Bibliographic Management Software

I'm starting on my PhD next month and I'm trying to get all my ducks in a row before the term starts. I'm considering using bibliography/reference management software right from the start. I want it enable me to keep notes and references in one, searchable location for use in constructing my literature review. I have two questions:

1. Has anyone used dedicated bibliography/reference management software as opposed to merely using Excel? I would love to hear the thoughts of anyone with experience in this matter. Is it worth the time and expense to buy dedicated software, or would Excel work just as well?

2. Any recommendations on which brand of software is best?

 

I just used a book shelf, about a dozen highlighters, a few packs of post it notes to stick on pages of interest, and Excel (and I did not use Excel until 30 days before the lit review was written). I like to go low tech!

 

Would it have been less work for you if you had used Excel from the start?

 

I used Biblioscape. It is worth its weight in gold during the dissertation. I had several hundred references by the end, and it would have been a task in itself to get it properly formated. The nice part about using the leading software, is when it (like ERIC), it will say "Download bibliography", when you say yes, it will populate the fields in the software. Then, once all managed, you can change to the format of choice.

I don't know if biblioscape is the best, I remember asking some colleagues, and they were all using another (can't rememebr the name of it). I just remember thinking, I will never do a big project without it. I should note, for a simple 20-30 page project I don't use it, but for a big project for sure.

 

I started a while ago using Zotero www.zotero.org. It's free, open source and they have quite an active community (I actually found once a bug and a day later they made a fix for it). Also one thing I like about it, that it is just a Firefox Plugin and the database can be saved on an USB stick, making it very mobile (since I don't like that online storage cloud computing kinda thing).

 

Zotero looks like a great solution. I will pass this along to my sister who is at the dissertation writing stage of earning a doctorate degree. The fact it works as a Mozilla Firefox plug-in and works with Mac OS/X.

 

As it happens, an old friend has just completed a comprehensive course in academic editing and indexing (online, with www.editcetera.com) as a career move; she hopes to serve clients in academia).

She says that many departments at Cal and Stanford use and recommend NotaBene (www.notabene.com/products.html) for writing (you can choose any of many styles: MLA, APA, Chicago, Turabian, etc.), indexing, footnoting, glossary, and bibliography. I note that offer free full-featured trial version which expires in 30 days. Windows only.

In the Mac world, I was surprised and pleased, at the MacWorld Show a couple of years ago, to see a (tiny) booth for Nisus, which practically invented the concept of academic software 25 years ago. Not only still in business, but apparently thriving, with new versions of their academic word processing software. 15-day free trial download at www.nisus.com/

 

You don't mention whether you need a windows or Mac solution -

On the Mac side, there's DevonThink which is quite useful.
Here's a link to how an author uses it to store reference material for future articles. This is what actually got me to look at it.

http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html

Hope this helps

 

I'm primarily Mac and I prefer using it. I do have a PC too, so if a PC application is far superior, I would be interested in it as well.

Thanks to everyone for the info.

 

I've always preferred Biblioscape myself, and have used it for years. I tried EndNote and RefWorks, but they just don't have the functionality of Biblioscape. I like how I can write notes to myself and attach them to the references... something I've never figured out how to do in the other two.

A colleague of mine swears by Zotero. It sounds good, but it's too late for me to switch now, and besides my preferred browser is Google Chrome, which doesn't work with Zotero.

Cheers,
Adrienne

 

NotaBene looks great, I wish it were available for Mac. Nisus looks like a fantastic academic word processor, but in skimming the website, I can't find that it has a dedicated reference/bibliography indexing function. Did I read too fast and miss something? Straighten me out if I'm wrong about that. I'm all over that free academic thesaurus though!

 

What an excellent thread. Downloaded Zotero and Note Bene and about to start trying them out. Thanks people.

 

Wikipedia has a listing of reference management software.

- Bibdesk is available for free if you have a mac. http://bibdesk.sourceforge.net/

- JabRef is free and available for windows, linux and mac. http://jabref.sourceforge.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_reference_management_software

 

Bibdesk looks good. Anyone ever used it?

 

For formatting a single paper (along with effectively entering and tracking references/citations), I like PERRLA. Inexpensive, reasonably functional, compatible with MS Word (it's a macro, IIRC).

 

I used Biblioscape while I was writing my doctoral dissertation. It was wonderful; however, I recently switched from windows to ubuntu. Now I am learning to use Zotero which is a cross platform solution that works with firefox.

 

Any idea of whether Zotero will work on Mac? If it's cross-platform, I would think it might. What do you think of Zotero?

 

Oh yeah it would have. And really reduced stress at the end.

 

Thanks, Randell. I think you were the first to suggest this to me.

 

EndNote

Have you considered EndNote?