Reference Manager 11
Reference Manager 11
 By
Dale Farris, Vice-PresidentGolden Triangle PC Club April 2004 Reference Manager is a database program developed specifically to manage bibliographic references. Anyone involved in gathering references for research or producing bibliographies can use Reference Manager to make managing collections easier. Reference Manager is used worldwide by researchers, librarians, students in academic institutions, and by business and research organizations. This is a feature-rich program tailor-made for writers and researchers, especially in scholarly fields, offering three research tools in one, including an Internet reference searcher, a database manager, and a bibliography builder. The focus with this excellent program is collecting, organizing and publishing research information. ISI ResearchSoft is a division of ISI (Institute of Scientific Information), a Thomson Scientific Company. Thomson is a leading global e-information company with annual revenue of approximately $6 billion. NOTE: See the Reviews link on the home page of this site to take you to links to reviews of Pro Cite and End Note, excellent products also available from ISI ResearchSoft. The reference searcher functions include the ability to search PubMed and Internet Libraries, choosing from hundreds of these libraries, and to save search strategies for future use. You can search over 600 databases in over 300 libraries (more added all the time), including the Library of Congress, university, and larger public libraries. The database manager will allow you to keep an unlimited number of databases with unlimited capacity (depending on system resources), customize 35 reference types with up to 33 fields, search, edit, and create bibliographies across multiple databases, customize your reference display, spell-check references and customize dictionaries, preview and print formatted bibliographies, and tailor duplicate detection from fuzzy to precise. Up to 255 Internet databases can be searched simultaneously, and the speed here depends on the bandwidth used by the machine. All matches are organized with citation details, with the top part showing the details of a record, and the bottom part showing the list of all the found records. The bibliography builder allows you to select citations with Cite While You Write in your Word or WordPerfect program, create in-text citations, format bibliographies for hundreds of journal styles, instantly recall your last search, and retain your last ten citation searches. You can format bibliographies according to hundreds of preset journal styles, or create your own. Adding the bibliography to the research report is as easy as a click of a button. Then, you can revise your styles and your citation scheme anytime, even after your report has been completed. You could use Reference Manager to prepare formatted in-text citations and bibliographies instantly for manuscripts, create and maintain departmental research interest databases, manage current awareness services for research staff or library customers, or collect bibliographic references from a variety of online, CD-ROM or Web-based data services. You can have many different reference types in a Reference Manager database. For example, you can store audiovisual material with journal articles and book references. Reference Manager comes with 35 predefined reference types for you to select from when entering references. While Reference Manager is designed and used for bibliographic references, you can use the program to store records of any type. You can use any of the predefined reference types or you can modify them to create a custom reference type. Each reference type can include up to a maximum of 33 fields. Target Customers Although one could consider loading and using this fine program on a home PC, Reference Manager is really more suited for a library environment, research institutes, laboratories, or other information publishing and research functions. The focus is on professional writing that would more likely be published in scholarly journals, research papers, theses and dissertations, or grant research reports. Graduate students will be very interested in the many features in this program that will answer most all their reference research and writing needs. Product Fit in Today's Digital Age Just a mere 10 or so years ago, we would have defined the research process as consisting of looking at ink on paper in books, journal articles or newspapers, loose or bound, stored on shelves after shelves that were covered with dust and dimly lit in relatively inaccessible stacks inside age old buildings that were usually as equally difficult to locate. Although the search for solid information was an ephemeral, conceptual process, "striking gold" usually meant physically traveling to esteemed libraries, sifting through card catalog drawers, hunting through the stacks for the morsels of meaning, fishing through the endless shelves of books, and then hauling the items to a copy machine while one also penned the citation notes on stacks of index cards. With a reasonable investment in electronic computer resources, including this excellent reference software program, one can bypass this "medieval" age of searching for information. Now, we experience an entirely different process, filled with pointing, clicking, and viewing results on a lighted computer screen, and then printing selected results on a personal printer. The digital age of the information process is now so entrenched in our culture, one wonders what will happen to the traditional concept of a library and how one used to use a library for research. Paradoxically, while today's information technology resources decentralize the research process down to the desktop, meaning one can practically complete the entire research process while never leaving home, the information that is as valuable as ever, as credible and reliable as ever, remains in these brick and mortar based libraries, but can now be accessed electronically. As this process continues to drill down to the desktop, both the principles and the philosophy of the research and reference library, as well as the entire definition of the research process, are rapidly being reinvented. Such is the broader meaning and importance of this marvelous research tool. New features in Version 11 Connectivity Reference Manager 11 delivers new ways to view and share your reference collections. Whether you want to post your database to the Web, collaborate with a colleague over a network, or link to full text (PDF files), Reference Manager is the center of all things reference-related. And with ISI ResearchSoft’s new complementary product, RefViz, you can now review literature in a visual landscape rather than reading each article for its content. Reference Manager is used by researchers, students and librarians worldwide to search online bibliographic databases, organize their references and create instant bibliographies. Post Your Reference Manager Database to the Web or an Intranet! Make your Reference Manager databases available in a Web environment for yourself and others to access. Colleagues with a Web browser can access your Web publisher site to search and create reference lists or export references (RIS and XML formats). Reference Manager’s Web publisher even allows you and others to add and edit references via the Web browser. Reference Manager provides a simple Web publishing tool and built-in Web server so you can post up to 15 databases in seconds. Instantly Create a Subject Bibliography with Topic Headings Save steps creating a bibliography with topic headings using Reference Manager 11. For example, simply select the field “Author” to view a bibliography organized by author headings. Control the look of your subject bibliography by selecting your favorite output style and a sort order for the references. This feature gives you an easy way to update your curricula vitae and reading lists. Export References From a Traveling Library Reference Manager stores all of the cited reference data in your Word document, called a traveling library. Now you can capture references directly from colleague papers to use in your own Reference Manager database with the new export traveling library feature. Store Links to Other Resources—Full-Text Web Articles or in PDF Files Reference Manager 11 includes dedicated fields in each reference for storing links to related information. Your reference collection is made virtual by linking to full-text articles, PDF files, related links and image files on the Internet or any accessible hard drive. Everything associated with a reference is organized in your Reference Manager database. Access New and Updated Content Files at www.refman.com Reference Manager 11 includes new and updated connections to online services and libraries as well as publishing requirements for over 950 journals. You’ll find new and updated import filters and output styles in your upgrade and on this Website. Other New Features Select your favorite Internet Search once—Reference Manager now remembers it for future searches Export references in XML format enabling use with other applications Communicate with other Web services using Web publisher—SOAP and WSDL-enabled Move references between Reference Manager and RefViz in one step—explore your reference collection visually Connect to your institution’s online resources with OpenURL Record links—locate full text faster Use the network version’s MSI service for easy installation on multiple workstations. Enhanced Searching of Internet Libraries Searches Z39.50 databases (provides access to online libraries) Searches PubMed Online session to track results of searches Direct URL link to each library site Proxy server support UNImarc, UKmarc, CANmarc, GRS-1 and SUTRS export features Search using the MEDLINE Unique Identifier ISI eSource Database Records Included with Reference Manager is the "Search ISI" (Institute for Scientific Information) feature that opens the door to more than one million entries from over 8,000 scholarly publications with unique inter-linking of articles and bibliographies, as well as online document ordering. These ISI eSource databases are multidisciplinary databases of bibliographic information gathered from many scholarly journals. Using this Web site, you can search for a topic within the ISI eSource database. Once you find an article of interest, you have the ability to also link directly to other articles on the same topic. You can even access articles that have been published after the article you are viewing, a very powerful feature of the ISI eSource database. There is no fee for searching the ISI eSource databases, but the actual record you want to view must be purchased. When you decide to purchase a full record view, you will be prompted to enter payment information. Records are purchased in bundles of ten, and until July 31, 2000, the fee is $9.95 per bundle. As of August 1, 2000, the fee will be $29.95 per bundle of ten records. The full record includes all information about an item, including author, title, source, volume and issue number, keywords, author abstract (when available), publisher information, a bibliography of articles referenced by the author, and a summary list of all articles citing this one. The indexes searched include the Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Science Citation Index Expanded. ISI Web of Science Existing paying users of ISI's Web of Science can now at no additional charge utilize a simple two-way connection between the ISI Web of Science and Reference Manager. Researchers can export selected references from the Web of Science to Reference Manager with one click. In turn, Reference Manager maintains a link in each reference to return directly to that reference within the ISI Web of Science. Users can even access the full text of references and link to other scholarly databases through ISI Links. This streamlines the research process for users of Reference Manager, making it possible to navigate from a bibliographic reference to the Web of Science, and from there, to the full text of articles through ISI Links. Reference Manager Recommendation Reference Manager is absolutely essential for all university libraries, and many of the larger public libraries serving larger markets. Wherever there are an abundance of researchers, writers, students and teachers, there should also be found this excellent research organizer tool. However, use of this tool will require some time to learn how to use the many built-in features. The accompanying pay-per-view information from eSource and the Web of Science, while also equally superb, will of course need to be evaluated for relevance to the user. Prices $299.95 Full Version With CD and Manual Oxford Press Journals |