The use of software for high quality scientific research has become a necessity for maintaining the accuracy of cited references. In addition to being a rather time consuming and laborious task, different journals demand a variety of referencing formats, thus further complicating the process. The Endnote software can be a boon for any researcher writing a manuscript or thesis.
Endnote 9.0 is supported in different operating systems, including Windows (98, 2000, XP) and Macintosh (support for Linux platform is currently not available). Endnote software can assist with searching libraries online, retrieving search-specific references in no time. Over 550 connection links are available to reference databases worldwide, retrieving details such as journal name and volume, year, page, title and list of authors. The retrieved references can be saved locally in a library file and accessed later offline. The only problem that I have faced with web-based reference retrieval is that the references arrive in plain-text format and therefore, italics or symbols will not appear in the retrieved references (they can later be corrected manually).
References stored in Endnote 9.0 can be arranged in any desired order, including chronological, alphabetical, by journal, etc. Duplicate references can be easily searched and removed by specifying parameters such as author, year and title. The software integrates well in MSWord and the ‘cite while you write’ option is extremely useful while preparing a manuscript. Citations can be made on the fly by constantly searching the library using keywords. Alternately, the list can be inserted separately by exporting to .txt, .rtf, .html or .xml formats. Font size and style can be specified during export of references.
Different references can be easily merged into a single file and formatting can be based on any journal. Once the library is created, the references can be exported into any format in a matter of seconds. A large number of output formats are available with Endnote. An update is occasionally released, incorporating newer journal and book formats. Alternately, some journal websites also provide their referencing style in the form of an Endnote template that can be readily downloaded or the user can easily create an Endnote template if a desired format is unavailable.
Several Endnote libraries can be opened simultaneously; however, they open in the same window and not in separate windows. Some users may find this rather inconvenient. A detailed user manual is available for first-time users of Endnote, however, using the software is so straightforward, that one doesn’t need to read the manual at all!
Vikas Jain
Research Scholar
Indian Institute of Science
India