Scrivener for Windows is offering a negligible discount---4 bucks----until 11/7/2011 when they are rolling out Ver. 1.0. I have already purchased a license for Writing outliner add-in for MS Word, and I would like comments on your experiences, if any, with these two programs.

Btw: I still do not believe that either program is useful for academic or legal writing since neither has a facility for storing, retrieving and inserting citations.

Mitchell Kastner wrote:

Btw: I still do not believe that either program is
useful for academic or legal writing since neither has a facility for storing,
retrieving and inserting citations.

There is a way to use EndNote references with Scrivener, here is how:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=14030&p=110894&hilit=endnote#p100428

Hi, I also was considering Writing Outliner for Word (as well as Scrivener), but as an academic found the same limitations. We simply need Mendeley or Zotero integration, at least those in the biological sciences.

I started using UltraRecall in a similar was to Writing Outliner, with embedded word documents. It is described in the post on page 3 here: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/3338/10

There is a quick two step process to export merged documents, but it works fine with Mendeley, thus solving the maddening problem of citations across multiple chapters or documents to be merged. Let me know if you have any questions.

Best, /Pavi

Mitchell Kastner wrote:

Scrivener for Windows is offering a negligible discount---4 bucks----until
11/7/2011 when they are rolling out Ver. 1.0. I have already purchased a license for
Writing outliner add-in for MS Word, and I would like comments on your experiences, if
any, with these two programs.

Btw: I still do not believe that either program is
useful for academic or legal writing since neither has a facility for storing,
retrieving and inserting citations.

Mitchell Kastner wrote:

Btw: I still do not believe that either program is
useful for academic or legal writing since neither has a facility for storing,
retrieving and inserting citations.

Not exactly. In WO you in fact manipulate pieces of Word documents, together with all their futures, including their native bibliographical capabilities (true - very modest), Zotero integration etc.

Wojciech

Mitchell Kastner wrote:

Scrivener for Windows is offering a negligible discount---4 bucks----until
11/7/2011 when they are rolling out Ver. 1.0. I have already purchased a license for
Writing outliner add-in for MS Word, and I would like comments on your experiences, if
any, with these two programs.

I missed out on this myself, but apparently if you add the discount code "NANOWRIMO", it gives you an additional 10% off (not valid with educational version though):
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/nanowrimo.php

I purchased a license for Scrivener after I read the (ungainly) work around for using Endnote within Scrivener. After reading Pavi's post about how Mendeley will correctly format subsequent citations to the same source after the embedded Word documents are merged, I am concerned that Endnote will do likewise when the Scrivener documents are merged into an RTF file. Do you have any experience with Endnote correctly formatting subsequent citations into an RTF that has been merged from Scrivener documents?

I must say that Scriviner has an APA template for writing journal articles, from which the unwary might assume that it has a facility for handling citations. It's a tad bit misleading IMHO.

Mitchell Kastner wrote:

I purchased a license for Scrivener after I read the (ungainly) work around for using
Endnote within Scrivener. After reading Pavi's post about how Mendeley will
correctly format subsequent citations to the same source after the embedded Word
documents are merged, I am concerned that Endnote will do likewise when the Scrivener
documents are merged into an RTF file. Do you have any experience with Endnote
correctly formatting subsequent citations into an RTF that has been merged from
Scrivener documents?

I've only gone through the process once but I can't see there being a problem. When you export your documents from Scrivener, it will put them into a single RTF file, where the EndNote code is still raw. As the formatting of the EndNote citations will happen in Word, I don't envision any formatting problems. Obviously you may have to manually exclude authors or dates or add page numbers or other desired notations where necessary but that shouldn't affect the style of the citation.

Hi Folks,

Based on these replies, I should point out that I was incorrect and that Writing Outliner should also allow Mendeley/Zotero citations to be merged. So I am ultimately using UltraRecall's outlining structure to mimic the features of Writing Outliner.

So if you want research and writing environment with Mendeley/Zotero integrated, UltraRecall works well. For an excellent research and writing environment without Mendeley/Zotero (but with EndNote, etc.), Scrivener would be a good choice. For a writing environment with Mendeley/Zotero but not robust for research, Writing Outliner is perfect.

There is no inherent reason to have research and writing in the same application (ie. UR), although it become convenient for storage and backup. Since I am already using Storybook and UltraRecall, adding another writing environment seemed unnecessary since most of the features are able to be duplicated. If I didn't use UR, I would almost certainly buy Writing Outliner for the academic reference integration.

Best, /Pavi

Mitchell Kastner wrote:

Scrivener for Windows is offering a negligible discount---4 bucks----until
11/7/2011 when they are rolling out Ver. 1.0. I have already purchased a license for
Writing outliner add-in for MS Word, and I would like comments on your experiences, if
any, with these two programs.

Btw: I still do not believe that either program is
useful for academic or legal writing since neither has a facility for storing,
retrieving and inserting citations.

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.

Yes I understand that perhaps I can import this Word document into Endnote---I doubt whether Scrivener is compatible with any of the free and superior bibliography mangers----but by creating a template for journal articles, Scrivener more than implies that it can handle references whereas it just cannot----at least seemlessly and efficiently.

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.

Mitchell Kastner wrote:
>Scrivener for Windows is offering a negligible
discount---4 bucks----until
>11/7/2011 when they are rolling out Ver. 1.0. I have
already purchased a license for
>Writing outliner add-in for MS Word, and I would
like comments on your experiences, if
>any, with these two programs.
>
>Btw: I
still do not believe that either program is
>useful for academic or legal writing
since neither has a facility for storing,
>retrieving and inserting citations.

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.

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

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

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 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.

I think the Scrivener forum advice for EndNote makes it sound a bit more complicated and onerous than it actually is. For me with EndNote it works like this:

1. I write in Scrivener. I realise I need a citation.
2. I go over to EndNote, select the citation, right-click and choose "Copy" (and not "Copy Formatted") and then past the citation into Scrivener as e.g. {Bell, 1973 #7}. Then I just carry on writing.
3. When I'm finished with writing in Scrivener, I compile (i.e. export) the whole project as an RTF file.
4. I open RTF in Word, and the code still looks like {Bell, 1973 #7}.
5. I go to to the EndNote add-on tab in Word and click on ?Update Citations and Bibliography." In an instant, the raw code is converted into formatted code according to the selected bibliographic style, so {Bell, 1973 #7} has now changed to (Bell 1973) and there is now a bibliography at the end of the Word document, showing Bell, D. (1973). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

And that's it! There are of course additional tricks in that Scrivener forum advice if you want to remove either the author or the date or add page numbers or add additional text to the citation such as (see e.g. Bell 1973) etc. But this can also be done at the end, in the Word document, if you find that easier.

Scrivener refunded the purchase price less a 15% restocking fee charged to them by their payment handler.

I am giddy using Zotero add-in in Firefox with Writing Outliner which is an absolute joy. I hope you bio-types won't think any more less of me but I discovered only last night that PubMed has oodles of free full-text articles, which as an attorney is all I need. Windfall!.

I am skipping UR, which I adore, and I am sticking everything-research included---into Writing Outliner. For example, I am going to prepare a medically-laden article on carpal tunnel syndrome claims under a federal workers' compensation statute: you know to need to know about CTS if you plan on winning or defeating a CTS workers' compensation claim. I downloaded from Westlaw a DISEASEDEX article which I used to create an outliner of Word docs in Writing Outliner. As I go through the journal articles, I will cut and paste snippets into these docs along with my blessed Zotero cite, or add to my outline or modify it.

Btw: Scrivener said that they would be working adding a full-blown (I guess) bib/cite manager in the program. Externally invoking any bib/cite manager, other than Endnote, does not work because only Endnote will produce the citation in "raw", i.e., a field code.

Cheers and thanks for all your comments and suggestions

Mitchell Kastner wrote:

Btw:
Scrivener said that they would be working adding a full-blown (I guess) bib/cite
manager in the program. Externally invoking any bib/cite manager, other than
Endnote, does not work because only Endnote will produce the citation in "raw", i.e.,
a field code.

I see. Interesting. I didn't know that. I'm personally not that crazy about EndNote but I'm stuck with it as a legacy software, having already invested into it. I'm hoping to switch to Citavi, once I have the time to learn it and transfer my stuff into it. But for now I'm glad EndNote at least works with Scrivener.

Citavi users out there: does Citavi work with Scrivener?

Re: Citavi + Scrivener

I am using this combination now (although still early in my learning curve). Seems to work similar to EndNote, in that:

1) I have both programs open and running on a dual monitor system,
2) search for and copy the reference from Citavi to the Clipboard (using full program or smaller "Publication Assistant" window),
3) paste the citation marker in Scrivener; e.g., {Yin 2003 #393}
4) compile from Scrivener to RTF,
5) use the Publication formatter in Citavi to produce a formatted (i.e., APA, MLA, Chicago style) Word DOCX file from the Scrivener RTF, complete with bibliography.

Yes, it sounds as though there are lots of steps, but it is really quite fast and easy.

Hope that helps,
Glen

Glen Coulthard wrote:

Re: Citavi + Scrivener

I am using this combination now (although still early in my
learning curve). Seems to work similar to EndNote,

Yes, it sounds as though there are lots of steps, but it
is really quite fast and easy.

Glen, thanks for that. Yes, it sounds like the exact same process as with EndNote.

I actually think that the full integration of referencing with Scrivener might be a double-edged sword. On the one hand it would simplify this process, on the other it may actually undermine Scrivener's original purpose of being a writing-focused application. When I was using Word, I often found myself editing the citations, rather than focusing on the writing itself. In this sense I don't mind that Scrivener is not fully integrated with any bibliographic software.

Hi, good news Mitchell. I used to use Zotero and both it and Mendeley are extremely easy to use (Zotero perhaps a bit easier, but Mendeley more viewing/sharing/organizational options).

Just to add, PubMed will have more articles available for free, as the new NIH policy says that all funded research MUST be made public within 1 year of publication.

Best, /Pavi

Mitchell Kastner wrote:

Scrivener refunded the purchase price less a 15% restocking fee charged to them by
their payment handler.

I am giddy using Zotero add-in in Firefox with Writing
Outliner which is an absolute joy. I hope you bio-types won't think any more less of me
but I discovered only last night that PubMed has oodles of free full-text articles,
which as an attorney is all I need. Windfall!.

I am skipping UR, which I adore, and I am
sticking everything-research included---into Writing Outliner. For example, I am
going to prepare a medically-laden article on carpal tunnel syndrome claims under a
federal workers' compensation statute: you know to need to know about CTS if you plan
on winning or defeating a CTS workers' compensation claim. I downloaded from Westlaw
a DISEASEDEX article which I used to create an outliner of Word docs in Writing
Outliner. As I go through the journal articles, I will cut and paste snippets into
these docs along with my blessed Zotero cite, or add to my outline or modify it.

Since we're on the topic, anyone know a good document manager for all types of docs, not just pdfs? I checked and Mendeley doesn't fit the bill.

Linux compatibility would be nice.

Ultra Recall works very well for me. Also, Smereka TreeProjects is popular and appears to be a good choice.

/Pavi

JBfrom wrote:

Since we're on the topic, anyone know a good document manager for all types of docs, not
just pdfs? I checked and Mendeley doesn't fit the bill.

Linux compatibility would
be nice.

As so often, it really depends on what you want to do with the documents you're managing. Do you want to be able to export them in their original form? Search through them "seamlessly"? Incorporate their data into a single resource? View them as if they were notes in an outline? and so on. I only make this point because I've played with hundreds of different "document management" applications, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses, depending on what you want to achieve.

Cheers,
Bill

Ultra Recall is not going to work for multiple gigs of data. If for no other reason than the Windows file size limit.

Does Smereka face the same problem? Sounds like it would.

Sounds like you are the right person to talk to then Bill.

I don't care about export or incorporation. I do want search. The more intelligent, the better. And auto-categorization would be nice. Along with rating, and maybe the ability to build a reading queue. Renaming would be cool too.

Basically I'm a massive info addict and I need a way to manage my collection. Right now I'm hand sorting it into a directory tree, which is tedious.