Two requests for it’s own thread, so here we go: let’s talk about collecting your references for when someone on the SDMB calls “CITE??!!11one1!” (Or when you’re writing a paper, but really, which is more important?)
**Here is what they do: **
(I might explain this all wrong, I only use these programs and don’t know anything about software.)
They work on three levels:
as a stand alone program,
as a button in your browser
and as a button in your word processor. In this way they allow you gather your references from the internet, store them and then post them to reference your work.
How does it work?
You’re browsing, you find an article that relates to your favourite SDMB argument. Huzzah! Next time you’ll show 'em, when in blaze of ignorance fighting glory you present your reliable, scientific source!
You click the little button in your browser, the source is saved automatically.
You can save it to a specific file to organise your sources. (I recommend “declawing”, “pitbulls” and “circumcision” as files all Dopers should have.)
Over time you build up a good bibliography in your file “declawing” that supports declawing as teh evil.
Next time it comes up on the SDMB you just open your reference manager and answer those requests for cite cite cite! The reference manager will save it all with a link, and you can tell it which style you like to use (but points are deducted for anything other than MHRA ;)). Just copy-paste your reference and link.
Put your t-shirt over your head and run a lap around GD with your arms in the air. Ignorance has been fought. If you are using your reference manager for a paper:
Write down your claim in your word processor.
Click the button in your browser. It creates the reference for you, in the style you want. You can add in the page number or chapter if you like.
At the end click the “bibliography” button, and that too is created automatically.
I use Zotero and I love it, but there are many more. Zotero works with lots of browsers and word processors. It also allows the option of saving your files to the cloud so you don’t lose them when you spill coffee on your laptop.
I don’t think you need to be either very techy or an academic to use a reference manager. It’s easy to download and keeps all your info nicely sorted for when you want to support your argument.
Anyone want to share their favourite reference management software? Or ask questions about using a reference manager? Or just post a better explanation?
I really is fun! I used to have so many files full of great articles. Everything from the Angolan Civil War to the gender dichotomy to theatricality of the suffrage movement. I did lose them all when I spilt coffee on my laptop* so I wised up and ticked the box saying “save to the cloud” or whatever.
*In my defence, the entire bed collapsed while I was having my morning coffee in bed. OK I’m not sure that is in my defence…
Do these apps allow you to type in a brief excerpt or synopsis (in your own words) of what each ref contains, so you can scroll through a list of cites and see your notes, short of having to open and re-read each one?
How is this seriously different from just maintaining bookmarks in my browser (aside from its cross-app use in word processors too)? I have various sub-folders in my bookmarks menu, grouped by topic, and when I see a web page I like, I just bookmark it and drop the bookmark into the appropriate folder.
Okay, I see that these apps allow for cross-app integration and cloud-based storage. What else can they do, more than what simple bookmarks do?
Oh hey, an opportunity to take about academic bullshittery while procrastinating from the same…
I’ve been using Mendeley for a number of years now. Basically it acts as an organized collection of all of the papers I’ve read for classes or my own research. I download a PDF into a folder monitored by Mendeley, and it automatically imports it into my collection and looks up all of the relevant metadata. Then, within the Mendeley program itself, I can highlight and add annotations, and search both the text within the PDFs and all of the metadata.
When I’m writing in Word and need to add a cite, I just hit Alt+M which brings up a search box. Type in a quick search, and then you select the desired citation from a short list. If I know the exact paper I just type “Alt+M Smith 2007 <enter>”. Or if I don’t remember the exact paper but I remember what it was about, I can type “Alt+M subject keywords <enter>”. Then Mendeley inserts a citation into the text and adds the paper to your bibliography, using whatever citation style you pick.
I used EndNote for a while, which was sort of useful, Mendeley has all the same functionality and so much more.
They’re more one-click and make the reference for you, as lazybratsche explained. If it’s just for the SDMB perhaps bookmarking is all you need. But then you don’t have page numbers and information saved, it doesn’t allow notes, it doesn’t tell you what kind of source it is and it doesn’t create a reference. Say you wanted to post a long list of evidence that lions would win in a fight against bears, you could simply import your bibliography from that file.
Yes, you can type notes!
Yes, they format references in your word processor in the style you want, and at the end they create a bibliography. Mine understands how to work with other footnotes in the text as well, so it keeps counting and doesn’t mess up the numbering by only counting its own references (if that makes sense?)
I think Word can also do that (I don’t use Word), but what my reference manager does better is the other features, like allowing you to save in one click. It’s remarkable in how much it recognises as a potential source, and how well it identifies what it is. If I am using a hard copy book I just look it up on Amazon and it saves it as a reference.
Can I append multiple keywords on to each reference?
I use diigo to collect references: it’s a web-based bookmark website. Back in the Spring of 2011, Delicious transmorgrified into some bizarre sort of image posting board and crippled much of its former functionality. So if you search for social bookmark comparison reviews, verify that they are dated from Dec 2010 or later.
Delicious’ bookmarks did not export well: the dating information was dropped. FTR.
August 2013 Tech Crunch article:
A survey by Hypothes.is shows that of 56 companies that tried to build annotation tools, most are either Defunct, Living Dead, or have Limited Use. The five that remain in wide usage are Diigo, Mendeley, DocumentCloud, RapGenius, and Goodreader. Both Mendeley and Goodreader are only tangentially related to annotations. While Rapgenius annotates its own sites, Diigo lets users annotate the whole web.
Wikipedia has a reference manager comparison page:
Endnote and Refworks are the 2 proprietary competitors in the academic market: their software sells for $300 fixed and $100 per year.
I’d like to dig deeper into this. I see that Mendeley was purchased by Elsevier this year, which is problematic given the latter’s restrictive policies. So for the moment, I’m thinking that a Zotoro/Diigo smackdown might be helpful.
Am I missing something? I installed the Zotero plugin for firefox, and I only get the icon that allows me to save references for a few pages. For instance, I went to a nytimes.com article and got it. I went to this page (for this thread) and did not. How’s it deciding?
You’re right, I’m not getting an icon for the SDMB either. Try google books, amazon, IMDB, JSTOR, wikipedia etc etc, it recognises all of those. It recognises papers even when you only have access to the abstract.
Measure for Measure posted a few comparisons between Zotero and others, and they seemed to indicate that Zotero recognises quite a lot.
I don’t really know how it is decided, but I suppose an internet message board isn’t a source that is normally used to cite academic work anyway.
If you are in academics/write papers, they contain all the information about it, including an optional pdf. Bookmarks only point to a non-persistent location. Bookmarks can only change the name and tags (at least in Firefox).
I don’t get it? It’s usually text that says “Export citation” or “Save citation”. Then you can export to EndNote format (the bloatier, pay program that’s similar to Zotero). The SDMB is not considered a citeable resource (unless the mods do something).
You can sign up for a Zotero account and then sync everything so that you can access your citations on any computer that has it installed.
Feature I like: adding by DOIs/PubMedID/ISBN.
The main Zotero interface is (in Firefox) on the bottom right by default, in your add-on bar (View > Toolbars > Add-on Bar).
Find endnote to be OK these days. It was so shit, for so long, that it’s not a well-loved program IME. The ability to search the main databases from within endnote, though, is quite impressively useful. If they were starting afresh, though, I’m pretty sure the program would work nothing like it does now. A lot of legacy functionality that is pretty bad IMHO.
I find I can do without it for most papers in any case. The vast majority of my work is published as communications and I don’t actually use any reference software when putting them together. I’d only wheel endnote out for a longer paper - the occasional review, say, with 100+ refs.
Well what bothers me about EndNote is that it starts at $250, unless you’re a student. Zotero is free and has a smaller footprint, and if the functionality is inferior in some way it hasn’t come up.
I find reference software is useful even if you have fewer cites. Let’s say you submit to an APA-format journal and it’s not accepted. The next journal you try is numerically formatted based on the order things are cited, or footnotes. It’s a pain to change that, and if you insert a 32nd cite, but it’s towards the beginning of the paper, you have to reorder everything behind it manually.
If you don’t have a specific style, you can usually use the repository to find it.
Zotero, if you’re not affiliated with an academic institution that covers the cost for Endnote or Refworks (the other two major players) is the way to go - and IMO, the way to go anyway, because what if you leave or the institution quits paying?
I’ve been using Zotero for a number of years now and my account has become a time-capsule of my research interests over the years. I’m lucky in that one of my colleagues literally wrote the book on Zotero, so I’ve have had ready help and heads-up about new features and the like.
I used EndNote to manage my bibliographies when I was in grad school, because it is so darn easy to import the citations. But I use Evernote to store my PDFs and search through my sources.
That makes sense, if you’re tracking references for use in an academic paper. On the other hand, if you want to track references to argue on an internet message board, you’d want to be able to track any page.
Just to be clear, if you don’t get an icon, does that mean that you can’t save the page in Zotaro in any way, shape or form? Because diigo (unsurprisingly) saves anything. It doesn’t generate references, but you can attach keywords.
You can add it manually. Go in the Zotero program, there is a little green add button at the top.
In my experience there is very little you could want to reference (incl on here) that it won’t save. YMMV, of course. But even on here, when people ask for a cite they’ll get miffed about wikipedia, and Zotero saves that. It gets most blogs, too. Really lots of informal stuff.
