Bibliographic Management Software (Tech Topic #8)
Technical Topic #8: Bibliographic Management Software
Purpose:
As an extension to Tech Topic #7, Copyright and Bibliographic Citation Issues (http://lrc.aiha.com/English/Training/TT-7-Eng.pdf), this Tech Topic describes software that can be used to manage bibliographic references.
CONTENTS:
- Introduction
- Main features
- Bibliographic software packages
- Web-based reference management tools
- Additional resources
Generating bibliographies can be a time-intensive aspect of writing research papers. Compiling accurate and thorough bibliographies is required for an article to be accepted for publication, and it is also important for the peer-review process. For an overview of bibliographic issues, see Tech Topic #7, Copyright and Bibliographic Citation Issues (http://lrc.aiha.com/English/Training/TT-7-Eng.pdf). Bibliographic management software (BMS) can be used to assist in compiling bibliographies. In general, these software packages allow you to enter bibliographic information into a standardized form, and offers multiple style options for generating formatted bibliographies from this data. In addition to generating publication-quality bibliographies, bibliographic management software can help to organize large, key-word searchable databases of citations. This kind of software can be used to import bibliographic citations saved from searches conducted in PubMed Medline or other databases. Once a group of citations is imported, they can be sorted by the various fields of the record (author, title, keywords, etc.) Records can also be manually entered into a database.
There is a wide range of bibliographic software packages. In general, they are designed to assist in the following tasks:
- manual cataloguing of bibliographic references
- automated collection and organization of references from bibliographic databases, library catalogues, etc;
- search and retrieval of bibliographic subsets
- integration with word-processing software to automatically insert and format citations and bibliographies;
- formatting of references according to particular bibliographic styles
- formatting of references for exporting to other packages and for data-sharing
The most common features include:
- Search / Retrieve / Sort options
- Field flexibility
- Import / Capture options: the software could import references from a variety of electronic resources (on-line, CD-ROM-based, etc.).
- Direct "Internet search" capabilities.
- Linking options: links to text files and images (both web-based and saved on your PC)
- Bibliographies & References styles : a predefined collection of journal formats which can be used to generate appropriately formatted bibliographies
- Compatibility with your word processor
- Support: most of these packages have help desks, mailing lists and web sites.
BMS usually support the following data types:
- monographs
- journal articles
- conference proceedings
- theses
- unpublished work
- magazine and newspaper articles
- web-based publications
Bibliographic software packages
There are a number of packages available and they all vary in terms of cost, features, and available platforms. Among the most well-known are:
Biblioscape – Research information manager
“People use it to organize literature references, research notes, automatically generate citations and bibliographies automatically, search and capture bibliographic data on the Internet, and post bibliographic databases live on the web. The flood of bibliographic resources on the Internet requires new solutions for bibliographic information management. Biblioscape offers such a solution - whether you work alone, or as part of a group, or even in a large organization”
URL: http://www.biblioscape.com
Biblioexpress - Free bibliographic software
“BiblioExpress is a simple reference manager for researchers. It is the freeware edition of Biblioscape. BiblioExpress can be used to collect literature references of different types, to explore bibliographic resources on the Internet, as well as to serve as a free viewer of bibliographic data. BiblioExpress can format records in several popular styles.” BiblioExpress can be distributed along with your reference database to third parties on a CD.
URL: http://www.biblioscape.com/biblioexpress.htm
BiblioPocket -Reference management software for Pocket PC
“BiblioPocket is a reference management software for the PocketPC OS - Windows CE. It is developed with Visual CE program. BiblioPocket includes a subset of the fields in a Biblioscape database”. “With BiblioPocket, you can take your PocketPC computer to the library, write down the references you find, as well as your notes. When you are back in your office, put your Pocket computer on the cradle, run BiblioPocket and go to "Option | Export". Then transfer the file to the desktop and import into Biblioscape or BiblioExpress.”
URL: http://www.biblioscape.com/bibliopocket.htm
Citation - Bibliographic and research note software
Citation is a useful tool designed to: organize research notes and bibliographic information , and write references (in any of 1000+ styles) automatically, right to your word processing document. With Citation, all references and notes can be entered on note card-like forms, from within a word processor (Word or WordPerfect) - along with keywords, abstracts, and links to original documents or web-sites. Free trial availbale.
URL: http://www.citationonline.net/9-home.asp
This product is widely used by researchers, scholarly writers, students, and librarians to search online bibliographic databases, organize their references, images and PDFs in any language, and create bibliographies and figure lists instantly. You can search bibliographic databases on the Internet, organize references, images and PDFs in a library, and use Microsoft Word templates to create your manuscript. Free trial version available.
URL: http://www.endnote.com
This package has several additional interesting and useful features. GetARef makes it possible to associate one or several links to individual references. Such links may refer to a page on a web-site or a file located on the local computer or in a local area network. It offers well-structured dialogs that makes it easy to enter new references also for a beginner, and by always checking that entered information is reasonable. GetARef automatically recognizes the origin of a downloaded file and accordingly suggests an appropriate import routine In addition to standard Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), GetARef offers advanced variants (ANY, NONE, ALL, NEAR). It is possible to search specific 'fields', e.g., the title, author names, editor names and the abstract. It is also possible to search for references published in a certain time span, and to find references similar to a particular reference and sort them by similarity. One of the additional useful options is a Search Thesaurus by which a user can create useful synonyms.
URL: http://www.getaref.com/index_en.htm
Library Master - Bibliographic and textual database manager
It automatically produces bibliographies, footnotes and citations for your paper, thesis or book, helps to organize research notes and project records, and to manage catalogs of books, periodicals and audio-visuals. Library Master is a flexible textual database manager: you can use it to manage catalogs in libraries, museums and archives, research notes for theses, papers and books, scientific project notes, legal briefs, mailing lists, sales records, personnel records, product descriptions, inventories. You can create an index to periodical literature or a book catalog, cross indexed by author, subject and publisher, print book spine and pocket labels, and design custom reports to meet your special needs. A free demo-version is available.
URL: http://www.balboa-software.com/lmw.html
Nota Bene - Software for academic research
Nota Bene’s products - Scholar’s and Lingua Workstations - are integrated suites of programs designed to help students, academics, researchers, and writers in “managing and formatting of references, searching through notes to find quotations or other relevant material, structuring the argument, entering links to related texts, making sure footnotes and/or endnotes wrap properly, ensuring that cross-references are correct, formatting the resulting paper according to the dictates of the journal or press, and producing back-of-manuscript indexes.” One of the most important features is Extended Alphabets: these modules enable you to work in the supported language in Nota Bene proper, in Ibidem (the bibliographic database program) and Orbis (the text-retrieval system), just as you can already do in Greek, Hebrew, and Cyrillic. You must have Lingua Workstation 7.0 to use these alphabets. 30-days trial version is available.
URL: http://www.notabene.com
Papyrus – Bibliography system and knowledge manager
This program allows to store and cross-link your references, notes and graphic images, import bibliographic references from anywhere, instantly locate references by any field, link your references to the Internet, and to combine with your word processor to produce perfectly-formatted manuscripts and bibliographies. Available for free (version 7, 2004)
URL: http://www.researchsoftwaredesign.com
This program allows searching the Internet for references, organizing your data using standard Windows navigational tools in ProCite, linking to the web and capturing web pages into your ProCite database. You can format bibliographies for hundreds of journal styles, or create your own. ProCite for Windows captures the URL and the page’s title information and stores it in your reference collection (with Netscape or Internet Explorer), then you can use the Express Paste feature to copy text information from the web page directly into the ProCite record. ProCite includes 39 different reference types each with 45 fields. ProCite is also available as a network program. Free trial available.
URL: http://www.procite.com/pcinfo.asp
This multifunctional electronic card-form database is aimed at the management of bibliographic information. This enables to catalogue different types of references (books, articles, proceedings, patents, etc.), to organize them, to search, and to format the references according to several journal styles.
URL: http://www.programms.ru/products/P00000790008368.shtml
Web-based reference management tools
Web-based reference management software provides some interesting new options (besides the standard set of features) – this include possibility of group work through the Internet, automatic updates of new/edited records, and access to bibliographic DBs, created by other users. Some of these products are available for free.
BiblioWeb is the first web enabled bibliographic software. All the basic functions of bibliographic software are delivered through web browser. A web user can be assigned "Read" or "Write" privileges. Users with "Read" accounts can search, browse, display, and export bibliographic records. Users with "Write" accounts can add, edit, delete, import, even format document through web browser. BiblioWeb is the solution for a research group to share a common bibliographic database on the Web. It also supports a threaded discussion forum. If you want to charge users for access, BiblioWeb can keep an access log recording every request made by users.
URL: http://www.biblioscape.com/bibliohost.htm
HotReference is a shareable bibliographic database. It allows you to: organize your bibliographies into categories, attach postscripts, pdf, doc files to the papers, make annotated bibliographies with your personal comments on each paper. You can allow other users (selected and registered by). It supports all most common bibliographic import and export formats. You can also use HotReference to make the publications list of your personal web-site: you create a public category containing a set of publications and copy a short HTML code into your web-site. Thus, if you modify that category content, your homepage gets automatically updated. There are two catalogues of articles, a Public and a Personal. The public one is used as an information source, and it is shared by all the system users. The personal catalogue is to keep your bibliography organized. It is available for free
URL: http://www.hotreference.com//login.php
Refbase is a web-based, platform-independent, multi-user interface for managing scientific literature and citations. Users can get automatic email announcements for newly added records, and dynamic RSS feeds for recently added/edited records as well as for any custom user query. You can link records to other records in the database (using static or dynamic links)
URL: http://refbase.sourceforge.net
RefWorks - Online personal database and bibliography creator
RefWorks is a web-based bibliography and database manager that allows users to create their own personal database by importing references from text files or online databases. RefWorks automatically creates author, descriptor and periodical indexes when importing so you just click on the word to perform the retrieval. Use Quick Search to search all fields for the most comprehensive results or Advanced Search to narrow your search to specific terms and fields. 30-day free trial.
URL: http://www.refworks.com
WIKINDX is a bibliographic and quotations/notes management and article authoring system designed either for single use (on a variety of operating systems) or multi-user collaborative use across the Internet. In multi-user mode you create and manage your own bibliographies drawn from the WIKINDX master bibliography and browse other users' bibliographies. It allows to add unlimited file attachments to each resource, and catalogue resources by categories and keyword(s). The package also provides multiple export options (to other bibliographic software). It is available for free.
URL: http://wikindx.sourceforge.net
Thompson ResearchSoft - Compare Products
A chart comparing the four main BMS produced by Thompson ResearchSoft: EndNote - the most popular and easy-to-use package; Reference Manager – it offers network features with simultaneous read/write access to databases; ProCite - it provides flexibility to group references and creates subject bibliographies; WriteNote - is the web-based tool that helps users conduct research and write papers.
URL: http://thomsonisiresearchsoft.com/compare/
Shapland M. Evaluation of Reference Management Software on NT (comparing Papyrus with ProCite, Reference Manager, Endnote, Citation, GetARef, Biblioscape, Library Master, Bibliographica, Scribe, Refs) (last update – April 2001)
URL: http://eis.bris.ac.uk/~ccmjs/rmeval99.htm
Dell'Orso F. Bibliography formatting software: An Evaluation template (Universit? degli studi di Perugia -Italy)
The web-site also includes a comprehensive Webgraphy: Internet resources on bibliography formatting software.
URL: http://www.burioni.it/forum/ors-bfs/text/index.html
Bibliographic Database Managers
URL: http://library.humboldt.edu/~rls/bibdata.htm
Managing Your References Using Bibliographic Software Packages
URL: http://www.lib.gla.ac.uk/researchskills/bibsoftware.shtml
Overview of Personal Bibliographic Software
URL: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/service/workshop/bib-overview.html
Bibliographic Software and Standards Information (Wikipedia)
URL: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Bibliographic_Software_and_Standards_Information
Ananchenko I., Frolov A. Bibliographic softwares and web-based databases (Russian)
Posted: August 11, 2004.
URL: http://listzone.ru/cgi-bin/script/view.cgi?id=239&cat_id=7&print=1
Protasov P. Bibliographic management software (Russian)
Posted: June 25, 2004.
URL: http://www.computerra.ru/softerra/raznosoft/34400/
Compiled by: Dave Sturgill and Irina Ibraghimova
Last updated: 10.10.2006
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