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Indian Journal of Pharmacology, Vol. 36, No. 4, August, 2004, pp. 257 Correspondence Bibliography management with EndNote 7.0 Venkataraman Girish, Ananthanarayanan V Department of Pathology, Loyola University Medical Center, Maywood, IL Code Number: ph04088 Sir, I read with interest Dr. Sahu′s letter regarding the necessity of accurate references in the IJP.[1] Two kinds of software are available to handle bibliography, as he rightly mentioned-free open-source and commercial. The only advantage of using open-source software for referencing is that they are free of cost. Even so, there are still a good number of problems that are encountered while using these for referencing. First, they are not intuitively understandable. Secondly, configuring specific journal-especially biomedical-output styles is not easy if the end-user has no programming knowledge. Thirdly, troubleshooting is very difficult as there are no ready-reference books available for these software. And lastly, compatibility with MS Word is a major issue; most biomedical journals stipulate that authors submit Word files containing all in-text citations and bibliography. One commercially available bibliography software that we have personally tested and use currently is EndNote ®7.0.(ISI ResearchSoft Inc., USA). Basically, EndNote is a software package for creating bibliographies, embedding citations of bibliographical references in the text of manuscripts and automatically creating bibliographies at the end.[2] PubMed citations can be imported into EndNote which, in turn, will format the bibliography output and automatically place the citations at the end of the manuscript.[3] This software has revolutionized the ways of managing a bibliography by helping to make journal style modifications and referencing a much easier and error-proof task.[4] In fact, modifications can be made to the Vancouver style in EndNote 7.0 templates so that it conforms to the style required by the Indian Journal of Pharmacology. Journal-specific ′style file′ can even be sent across to other authors so that they can immediately format their bibliography output to conform to the journal′s requirement, relieving the journal office of delays in publishing due to improperly formatted bibliography.[5] Many international scientific journals already have a downloadable style file available within EndNote or on their respective websites for authors to use. The ′endnote′ on EndNote A good place to start is the website of EndNote (www.endnote.com) and check out a one-month free trial of EndNote to see how it helps in managing bibliographies. Academic versions of this software are available for nearly half the price of commercial versions, for researchers and students. The learning curve is very steep as the software is intuitively easy to navigate and use. University libraries can have an academic version loaded on a sharing basis for students and researchers who cannot afford a personal copy. All said and done, the best way to learn is by trial and error. The handbook that comes with the software is very comprehensive and gives numerous step-by-step instructions to handle bibliographies. Commercial software like EndNote ® have specifically been designed to aid in referencing for biomedical journals; a one-time investment can go a long way in the efficient management of bibliographies for everyone in the biomedical field. REFERENCES
Copyright 2004 - Indian Journal of Pharmacology |
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