Fastest academic referencing softare for inserting and editing citations? (for Windows)

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Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 10, 2014 at 03:47 PM

Which is the fastest academic referencing software for inserting and editing citations into MS Word? By “fast” I mean how many steps in takes to select and insert a citation, and then edit it by adding page numbers or removing author names (if already mentioned in the sentence). The speed of the software itself also matters.

Currently I’m using MS Word 2010 and EndNote X4, with the two windows side-by-side. Selecting and inserting is easy, though it does take a few seconds of processing. But adding the page numbers and removing author names is a pain, as it takes too long (both steps and processing time). I’m on a Win7, 64-bit PC with i7 processor and 8GB RAM.

Typically for a 10,000-word document I may have 70-100 references, inserted multiple times (so it’s probably hundreds of individual operations). I do the inserting of EndNote code at the end of the writing process, replacing hand-typed placeholders for the given reference. While I’m also reading through the document, it’s frustrating that it takes me 2 days to do this.

Does anyone have a better experience/workflow with any of the other ref software out there (Zotero, Mendeley, Citavi, BibTex or newer versions of EndNote)? I don’t mind switching to LibreOffice, if it’s faster.

According to this blog post EndNote is faster than Zotero still for the above:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/zotero-vs-endnote/33157

Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jan 11, 2014 at 10:37 PM

Dr Andus wrote:
>Currently I’m using MS Word 2010 and EndNote X4, with the two windows
>side-by-side. Selecting and inserting is easy, though it does take a few
>seconds of processing. But adding the page numbers and removing author
>names is a pain, as it takes too long (both steps and processing time).

I don’t have a suggestion for alternative software, but for potentially reducing the time in your current setup: I wonder whether some setting in your security software may be responsible for some of the processing time. Clipboard and similar exchanges between programs are sometimes checked and filtered to avoid identity protection and similar activities. The result is that some desired actions take more time or even completely blocked.

Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 12, 2014 at 12:05 AM

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
Dr Andus wrote:
>I wonder whether some setting
>in your security software may be responsible for some of the processing
>time.

Alexander, thanks for the suggestion. This prompted me to run some tests with a process monitor, which didn’t show anything intervening. Eventually I came to the conclusion that the slowdown is due to EndNote itself: if I start with a blank Word doc, it’s fast, but it gradually slows down once there are hundreds of citations in a long text in Word because every time a new citation is inserted, it seems to run a check on every single citation that is already in the doc.

It seems to me that the solution is not to use EndNote for the insertion itself. Instead, it’s possible just to paste in and format the raw EndNote field codes in a text editor (e.g. WriteMonkey) manually, and then run it through Word + EndNote once the document is finished. A bit like writing in Markdown or LaTex and then only wordprocessing at the end.

If anyone else wants to give it a try, there are some instructions on the Scrivener forum:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=14030&p=100428&hilit=endnote+windows#p100428

Posted by Dr Andus
Jan 21, 2014 at 06:33 PM

Dr Andus wrote:
>It seems to me that the solution is not to use EndNote for the insertion
>itself. Instead, it’s possible just to paste in and format the raw
>EndNote field codes in a text editor (e.g. WriteMonkey) manually, and
>then run it through Word + EndNote once the document is finished.

I’ve come across an alternative process with Zotero, if anyone else has got this problem (though I find EndNote field codes somewhat less intrusive when working in plain text):

http://zoteromusings.wordpress.com/2013/05/06/announcing-rtfodf-scan-for-zotero/

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