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Scrivener for Windows versus Writing outliner add-in for MS Word
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Posted by Pavi
Nov 8, 2011 at 08:18 AM
Hi Mitchell,
It is really unfortunate that Scrivener doesn’t support citations well, especially since a lot of people praise it’s flexibility for both fiction and non-fiction (ie. academic papers). I read on their forum that since they are a small user base, they are not sure about incorporating Zotero integration. About your license fee, don’t they have a 30 day refund policy? Is license transfer allowed?
At this point, I need to point out that citation integration is supposed to be easy!!! Take Zotero or Mendeley using either Writing Outliner or Ultra Recall directly. In both of these solutions, you are using a word file embedded into an outline. Therefore, you simply click on the button for adding a citation in word’s “References/add-ins” menu. Then you either select the reference from a dialog (Zotero) or click on it in the program itself (Mendeley). There is another button to add the bibliography which you would do below your References heading, and another to refresh the bibliography. It’s so simply! When you export/merge, they should auto-refresh - otherwise, you can just click the button to do so. You can enter the same reference multiple times, in multiple documents, etc. as well as choose your style of formatting - all references are renumbered/reordered as needed.
Also, both of these offer direct import from Firefox from a source such as PubMed. So if you are browsing the abstract, you can just click to import to either. If you have the PDF downloaded into a directory, that will of course also be included in the library, and I usually use this method in Mendeley. All this entering of citations and formatting is really unnecessary, which was why I switched from EndNote (back then you had to search within EndNote for a reference, not sure about now).
The short version is that this should be easy, and it is with either Zotero or Mendeley using one of the Word based solutions. This is why I love Ultra Recall, as I am finding uses for it that make additional software (Writing Outliner, WebResearch, etc.) unnecessary and therefore the value is superb.
Best, /Pavi
Mitchell Kastner wrote:
>I continue to be exceeedling disappointed in Scrivener’s utility to handle
>citations and references.
>
>Scrivener has a template to use for journal articles and
>one type of “document” is for References. I am writing a law-review type article on US
>Department of Labor workers’ compensation decisions on carpal-tunnel syndrome
>claims. I am beginning my article with a moderately detailed review of the syndrome
>itself. One source I am using for Etiology/Pathophysiology is DISEASEDEX; the cite
>in specific is DISDEX CR1711C. So I dutifully enter that cite as a document under
>References. Clearly I am going to cite that reference multiple times in separate
>documents. This is a snap is UR wherein you can link one document to many documents;
>alas not possible in Scrivener: for sure you can link the text “DISDEX CR1711C” ONCE to
>another time. But I need to cite it multiple times in different documents but there is
>no way to link that reference to mulpticle documents for which it is the source.
>
>I threw away 36 bucks and unless someone knows how to link one
>document to multiple documents, I am going to have to get back some of my money since
>there is a 15% restocking fee.
Posted by Hugh
Nov 8, 2011 at 09:03 AM
Hi Mitchell,
Have you raised the citations issue on the Scrivener for Windows forum? In my experience, the support there is very good by most standards.
I should say straight away that I have no experience of Scrivener for Windows, or using either version of the software for academic or legal work. But I do know that a number of users successfully use Scrivener for such applications, including those that require extensive citations such as doctoral theses. The Mac version was modified early on its development to allow citations software to plug in. I think the developer took the view that it wouldn’t be worthwhile for him to develop his own citations functionality when good plug-ins already exist.
H
Posted by Dominik Holenstein
Nov 8, 2011 at 10:43 AM
You can link to your preferred Bibliography/Citation tool in Srivener via Options -> General -> Bibliography/Citations Manager. Once you have set it up you can open your citation tool with Format -> Bibliography/Citations…
This option is an advantage for me because I can keep all the Bib/Cit stuff in Zetero standalone. http://www.zotero.org/support/3.0#zotero_standalone
You can copy/paste citations or bibliographics from Zotero to Srivener or export the bibliographics list as an rtf file an import it in Scrivener.
Dominik
Posted by Mitchell Kastner
Nov 8, 2011 at 08:58 PM
Thanks,
I set up Srivener to invoke Mendeley, and when I copied a citation from Mendeley—-btw I could have set up Scrivener to start any exe file; it’s not partial to bib/cit software, the cite was pasted into Scrivener as plain test: “Levett, L. M., & Kovera, M. B. (2008, August). The effectiveness of opposing expert witnesses for educating jurors about unreliable expert evidence. Law and human behavior. doi:10.1007/s10979-007-9113-9.” When I cite to this article again in the same Scrivener doc or another and when I compile the docs to an RTF file, my huge concern is how will Word handle subsequent citations to the same article. I.e., unless the subsequent cites to the same article are converted to short cites—-”(Levett & Kovera, 2008, p.2)” Scrivener would continue to be unacceptable to me. (I surmise from Dr. Andres previous post that Endnote, which is not in my budget, would handle the conversion to short citations seemlessly through the MS Word plug-in.)
Posted by Dr Andus
Nov 8, 2011 at 10:13 PM
Mitchell Kastner wrote:
>Thanks,
>
>I set up Srivener to invoke Mendeley, and when I copied a citation from
>Mendeley—-btw I could have set up Scrivener to start any exe file; it’s not partial to
>bib/cit software, the cite was pasted into Scrivener as plain test: “Levett, L. M., &
>Kovera, M. B. (2008, August). The effectiveness of opposing expert witnesses for
>educating jurors about unreliable expert evidence. Law and human behavior.
>doi:10.1007/s10979-007-9113-9.” When I cite to this article again in the same
>Scrivener doc or another and when I compile the docs to an RTF file, my huge concern is
>how will Word handle subsequent citations to the same article. I.e., unless the
>subsequent cites to the same article are converted to short cites—-”(Levett &
>Kovera, 2008, p.2)” Scrivener would continue to be unacceptable to me. (I surmise
>from Dr. Andres previous post that Endnote, which is not in my budget, would handle the
>conversion to short citations seemlessly through the MS Word plug-in.)
Mitchell, I don’t have the time to check this for you in Mendeley but I assume that it also has a Word add-on for citations and it should work very similarly to EndNote. From your description it sounds that you may not be copying the citation in the correct format. You would need to copy it as Mendeley code (if possible).
E.g. in EndNote, when I right-click on a citation, there are two options for copying: 1) Copy and 2) Copy Formatted. It sounds like you are using the equivalent of ‘Copy Formatted’, which copies the whole citation as text. E.g.
Bell, D. (1973). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin
However, that’s not what you want. You want to copy and paste the raw code for the citation, which looks something like this: {Bell, 1973 #7}
As long as all the citations are copied and pasted into Scrivener as raw code (EndNote etc.), when you export it as RTF and open it in Word, the given Word add-on will recognise the raw code. Then there will be an option to format it into proper looking citations and bibliographies, as defined by the style in your bibliographic manager.
So I don’t see any problem there with handling subsequent citations, as long as they are all in the raw code format. Of course if you want to re-import the same document into Scrivener to continue working on it, then you would first need to re-convert it into the raw code format (which is an option e.g. in the EndNote add-on in Word), then import it. I assume all other desktop bibliographic managers must work according to a similar principle.