I've just bought a copy of this, it looks quite interesting, but is it as good as they suggest? Does it do more than just produce your ref list and keep tabs on that and collect refs from the internet? At the moment I'm thinking it is a bit like Access

It organises your references, makes it easy to access the list, change it, and later to transfer it into a word document prior to submission of your thesis. I strongly recommend its use, I've seen enough people running into trouble with regular word document reference lists.

Nevertheless, don't expect wonders from the programme, it's simple and doesn't have that many options apart from the ones described above. But then, what more do you need?

I was hoping it was going to be a way of keeping track of all those bits of paper with odd quotes on them which kind of get lost amongst the piles of paper on my desk. I've just spent half an hour looking for a bit of paper with info concerning ethics and would like to have a simple place to keep such notes -sigh

You can put notes of whatever kind into the refs for storage, for example I note the date collected (long story why) in one section and where I have filed it in another. You could easily put other notes or quotes in a section (for example, the heading 'alternate journal' is never used so I store stuff in there).

smiledon (sp? sorry fogotton exactly) you can create custom fields too for that kind of information. can't remember exactly how but someone showed me the other day!

yeaaaa! I love endnote

As everyone else has said it is basically a ref lib manager - everything is put in manually - but you can search for it via basic search terms and it'll fill in all the details - it does not automatically search for updates for you and put those in

but the good thing is that it stores all the different paper styles for referencing - so if you do it one way and decide to change to another - it is as easy as a click of the button

You can add your own refs (for odd quotes and books) - edited by yourself or just add in all the journals you ever use - through a fairly comprehensive easy to use search engine

and it means you don't have to spend weeks formating documents -

Definately use it (or any other ref manager) from the start

S

oh, and you can connect endnote directly to databases (such as the ISI web of science), and search the databases through endnote and save the references you need. or import them from the database. that means, no need to copy down the reference manually.

and you can save your endnote library online and access it from everywhere.

and you can link directly to the PDFs of the articles.

and it connects nicely with word. you simply press alt-7 to insert a reference while you are writing in word.

Endnote 9.0 seems very good. A colleague demonstrated it to me last week and I think I like it.


Soza

Don't forget if you want to buy it, you get a student discount if you put in your athens account details

I don't have endnote

Another good thing about EndNote is the way that you can print off the records for when writing up sections (lets be honest - most of us read a paper and don't look at it until the s'visor asks us to submit that section). If you set up one of the custom fields to show "Area of Research", then use the Copy/Formatted option and copy the list to a word doc, you'll have a list of all refs (sorted and all) in one doc for easy reading.
Also, you can see fellow researchers libraries (if they are generous enough )and see what refs they think are important within your dept.
Basically, I find that you have to enter in ALL crucial info (including a link to the PDF doc) once you have read the doc in order to get full use of EndNote, so a bit of discipline is needed.
Joyce - get EndNote and take time out to learn it (there should be a course at your college) - it will be worth it! Two up from me anyhows.

It may be possible if you are with a university that they have the subscription (liscence) for multiple distribution of endnote, which as a PhD you should be entitled to.

It might be worth asking your supervisor or fellow Phds to see if they have it and if they got it through the dept?

it is well worth getting and using from day one

I'm on a 6 week submission deadline now and if I had to go through the entire thing manually formatting each reference it would take me at least a week - and god forbid if your supervisor told you it had to be formatted a different way!

Whereas with endnote it is as simple as a single click!

It seems like a very good investment then.

yep!