Technical Computing Magazine - Issue 38

Cite right despite pressing deadlines & competitive publishing

Stephanie Marshall,
Account Manager - Bibliographic Products

The task of getting writing ready for submission causes problems for researchers, authors and students alike.

For the inexperienced undergraduate, the finer details of citation etiquette can be confusing and frustrating.

It’s no picnic having to struggle with formatting while the paper deadline looms ever closer.

For the seasoned researcher, listing often numerous reference sources properly can seem painfully slow when you’re racing to publish results ahead of others in your field. In the quest for peer recognition, a grant or a better job, it’s all too easy to cut citing corners just to get your findings in the public domain first.

But you don’t have to sacrifice the quality of your work, or risk unintentional plagiarism just to get the paper out the door on time or ahead of the competition. Bibliographic tools like EndNote can help researchers and students become more productive in their writing and keep conscientious about citing their sources.

That’s because all the hard work and ‘fiddly bits’ associated with referencing is taken care of.

EndNote helps writers and researchers scour online databases, to find and manage relevant references, and keep accurate, searchable records of their sources. In one go, the software accurately captures all the reference information required to properly attribute the author - without the mistakes or omissions associated with manual copying. EndNote even locates and downloads any available full text documents, automatically attaching them to the relevant record, for a comprehensive personal library.

Then when it comes to inserting those references as citations in a document and creating the accompanying bibliography, EndNote makes the task almost instantaneous. Users can quickly cite to suit hundreds of styles depending on their field of research, course leader’s requirements, target journal or personal preferences. Even if you’re completely clueless about citing and referencing, EndNote will have you quoting published works like a pro.

The latest version X3 comes with some great new features to help writers and researchers alike achieve an even quicker writing turnaround.
Upon start-up, EndNote now automatically downloads the top 100 bibliographic styles to make loading Cite While You Write faster than ever, so you spend more time typing text and less time tapping your fingers while the software loads!

It’s now possible to create citations and bibliographies while you write in Apple Pages® ‘09 and OpenOffice.org Writer 3 for Windows - not just the universally popular Microsoft Word. That means more and more users are able to access EndNote capabilities from within their favourite word processing package without interrupting their train of thought. What’s more X3 comes with the capability to create multiple bibliographies in a single document - perfect when the author wants to list their sources at the end of every chapter instead of at the end of the document only.

EndNote X3 also comes with expanded grouping options perfect for large multiple-topic reference collections where simple, single-tiered filing just isn’t suitable. Users can now create ‘Group sets’ - master headings, under which both custom and smart groups can be filed. These can be easily rearranged at any time using drag-and-drop capabilities.

EndNote X3 licences come with a free EndNote Web account, providing 24/7 access to reference managing capabilities from any PC with internet access.

So when users are carrying out research away from their workstation, they can use EndNote Web as an online search and storage stop-gap, then export their web library to their desktop library as soon as they’re back at their computer. Users can also access their ResearcherID publication list via EndNote Web to output and share their publications.

And the improved ‘Find Full Text’ function and OpenURL Link resolver support brings more results for online searches. So not only do you always have the relevant abstract at hand, you can also have the complete content in electronic format too - whether it’s a PDF, article, text document or entire book!

Other new features include more options for compressed libraries, side-by-side record comparison for simpler duplicate checking, plus support for composite reference styles favoured by chemistry journals.

Thomson Reuters have ‘tuned’ the engine of EndNote, so that with version X3, a growing group of users can accelerate through research and referencing tasks, to meet bibliographic demands and copy deadlines without even breaking into a sweat. Why not download a free demo and take the software for a test drive to see how much writing time you can save without slipping up on citation convention.

Contact our product specialists for more information.