Converting "Dozies" (was Re: [ale] OT: winxp upgrade...)

[Chris Ricker]

On Mon, 6 Jan 2003, Dow Hurst wrote:

> We have here in our research group an application called EndNotes.  It 
> tracks, adds, and simplifies reference management in writing papers and 
> proposals.  It is absolutely magic for someone who needs to re-order 
> references or build references while writing a report.  Imports 
> references directly from PubMed online.  Very powerful.  Only works with 
> MS-Word. :-(
> 
> BibTex is an alternative, but from what I've read (limited understanding 
> of the program here) it seems it might not be very easy to use, 
> certainly not a simple interface since it uses Tex.  It isn't something 
> that I would hand over to a MS-Word person.

Academic researchers in my experience pretty much all use either EndNote or
BibTeX, at least in the sciences.

>  Are there any alternatives that anyone knows of for this type program
> that is opensource or for Linux?  I am planning to send an email to the
> makers of EndNote to suggest porting to Openoffice.org for future
> business.

In no particular order, check out <http://www.santafe.edu/~dirk/sixpack/>.  
It can import / export BibTeX, EndNote, Medline

There's also <http://refdb.sourceforge.net/index.html>, which can import / 
export BibTeX, EndNote, Medline. It's more geared towards producing XML 
output, though, so it's mainly useful for your people who already use a 
markup-like language (XML, TeX, etc.) rather than a word processor.

The <http://bibtexml.sourceforge.net/> BibTeXML DTD is becoming popular, at 
least in genetics, now that XML is being used there in a major way. I'm not 
sure if other researchers use it much though. It's a BibTeX -> XML DTD.

There are some other projects (like Gnome front ends to BibTex), and 
dead-but-promising-at-one-time things (like OBAS), but these three are the 
ones I've actually seen people use / used myself

later,
chris
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