How to use Endnote? - for references (Jan/11/2011 )

Hi,

My manuscript was just returned because the reference format was not similar to the journal style. They sent me an Endnote output file with the e-mail and asked me to check my references with that. how to do that?

I've never used Endnote before, so I imported the output file in the style directory in the Endnote folder. now what?

I have my references in a word file, do I have to manually add them to the Endnote? seriously? all of these? I got 47 references, is there any way to automatically detect the references in a word file and transform?

Curtis~
So sorry buddy but according to my knowledge of endnote, you are going to have to redo all your references in endnote. You have to build the library by importing all 47 references and then inserting the reference from endnote into the manuscript document. You can then format the references with a click of a button for any journal. This is a God-send if you need to reformat to send your manuscript to a different journal later. I would say you could get this done in a few hours so it's not as bad as you think. You can either search pubmed (in endnote) by the author(s), title and/or year but this might result in multiple results. It's faster (I think) if you sit down with your list of references and find the PMID, then you can find the article in endnote with this and all you'll get is the one article. If you have internet at home, just sit down tonight in front of the TV and start searching pubmed for each article. Write down the PMID and then tomorrow you'll be able to build your library very quickly.

Wouldn't it be quicker -- in this instance anyhow -- to just put the references into whatever format the journal requires using Word?

Thanks rkay447,
haha, I'm actually doing the same thing, while watching Dexter.

but you know what, I asked this because when I was uploading my manuscript (with my references in it), the journal website automatically detected where my references were and separated them from the rest of the text and immediately put Medline link beside each one of them. So there must be softwares that do that, but Endnote cannot.

HomeBrew on Tue Jan 11 21:51:31 2011 said:

I think the problem is one or two references that are from conference publications, not the journal articles. I am pretty sure the format of the journal articles is correct, so perhaps I should permanently remove the references from seminars and stuff. They are really troublesome...

If the references are indexed on PubMed, then you can search through endnote to find the references, and the relevant information should be imported.

Note that automatically importing references can have a few pitfalls - the most notable of which is that journal titles are often abbreviated, and the journal you are submitting to may want a full journal title in the reference format. To solve this problem you need to use something called a terms list which basically is a list of the abbreviations and full titles of journals in a text file. The University of Queensland library makes one available free of charge along with instructions on how to use it (I think they have over 10 000 entries so far). However, they are experiencing a very severe flood at the moment so the servers are down and may be for some time.

If you need, or would like a copy, I'll try to extract the one from my old endnote and attach it as a .txt file and try to remember how to insert it for y'all.

Thanks bob1, you are always helpful. But no thanks, I already re-submitted the manuscript. I think I am getting to know Endnote better these days, and now I just need it to write my thesis references with.