wish the Wikipedia comparison included Bookends, since I was leaning toward that program, but it’s still helpful.
Webcitation looks pretty sharp; I didn’t read all the details but no down sides come to mind immediately. Is this a service you’ve used?
Latex and Bibtex (with Jabref as the bib manager). I don’t know if I’d necessarily recommend Latex unreservedly to humanities scholars, though, as it is a steep learning curve for not a great advantage (especially for those of us in fields whose journals don’t accept papers in Latex form!)
Oh, and Jabref is much more customisable than Endnote. I love it.
GTD Wannabe, you may want to move to the next century by using pdflatex. It will spit out a PDF file directly, and you can include PNG, JPG, and embed PDF figures directly.
Hi,
I’m using Citavi, a bibliography software from Switzerland. I’m now using it for 6 months and like it. Especially its abilities for knowledge managment.
Oh sorry, I forget the link:
http://citavi.com/de/allgemeines/english.html
@Tobias: Thanks for the idea. I’ll admit - I’m completely self-taught when it comes to LaTeX. My major problem was being one of a few Windows users in a CS department. Nobody could point me in the right direction
It took me much trial and error getting everything to work *just so*. But I’ll take a gander at it 
If you use Firefox, you might consider checking out the free Zotero as a replacement for Endnote. It’s a Firefox extension: http://www.zotero.org/. I haven’t used it much myself, but you can export your Endnote library and easily capture citations from the internet.
Thanks, Jeremy.
I actually got an email from the Zotero folks a while back asking me to check it out and write up a review if I felt like it. I installed it last week and although I’ve just spent 5-10 minutes with it I have to say I really liked it. Even if you use another program like Endnote as your primary reference manager, Zotero seems like a wonderful tool for Firefox users–it might be powerful enough to get me to use Firefox more often.
I used Zotero for a while, and then it crashed and lost ALL my saved stuff. I am too scared to use it anymore!
Hi Jim,
I’m using pdfLaTeX and BibTeX (JabRef as FrontEnd) for writing my dissertation and the great Zotero for managing online references etc.
For simple documents or collaboration with colleagues, I also use MS Word and JabRef export features.
Furthermore, I’m using Citavi and Endnote for fetching bibliographical information from the Web.
Citavi looks also very promising, but as it is not available for MacOS X, it was not an option for me, as I’m writing my thesis on a non-INTEL Mac with OS X.
Kind regards
Martin
p.s. @ stylegeek
Well, Zotero is still in heavy development, however for me it proved quite stable.
I moved the zotero folder from within the firefox directory to my data directory and back it up regularly.
So far no data loss.
Cool, Martin. Thanks for the extra thoughts about Zotero.
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