Original author(s) | Niles Software |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Clarivate |
Stable release | |
Operating system | Windows, macOS |
Type | Reference management |
License | Closed-source and commercial software |
Website | endnote |
EndNote is a commercial reference management software package, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays, reports and articles. EndNote was written by Richard Niles, and ownership changed hands several times since it was launched in 1989 by Niles & Associates: in 2000 it was acquired by Institute for Scientific Information’s ResearchSoft Division, part of Thomson Corporation, and in 2016 by Clarivate (then named Clarivate Analytics). EndNote's main competitors are Mendeley and Zotero. Unlike Mendeley and Zotero, EndNote is neither free-to-use nor offers a freemium model.
EndNote groups citations into "libraries" with the file extension *.enl and a corresponding *.data folder.
There are several ways to add a reference to a library: manually, or by exporting, importing, copying from another EndNote library, or connecting from EndNote. The program presents the user with a window containing a dropdown menu from which to select the type of reference they require (e.g., book, congressional legislation, film, newspaper article, etc.), and fields ranging from the general (author, title, year) to those specific to the kind of reference (abstract, author, ISBN, running time, etc.)
Most bibliographic databases allow users to export references into their EndNote libraries. This enables the user to select multiple citations and saves the user from having to manually enter citation information and abstracts of papers. Some databases (e.g., PubMed) require the user to select citations, select a specific format, and save them as .txt files. The user can then import the citations into the EndNote software. It is also possible to search library catalogs and free databases, such as PubMed, from within the EndNote software program itself.
If the user fills out the necessary fields, EndNote can automatically format the citation into any of over 2,000 different styles the user chooses. For example, listed below are some citations from Gray'sAnatomy using several different styles:
Anthropos | Gray, Henry 1910 Anatomy, descriptive and applied. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger. [18th ed.] |
APA 5th | Gray, H. (1910). Anatomy, descriptive and applied (18th ed.). Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger. |
MLA | Gray, Henry. Anatomy, Descriptive and Applied. 18th ed. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1910. |
New England J Medicine | 1. Gray H. Anatomy, descriptive and applied. 18th ed. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger; 1910. |
In Windows, EndNote creates a file with an *.enl extension, along with a *.data folder containing two MySQL files pdb.eni and sdb.eni. EndNote can be installed so that its features, like Cite While You Write, appear in the Tools menu of Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer.
EndNote can export citation libraries as HTML, plain text, Rich Text Format, or XML. From version X.7.2, one library can be shared with up to 14 other EndNote users. The data is synchronized via the EndNote cloud service, with everybody having full write access to the library. [2]
EndNote can also organize PDFs on the user's hard drive (or full text on the web) through links to files or by inserting copies of PDFs. It is also possible to save a single image, document, Excel spreadsheet, or other file type to each reference in an EndNote library. Starting from EndNote X version 1.0.1, formatting support for OpenDocument files (ODT) using the Format Paper command is supported.
EndNote can also find full-text PDFs on-line (for non–open access publications, subscription credentials are required) and automatically attach PDF files from user's computer, provided that the PDF files have a DOI on the first page. [3]
EndNote Version 1 was released as a ”Reference Database and Bibliography Maker” for Apple Macintosh in c. 1989 by Niles & Associates near Emeryville at a list price of US $129 plus shipping. [4] However, starting with version 2.1. in 1995, EndNote has been available for Windows. [5] [6]
Libraries created with EndNote 7 and earlier are restricted to the size of 32,767 references, or 32 megabytes, whichever comes first. In the early 1990s, software reviewers stated, that “EndNote is a citation manager, not a personal online catalog. Its focus is on inserting citations into written documents,” although it has had the “ability to import formatted references from other databases” from its very early days. [7] [5] [8]
Starting with version 2 in c. 1995, many EndNote users considered the product as “a dual purpose program”, that "functions as a database manager and as a bibliography maker to insert citations into word processing documents and later compiles the bibliography in the required format”. [9] With the release of version 4.0 in c. 2000, EndNote attained most of its current functionality. [10] [11] [12] EndNote's database size limit has been increased several times. [13]
In 2000 EndNote was acquired by Institute for Scientific Information’s (ISI) Research Soft Division, part of Thomson Corporation. [12] In 2016, EndNote was transferred from Thomson Reuters to a spin-off company, Clarivate.
In 1992, there were four other products competing with EndNote: ProCite, Reference Manager, Papyrus [14] and Bibilostax. [15] In 1998–2015 Biblioscape was on this list as well. [16] Zotero was added to this list in 2006 and Mendeley in 2008.
In September 2008, Thomson Reuters, the owners of EndNote, sued the Commonwealth of Virginia for US$10 million and requested an injunction against competing reference management software. [17] [18] George Mason University's Center for History and New Media had developed Zotero, a free/open-source extension to Mozilla Firefox. Thomson Reuters alleges that the Zotero developers reverse engineered and/or decompiled EndNote, that Zotero can transform proprietary EndNote citation style files (.ens) to the open Citation Style Language format, that they host files converted in this manner, and that they abuse the "EndNote" trademark in describing this feature. Thomson Reuters claims that this is violation of the site license agreement. They also added a restrictive click-thru license to their styles download website. [18] [ failed verification – see discussion ] George Mason University responded that it would not renew its site license for EndNote, that "anything created by users of Zotero belongs to those users, and that it should be as easy as possible for Zotero users to move to and from the software as they wish, without friction." [19] The journal Nature editorialized that "the virtues of interoperability and easy data-sharing among researchers are worth restating. Imagine if Microsoft Word or Excel files could be opened and saved only in these proprietary formats, for example. It would be impossible for OpenOffice and other such software to read and save these files using open standards — as they can legally do." [20] The case was dismissed on June 4, 2009. [21]
EndNote Web, a web-based implementation of EndNote, offers integration with the ISI Web of Knowledge. [22]
Data schemes
Software
BibTeX is both a bibliographic flat-file database file format and a software program for processing these files to produce lists of references (citations). The BibTeX file format is a widely used standard with broad support by reference management software.
Reference management software, citation management software, or bibliographic management software is software that stores a database of bibliographic records and produces bibliographic citations (references) for those records, needed in scholarly research. Once a record has been stored, it can be used time and again in generating bibliographies, such as lists of references in scholarly books and articles. Modern reference management applications can usually be integrated with word processors so that a reference list in one of the many different bibliographic formats required by publishers and scholarly journals is produced automatically as an article is written, reducing the risk that a cited source is not included in the reference list. They will also have a facility for importing bibliographic records from bibliographic databases.
Reference Manager was the first commercial reference management software package sold by Thomson Reuters. It was the first commercial software of its kind, originally developed by Ernest Beutler and his son, Earl Beutler, in 1982 through their company Research Information Systems. Offered for the CP/M operating system, it was ported to DOS and then Microsoft Windows and later the Apple Macintosh. Research Information Systems was acquired by Thomson Business Information in 1994. Subsequently, Thomson acquired EndNote and ProCite, the other two leading bibliographic management programs. Rich Niles, founder of EndNote, joined Thomson Reuters as head of that division, and put all development focus on EndNote. Sales of Reference Manager continued until December 31, 2015, and support ended on December 31, 2016.
RIS is a standardized tag format developed by Research Information Systems, Incorporated to enable citation programs to exchange data. It is supported by a number of reference managers. Many digital libraries, like Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, Scopus, the ACM Portal, Scopemed, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, Rayyan, The Lens, Accordance Bible Software, and online library catalogs can export citations in this format. Citation management applications can export and import citations in this format.
Zotero is free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF and ePUB files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies, integrated PDF, ePUB and HTML readers with annotation capabilities, and a note editor, as well as integration with the word processors Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, and Google Docs. It was originally created at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and, as of 2021, is developed by the non-profit Corporation for Digital Scholarship.
The following tables compare notable reference management software. The comparison includes older applications that may no longer be supported, as well as actively-maintained software.
The Citation Style Language (CSL) is an open XML file format that describes schema for the formatting of citations and bibliographies. Reference management programs using CSL include Zotero, Mendeley and Papers. The Pandoc lightweight document conversion system also supports citations in CSL, YAML, and JSON formats and can render these using any of the CSL styles listed in the Zotero Style Repository.
BibDesk is an open-source reference management software package for macOS, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. It can also be used to organize and maintain a library of documents in PDF format and other formats. It is primarily a BibTeX front-end for use with LaTeX, but also offers external bibliographic database connectivity for importing, a variety of means for exporting, and capability for linking to local documents and automatically filing local documents. It takes advantage of many macOS features such as AppleScript and Spotlight.
The Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI) is a database containing patent applications and grants from 44 of the world's patent issuing authorities.
The Web of Science is a paid-access platform that provides access to multiple databases that provide reference and citation data from academic journals, conference proceedings, and other documents in various academic disciplines. Until 1997, it was originally produced by the Institute for Scientific Information. It is currently owned by Clarivate, and currently contains 79 million records in the core collection and 171 million records on the platform.
Scholar's Aid is a shareware reference management software package. The project seems to idle. There have been no updates since September 2010.
Mendeley is a reference manager software founded in 2007 by PhD students Paul Foeckler, Victor Henning, Jan Reichelt and acquired by the Dutch academic publishing company Elsevier in 2013. It is used to manage and share research papers and to generate bibliographies for scholarly articles.
WIKINDX is a free bibliographic and quotations/notes management and article authoring system designed either for single use and multi-user collaborative use across the internet. WIKINDX falls within the category of reference management software, but also provides functionality to write notes and entire papers.
ResearcherID is an identifying system for scientific authors. The system was introduced in January 2008 by Thomson Reuters Corporation.
WizFolio was a web-based reference management software for researchers to manage, share their research and academic papers and generate citations in scholarly writings. It used plug-ins to collect bibliographic information, videos, and patents from webpages. WizFolio ceased to be available at the end of 2017.
Nota Bene is an integrated software suite of applications, including word processing, reference management, and document text analysis software that is focused on writers and scholars in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts. The integrated suite is referred to as the Nota Bene Workstation. It runs on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh.
Citavi is a reference management and knowledge organization program for Microsoft Windows published by Swiss Academic Software in Wädenswil, Switzerland. Citavi is widely used in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, with site licenses at most universities, many of which offer training sessions and settings files for Citavi.
ProCite, a commercial reference management software program, was designed in the early 1980s by Victor Rosenberg, associate professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. ProCite was published in 1983 by Personal Bibliographic Software of Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1996, ProCite was purchased by the Institute for Scientific Information, a division of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters discontinued sales and support of Procite in May 2013.
BibBase is a free web-service for creating and maintaining publication pages. BibBase takes its input from a BibTex file or from DBLP, Zotero, BibSonomy, or Mendeley. It produces both HTML renderings, which can be embedded into an existing web page, as well as RSS feeds that allows others to subscribe to updates about new publications from the user.
Paperpile is a web-based commercial reference management software, with special emphasis on integration with Google Docs and Google Scholar. Parts of Paperpile are implemented as a Google Chrome browser extension. It was founded in 2012, and is produced by Paperpile LLC.
EndNote Web is a companion product which is a Web-based reference organizer incorporated into the ISI Web of Knowledge [...].