Tag Archives: Endnote

Review of Endnote X8 for Mac

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Some days I just don't like Endnote any more. In the past I have used a combination of Endnote and Papers2. A few years ago I wrote a review of Endnote X4 for Mac and I thought that I would go back and take a look at what I thought about that review and the new version of Endnote 8.

Keep in mind that I have over 8,500 references in my Endnote file. My biggest complaints are:

  1. It is slow.
  2. There still is no keyboard short cut for importing a reference.
  3. The "detect duplicates" script does not allow one to exit successfully prior to completing all the items in your detected duplicate list. (Which for some might be very long, and cause the script to crash!)
  4. There is no mechanism in the collections area to browse by Journal or Book series.
  5. When looking at a reference, there is no clear way to determine if it is in one of several collections (including in the check for duplicate script).
  6. There does not seem to be an export style for exporting to bibJSON. (I might be creating one soon).
  7. No auto suggest for missing citation metadata.
  8. for me, Endnote, when importing citations which contain a relative link to a PDF on my machine, does not actually import the PDF to an endnote managed folder. I want all my PDFs in one place. And if they are not in the Endnote managed folder I want a visual indication that they are outside the Endnote data folder.

These are my observations as I try and work with Endnote (and have over the last few months). For me, Papers2 (I haven't bought Papers3) nailed the interaction around PDF management and citation management, from a User Experience perspective. Papers2 just didn't have the custom Fields necessary for me.

Using Endnote X4 for Mac

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One of the most popular Citation Management software applications among academics is the application Endnote. Endnote has a long history is published by a reputable company, and has some pretty cool features. I use it (version X4) primarily because it is the only citation softwareThere is other citation management software for OS X which claims integration with pages but none of these solutions are endorsed or supported by Apple. Some of the other applications which claim integration with Pages are:

  1. Sente
  2. Bookends
  3. Papers – This is according to Wikipedia, but I own and use Papers 1.9.7 and have not seen how to integrate it with Pages. (However, Papers2, released March 8th, 2011 does say that it supports citation integration with Pages.)

which integrates natively with the word processor Pages, by Apple, Inc. The software boasts a bit of flexibility and quite a few useful features. Some of the really useful features I use are below.

However, regardless of how many good features I find and use in Endnote there are several things about it which irk me to no end. This is sort of a laundry list of these problematic areas.

  1. Can not sort by resource type:
    For instance if I wanted to sort or create a smart list of all my Book references, or just Journal Articles. This can be done, one just has to create a smart list and then set Reference Type to Contains: “Book Section”. There is not a drop down list of reference types invoked by the user.
  2. Can not sort by custom field:
    I think you can do this in the interface. Though it was not obvious on how to do it.
    Endnote Display Fields

    Endnote Display Fields

  3. Can not view all the custom fields for a resource type across all resources.
    This seems to be limited to eight fileds in the sorting viewer at a time.
  4. Can not view all entries without content in a specified field.
    This would be especially nice to create a smart list for this.
  5. No exports of PDFs or exports of PDFs with .ris files.
  6. There is no keyboard short-cut to bring up the Import function (or Export) under File Menu
  7. Does not rename PDFs based on metadata of the resource.
    This is possible with Papers and Mendeley. The user has the option to rename the file based on things like Author, Date of publication, etc.
  8. Can not create a smart list based on a constant in the Issue data part.
    I have Volume and Issue Data. Some of the citation data pulled in for some items has the issue set as 02, 03, etc. I want to be able to find all the issues which start with a zero so I can remove the zeros. Most stylesheets do not remove the zeros and also do not allow for them.
    Items are not selectable based on Issue Data

    Items are not selectable based on Issue Data

  9. Can not export PDFs with embedded metadata in the PDF.
  10. Can not open the folder which contains a PDF included in an Endnote Library.
    Endnote does not have a way to open the containing folder of a PDF

    Endnote does not have a way to open the containing folder of a PDF

    Endnote does not have a way to open the containing folder of an included PDF

    Close-up of the same menu.

  11. Modifying Resource type does not accept |Language| Subject Language|
  12. There is no guide in any of Endnote’s documentation for how to create an export style sheet.
    This is in the Help Menus I was expecting it on the producers website or in a book.
  13. When editing an entry’s meta-data i.e. the author, or the title of a work, pressing TAB does not move the cursor to the next field.
    At least some times it does not continue to TAB. If I do a new entry as a Journal article, then it will tab till the issue field, but not beyond. It gets stuck.
  14. There is no LAN collaboration or sharing feature for a local network solution.
  15. There is no Cloud based collaborative solution.
  16. There is no way to create a smart group based off of a subset of items in a normal group.
    i.e. I want to create a smart group of all the references with a PDF attached but I only want it to pull from the items in a particular group (or set of groups).
    Endnote no option for part of group filter

    Endnote has no option for 'part of group' filter

  17. There is no PDF Preview within the application. The existing Preview is for seeing the current citation in the selected citation style. (Preview of the output.) It would be helpful if there was also a preview pane for viewing the PDF or the attached file.
    No PDF Preview internal to Endnote

    No PDF Preview internal to Endnote