Evaluation of Reference Management Software on NT (comparing Papyrus with ProCite, Reference Manager, Endnote, Citation, GetARef, Biblioscape, Library Master, Bibliographica, Scribe, Refs)

The University of Bristol has had a site license for Papyrus for several years and offers courses and extensive support. There is a Chest deal and most of the other Universities use it. However, it is felt that a new evaluation should be completed to satisfy those users who want a more windows-based package, provided they were prepared to pay for it themselves. This document aims to show the differences between Papyrus and the other systems. Papyrus would still be the principal bibliographic manager that we would recommend on the basis of its price and the fact that there will be a proper windows version sometime. The advantage of being able to recomend one other package would enable a deal with the suppliers and aid support problems.

This evaluation is similar to the evaluation covered in March 1998 but:

• is not restricted to software that can only run on both Windows and the Apple Mac
• it covers more uptodate versions of Endnote, Reference Manager and ProCite
• all evaluations were carried out using Windows NT and Office 97 (the previous evaluation was primarily carried out using Windows 3.1 versions)
• covers Z39.50 compliance
• removed Idealist (not a reference manager)
• added Biblioscape, Library Master, Bibliographica, Scribe, Refs

Reference Management software

Reference/bibliographic management systems are characterised by the ability to handle references of books, articles, journals etc (reference types) in the same database without having many fields defined that are only applicable to one type of reference, for example journal details are not relevent to books. They typically employ variable-length record structure, divided into a number of loosely organised components or fields. Fields have repeating values, eg multiple authors. This is true of text retrieval systems too. The structure of the database is often predefined unlike more general text retrieval packages and database packages. This should make the package easy to use since it has been tailored specially for a particular task but obviously loses the flexibility of a more general package.

References are often batch loaded from external sources so a library of import formats needs to be available plus the ability to specify ones own, and modify existing ones since they have a tendency to change.

References need to displayed in different ways depending on the publisher so again a library of export formats needs to be available plus the ability to specify ones own. One should be able to specify the fonts to be used, and support a wide range of printers. In addition one should be able to output to a word processor. The real power is when one can have a word processor document open at the same time as the reference management system, embed a pointer to a reference directly and produce a bibliographical list at the end of the document (ie citing).

Comprehensive indexing mechanisms (typically at the word level) are used so that large texts can be rapidly searched for particular strings. Word punctuation is ignored. Typical search criteria may include:

• proximity matching (search terms must be located within a certain distance of each other or within the same sentence or paragraph)
• fuzzy or partial matching (when only a part of search term specified)
• searching via an on-line thesaurus
• boolean queries
• being able to refine search criteria on the current query.

The distinction between bibliographic managers and more general text retrieval systems such as Idealist is that bibliographic managers are solely used to handle lists of references and thus need to handle the many different import and export formats as specified by different publishers, including such author layout, and to provide its own character fonts without needing a word processor whereas a text retrieval system provides better search facilities.

Relational database systems such as ORACLE, and Microsoft Access can be used for simple text retrievals. They do not generally support free text searching of the type considered here very well, author lists, journal lists, nor do they offer different character fonts and punctuation. Access and ORACLE memo fields can not be indexed for fast retrieval. Only ORACLE is available for both mainframe and micros. Access is easier to use and can handle large text fields. Both offer string functions. They have to be used in conjunction with a word processor and tagged import files are a problem.

A brief glossary of database-related terms is given in the Appendix.

Systems considered

Papyrus

• Research Software Design 503/796-1368
• Recommended by IUCC
• email: support@rsd.com, chest-papyrus@mailbase.ac.uk
• URL: www.rsd.com/
  www.in.umist.ac.uk/papyrus/index.html
  www.pbseuro.demon.co.uk/rsd2.htm

Endnote Plus Adept Science acquired the software distribution business of Cherwell Scientific in May 2000. They are now the place to come for information, technical support, upgrades and new licences for EndNote, Reference Manager, ProCite, ChemDraw, ChemOffice, StatView and gNMR. Information about the range of bibliographic and scientific software is still available at CiteWise.com.

• Cherwell Scientific 01865-784819
  Adept Science 01462 480055
• email: endnote@cherwell.com Paul_Bragg@adeptscience.co.uk
• URL: www.niles.com/home/AboutEN.htm
  www.cherwell.com www.adeptscience.co.uk

ProCite

• Research Information Systems 800.722.1227, 760.438.5526
  Bilaney Consultants 01732 450002
• email: sales@risinc.com, bilaney@bilaney.com
• www.bilaney.com
  www.risinc.com
  www.isinet.com (products and services)
  www.procite.com
  www.unn.ac.uk/central/isd/procbook.htm (v3.2)

Reference Manager

• Research Information Systems 800.722.1227, 760.438.5526
  Bilaney Consultants 01732 450002
• email: sales@risinc.com, bilaney@bilaney.com
• URL: www.hsl.unc.edu/hsl/es/refman.htm (v7)
  www.risinc.com
  www.isinet.com (products and services)

Citation 7

• email: sales@quinion.demon.co.uk
• URL: www.oberon-res.com
  clever.net/quinion/citation7/
  www.quinion.demon.co.uk/citation7/
  soho.ios.com/~notabene
  www.netlink.co.nz/~maxsys/maxsys.htm

GetARef

• email: neil.chapman@adeptscience.co.uk, Benoni.Edin@physiol.umu.se
• URL: www.getaref.com
  www.adeptscience.co.uk/

Biblioscape

• email: support@biblioscape.com
• URL: www.biblioscape.com

Bibliographica

• email: winkelhake@bibliographica.de
• URL: members.aol.com/winkelhake/bgraph/feat.htm

Scribe

• email: scribe@scribesa.com
• URL: www.scribesa.com

Library Master

• email: sales@balboa-software.com
• URL: http://www.balboa-software.com/libinfo.html
  

Refs

• email: refs@cyclin.demon.co.uk
• URL: www.cyclin.demon.uk/refs/

A data file consisting of 28 journal articles (size 95429 byte) in BIDS ISI format (see appendix) was used for testing. Even if the package could read tagged input, extra field information sometimes gets loaded in the wrong fields so it was a good test. A BIOSIS tagged file was tried since it has inconsistent indentation. A delimitered file was tried since users often want to load references lists that they have created using Word or Microsoft Access.

Hardware requirements and interface

	Papyrus	Endnote	ProCite	Ref Mgr	Cit7	GRef	Bibliog	Biblios	Scribe	LibM	Refs
version	7.0.16	3.1.0	4.0	9	7.1	3.2	6.5	3.4	3.0	4.0	7.8
indiv price (exc VAT)	s lic	£199	£185	£185	£105	£149	$99	$95	$66	$185	£30
upgrade charge	no	yes	yes	yes	-	-	no	yes	?	yes	no
disk store (inc formats)	5M	5.5M+3Mb*	10M	10M	2.4M	4.4M	8M	21M	8M	10M	1M
test db	227K	46K	?	65K	-	-	76K	1.29M		30K	6K
memory	470K	8M	16M	16M	4Mb	2M	16M	8M	16M	8M	?
DOS-based	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
intuitive	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly
security pwd	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no
demo from web	yes	yes	yes	yes	-	-	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes

Most of the evaluated packages were very expensive and none offered a cheap site license. Departments must be prepared to pay a lot of money if they want to switch from Papyrus.

Papyrus

• Cost.£700/ year for site licence, free to users. It can run on low spec machines and does not require much disk space, but can take advantage of windows facilities when run from Windows.
• ***stores on average, 1500 references/megabyte. It will use upto 1Mb extended memory.
• does not use expanded memory. Can have problems getting enough conventional memory
• Being a DOS based program it has limited mouse usage.

Endnote

• now merged with Research Information Systems giving them a monopoly
• offers various deals depending on number of users and manuals across all platforms. eg
  5 user license £825 with manuals, £775 without.
  10 users £1550 with manuals, £1450 without. 20 user £2800 with manuals, £2600 without.
  If a site wishes to increase the number of copies they may do so in minimum quantities based on the price given in the additional order. eg if the site has 50-99 licenses they may buy a minimum of 10
• will not run with Norton Anti-virus, (but will with Dr Solomon's)
• needs extra 3M if use Windows 3.1

ProCite

• Cost £185 + VAT (Bilaney prices). $79.95 per annum maintenance
• Upgrade to version 4 costs $99.95 RIS (plus shipping), £85 Bilaney (including shipping)
• 5 user netpack (either concurrent or systems) $977.17 (RIS) plus shipping, £716 (Bilaney) including shipping

Reference Manager

• Cost £185 + VAT (Bilaney prices). $79.95 per annum maintenance
• Upgrade to version 9 costs $99.95 RIS (plus shipping), £85 Bilaney (including shipping)
• 5 user netpack (either concurrent or systems) $977.17 (RIS) plus shipping £716 (Bilaney) including shipping. Single copies are bought under named end-user names and therefore are end-user licencees. Other people using the software are using it illegally and will get emailed for contravening the single-user agreement.

Citation 7

• Cost £71 if ordered from web with machine documentation. 10 user license £320. 10% student discount

GetARef

• educational discount available, multi-packs and network pack

Bibliographica

• Light version (500 references max) $35, Professional $99
• free upgrade from web (automatically emailed when new version)
• manual comes as word document to print out
• network version. Campus license for simultaneous number of potential users - square root (number users) * $99 (min number of users 9, can install at home). Floating license for current users - number of users * $99 (min number of licenses 3, can not install at home)
• free upgrade
• 54 or more files per database! two files per first letter of author surname, all readable

Biblioscape

• standard version $99 (educational). Upgrade $69
• professional - includes web publishing and report writer $149 (educational). Upgrade $99.
• For more than 5 copies, the discount percentage is the same as the number of copies purchased. But the maximum discount rate is 50%.
• Normally license software based on the number of users, not the number of simultaneous users. They would like to know the number of people who will use the software on your network, then negotiate a deal. If the number is large, the discount rate can be more than 50%.
• Once published on the web, users can use both Internet Explorer or Netscape to search modify or add references. Only Internet Explorer (4 or 5) can be used as the integrated web browser for searching web bibliographic resources
• Uses Paradox tables to store database and the Paradox Database Engine to access the references. Oracle, Access, Interbase etc can be used as backend database in the 3.4 release. Biblioscape uses Borland Database Engine (BDE) to access the Paradox tables. You have to install the BDE on your network instead of each PC in order to use Bibliscape on the network. See the following links about BDE network installation. http://www.borland.com/devsupport/bde/files/bdenet.zip http://www.delphimag.com/features/1999/02/di199902bt_f/di199902bt_f.as
• In April 2001 Biblioscape 4.0 was released. In this new release, the feature sets were expanded to make Biblioscape not just a bibliographic software but also a Research Information Manager. It has 7 modules for researchers to manager references, notes, idea charts, tasks, the Web, and a library. Please visit http://www.biblioscape.com/features.htm for a detailed feature set description. For the backend, the use of Paradox, Access, or InterBase is supported. In version 4.0, more data fields and reference types are added for the References module. To help user to build a research knowledge base, records from different modules can be linked.

Scribe

• Scribe offered a book collection manager for $66, and reference builders to output references in AMA (American Psychological Association) style, MLA (Modern Language Association of America) style and ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) style at $49 each

Library Master

• 5 user license $599.95, 10 user $1099.95 educational
• update $99
• Upto version 3.03, DOS based program no mouse usage. New windows version 4.0 out July 1999 for NT, 95 etc
Refs
• 1-4 cost £30, 5-25 £25, 26-99 £20
• upgrade £20

New Features since last Evaluation

Papyrus
• Support for Word 97
Endnote
• EndNote 3 features a Connect command that enables you to connect to and search online reference databases and library catalogs
• A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) field has been added to store web addresses and even paths to files on your own computer. The new Launch URL command takes you right to the file
• The Export and Format commands support HTML so you can easily post a list of references on the Web.
• EndLink (the utility used to import downloaded text files into older EndNote versions) is now part of EndNote (EndLink filters are the same).
ProCite
• The Titles/Journals Field Content List is split into two lists: Titles and Journals to enable you to search and perform other operations specifically on journal titles rather than on all monographic titles
• ProCite can directly import tagged records from various bibliographic sources with an "Import Text File" tool. This import tool uses configuration files to map data. Biblio-Link now just used to create new configuration files or modify existing files
• Directly Share Files with ProCite for the Macintosh
• convert Reference Manager databases or EndNote libraries to ProCite - from Windows, DOS, or Macintosh.
• Smaller Database Files
• In addition to launching a local file or internet URL, you can use a Medline unique identification number (UI) to direct your browser to a citation in the National Library of Medicine's online Medline database.
• ProCite now sorts each character according to an internal language setting saved with each database
• Additional reference types
• Additional output styles
Reference Manager
• Searching Internet Libraries Search PubMed and hundreds of Internet libraries for references. Directly import references from the Internet to your database. Search up to 255 databases simultaneously.
• Use Wizards to search for or create output styles. Choose between reference list or footnote style formatting. Define first and subsequent in-text citation styles separately for each reference type.
• Customize import filters with Import Filter Editor. Assign a default Reprint Status when importing references. Build a list of terms where casing changes are ignored during importing (such as DNA).
• Cite While You Write features: View full references within your word processor. Click on a column heading to sort columns. Check your document for unlinked citations. Search any field to locate a reference. Instantly recall your last search. Scan and generate your final document in one step. Keep track of your last ten citation searches.
• Export comma and tab delimitered files
• Editing features: Add unlimited information to your references in all text fields. Build a list to use with any text field. Simplifies entry of publishers, authors affiliation and more. Link to any published reference using the Web/URL field. Define a default sort order for the Database Reference list(s).
• Search for embedded terms
• Keyword Sorting alphabetically, either globally or reference by reference.
• Drag and Drop

Database structure

The structure of the database is predefined This section shows the reference types supported, the number of fields per type and whether the user can define his own. For example, the Law Department may find that none of the reference types provided could be used to store case records

	Papyrus	Endnote	ProCite	Ref Mgr	Cit7	GRef	Bibliog	Biblios	Scribe	LibM	Refs
no. ref types	8	16	28	36	38	3	13	19	6	31*	3
article	29	14	19	26	12	8	12	14	no	18	12
book	30	19	30	29	9	9	13	18	15	19	12
chapter	32	20	21	31	12	10	14	20	no	20	10
conference	=article	20	29	28	16	no	13	19	no	26	no
map	20	14	25	25	11	no	no	12	no	19	no
patent	28	17	29	28	no	no	no	15	no	21	no
thesis	22	14	16	23	15	no	no	13	no	18	no
quotation	16	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
personal	=other	11	15	20	13	no	no	9	no	=manscrpt	no
program	=other	15	22	26	no	no	no	35	9	15	no
report	=other	14	29	26	13	no	11	12	no	20	12
audiovisual	=other	12	32	24	no	no	no	11	9	23	no
artwork	=other	13	22	22	no	no	no	35	no	19	no
electronic	no	14	19	22	.	.	10	17	no	12	no
user-defined	no	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no
user-definable fields	3	4	5	5	0	0	2	4	no	all	?
major/minor kw distinguished	yes	no	no	no	no	no kw	no	no	no	no	no
URL field	no	yes	yes	yes	no	no	yes	yes	no	yes	no

Having a URL field enables one to link to an image or a document (providing the full pathname is given) as well as a Web URL

Papyrus

• provides less reference types, but the manual describes how to decide which reference type should be used since for example, conference proceedings are notoriously difficult to categorise.
• distinguishes between major and minor keywords.

Endnote

• less fields in each reference type. Journal article omitted: Also print; affiliated address; series; supplement. All fields and reference types "soft-coded" and are fully editable
• URL field in all record types
• entering a web URL did not work properly. One had to use Edit/Launch URL but this always opened Word because the installation set the Online Preferences Web Browser to Word.

ProCite

• It provides 45 fields, and 28 reference types to rename and access some or all of these fields. Some of these fields can be renamed by the user but searches use the original names or column numbers, so user-defined field names are just boilerplate names.
• less fields in each reference type. Journal article omitted: Also print; location, abbreviated journal, affiliated address; series; supplement, issue editor. Day and month included in date.
• Extra fields were medium designator, connective phrase, translated title, language, availability and URL
• direct interface to and from web (Netscape only) enabled by URL field and express paste. Does not launch Netscape unless Tools/open File/URL selected. Links to image file also held in URL field and also launched from Tools menu. Can capture URL and title information into a new record using Tools/Import Web Page

Reference Manager

• less fields in each reference type. 33 reference types. Journal article omitted: Also print; affiliated address; series; supplement.
• enables direct interface to the web or an image enabled by URL field (Version 8 onwards) in all record types
• launches Internat Explorer to look at URL
• launches appropriate software for URL

Citation

• less fields in reference type and not customisable. Journal article omitted: also print, accession number, location, address, field a etc, comments, issue title, editors. Had to use full type to get extra fields.

GetARef

• only had 3 reference types. Journal article omitted also print, accession number, location, address, comments, keywords, journal series, issue, supplement, day&month, issue title, issue editors

Bibliographic

• less fields in each reference type. Journal article omitted: location; affiliation; comments; supplement; accession number; editors. Day and month probably included with year.
• record type website included URL field

Biblioscape

• less fields in each reference type. Journal article omitted: location; affiliation; supplement; editors but they can easily be included by editing the preferences since the fields have been set up. Day and month in date field only entered as mm/dd/yy.
• record type electronic source included URL field
• cross link facility between references

Scribe

• principally a program to catalog collections of books, periodicals etc
• no journal article reference type
• keywords did not seem to be updated

Library Master

• 19 user-definable reference types also allowed
• not always intuitive to find help for example on format and contents for each field- better context sensitive help required
• no day and month field. Any text can be inserted into date field. The date is parsed and rearranged as necessary for the style sheet
• fields can be specified as unique, required, compressed, list, compressed
• Abbreviation field must be filled in to be able to cite it- this can lead to problems when data imported without this value. It is possible to define a combination of upto 3 fields to be used as citation markers but the default is the record number so there is no check as to which database is being used
• record type electronic source included URL field

• authors and date not shown on the same window as the rest of the reference which is disconcerting
• no journal abbreviations

Limitations and Indexing

	Papyrus	Endnote	ProCite	Ref Mgr	Cit7	GRef	Bibliog	Biblios	Scribe	LibM	Refs
max Field size	8K	32K	32K	16K	32K	255	32K	256M	?	65K	16K
max ref size	16K	64K	32K	16K	32K	16383	32K	256M	?	65K	?
max field/ref	32	30	45	33	25	10	15	39	15	65	12
max ref/db	2M	32K	unlimited	65K	64K	32K	80K	2 bill	30K	2Gb file	4.1M
max term	?	253	255	255	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
max stop terms	0	0	600	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
max go terms	n/a	n/a	16000	0	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
max sort fields	6	5	6	3	phys	2	0	3	1	5	3
max authors/ref	100	100	?	255	?	255 char	?	32K char	?	unlim	8192
max keyword/ref	100	?	?	255	?	0	?	32K char	10	unlim	8192
indexing redefinition
word punctuants	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
synonyms	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	no	no	no	no	no
broad/narrow term	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no	no	no	no	no
indexing by	option	aut, year deflt	aut, kw, tit	aut, yr, kw, jrnl	?	indx file	tit, kw	au, kw, jnl	tit, kw, au	option	?

Notes

Word punctuants allow "don't" to be indexed as such, rather than "don" and "t"

If the package has an independent thesaurus, it can be edited

Citation7

• each sort creates a new file, so the user must open the sorted file to get the display in the appropriate order

GetARef

• thesaurus only applies to indexed searches. Invoked by !word
• index not updated automatically, and needs to be created by user

Bibliographica

• sort only on first letter of first authors surname. Any other sort performed when in Word

Retrieval of references and reference sets

	Papyrus	Endnote	ProCite	Ref Mgr	Cit7	GRef	Bibliog	Biblios	Scribe	LibM	Refs
comparitive(<,>)	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
boolean query	yes	3 cond	yes****	yes	2 cond	yes*	3	yes	yes	yes	not
() with and/or	yes	yes	yes	no	?	?	no	yes	no	yes	no
all field search	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
field search	yes	yes	yes*	yes	yes	yes	yes*	yes	crude	yes	no
group search	yes	yes	yes**	no	no	-	no	no	no	no	no
proximity search	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	no	no	no
left truncation	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	no	yes	yes
right truncation	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
wild card	yes	no	no	yes	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
range search	yes	yes	yes	yr,id	no	yr	yr	yes	no	yes	no
empty field	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	no	SQL	no	yes	no
SOUNDEX	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
case distinguish	no	option	option	no	option	no	no	option	no	yes*	option
builtin thesaurus	no	no	no	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
browse by arrow key	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
browse by scrolling	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	author
string functions	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	14	0	0	0
date comparisons	yes	yes*	yes***	yr only	yr only	yr only	yes**	yes	no	yes	no
search refine	groups	yes	yes	no	no	yes	no	no	no	yes	yes
query hitno	each search	yes	yes	each param	no	yes	each search	yes	no	yes	yes
save search	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	no
word frequency list	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
jrnl,auth,kw freq list	yes	no	yes	no	no	no	kw	yes	yes	no	no
save doc sets	yes	no	yes	transfer	yes	no	no	folder	no	yes	no
list set def	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
and,or,not sets	yes	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
diff databases	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no	yes	no
multi-file search	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no	no	no
max search term	?	?	255	?	?	255	?	?	?	unlim	?

Papyrus

• empty field found by expression `not field=*'

Endnote

• very limited search facilities with no control over brackets for precedence. In fact when a third condition was added with an AND operator the AND acted like an OR
• author search works differently depending whether the index is switched on or not. If switched on, must not include forenames or initials else will not find author, so using term list one must remember to remove the initials to do the search! unless index switched off
• using term lists when searching and adding references not very intuitive and confusing when they are not updated automatically

ProCite

• sort keys predetermined on author, title and date for a quick search.
• * Field comparison now improved. Each of the 45 fields has a field number which is prefixed by #, so to to check for text in a particular field, you can now use the field name which shows you which field numbers will be searched. Thus searches on title, author and date automatically perform a group search on several fields. This is due to the fact that, depending which screen or workform you are using, the 45 fields often have different names.
• ****Expanded Retrieval Operators (Less Than, Empty, Contains, etc.)
• *** since date fields are not validated and include the day and month, 26 jan 1999 will find a reference (date 1/26/99 and 26/1/99) as will 1999 but jan 1999 will not. Not possible to do >Jan 1999. Date sorts seem to work but dates are displayed as entered rather than in a consistent format
• BookWhere 2000 (sold separately $99.95) must be used to search Z39.50 hosts and export directly

Reference Manager

• Reference list window shown as a split screen, with one part showing the full text of the highlighted list. References marked to cite or print.
• The Casing Term Dictionary contains terms whose case remains unchanged as they are imported into Reference Manager.
• very limited search facilities with no control over brackets for precedence. In fact when a third condition was added with an AND operator it was ignored. OR is the default boolean operator and one has to guess what to type in the field section. Very easy to get "parameter not found" even when parameters filled out properly but this transpired to be if one of the search conditions did not find a reference then the whole search was stopped even if conditions ORed together
• A quick search using term lists for keywords, authors or journals was eventually found under Term Manager/Activate
• Trying to do Internet Z39.50 search from Reference Manager gave error "incomplete parameter"
• BookWhere 2000 (sold separately $99.95) must be used to search Z39.50 hosts and export directly

Citation

• have to start search from top each time, as only searches down from current record

GetARef

• boolean operators must be in upper case
• *extra boolean operators XOR, ANY, ALL, NEAR, NONE
• refining done by using LOCATED function eg LOCATED and dog
• since there was nowhere to store month, could only look for year
• no lookup lists of authors, journals to aid searching
• confusing to do SO(Brain) rather than SO=Brain. The field name had to be in capitals else the search did not look in the field

Bibliographica

• **day and month included in year field, but no syntax for month so searching for the name of a month did not find it
• drop down boxes were used to specify year range but could search for references written many centuries in advance!
• boolean precedence was specified when one did a title search since one had an 'and' and an 'or' to join a maximum of 3 conditions. Keyword conditions could only be 'ored' together.
• *all field search performed by using 'natural language'. Natural language search was an exageration since one had to add keywords such as 'by' for an author, and if one entered a multi-word topic such as 'computer algorithm' it would not find 'An algorithm in Computer..' since the words were in the wrong order. 'Everything about' had to be used to specify all publication types or one specified 'books about...'. In fact the publication had to be specified in plural else nothing was found! Natural search only seemed to look at the title and keyword field

Biblioscape

• Pressing the Online button was very impressive since Biblioscape had a similar interface to a web browser and one was able to choose 12 types of database eg Chemistry, Medicine and from there select an appropriate database to search and capture references or pages from the web into Biblioscape electronic source reference type
• There are many ways to conduct a search:
  • find all authors, journals etc based on the current displayed reference
  • List/Filter for simple field search-
  • Tools/Advanced/Anayse to perform a frequency count on 12 fields and hence a search
  • Tools/Advanced/SQL can be used to manage Biblioscape data in the following ways: retrieving, summarizing, adding, deleting, and updating. The problem is that the table names used do not match the given schema. Thus one uses bib, au_x, kw_x, jn_x instead of bib, author_x, keyword_x, journal_x (this was worked out by looking at the file structure!). This will be corrected. The SQL may vary depending on the database engine being used.
  • Find icon on Record mode just looked for text in a specified field of the currently displayed record
  • Edit/Find did a search on all or selected fields
  • List/Search or Exporer icon from List mode had icons for:
    • indexed search for full text searches using AND, OR, NOT, LIKE, NEAR, quoted phrase searches, parentheses, and wildcards (* for any number of characters, ? for a single character).
    • smart search- natural language support for example, 'papers by Bowie before 1995'.
    • advanced search- One can also build up a command which has operators relevent to the selected field for example <Authors> contain "Shapland" <Date> in the last 30 days ""
    • term list searches
    • folder searches
    • grouped searches (view records being organized into different groups up to three levels. Each level represents a data field, records of the same value will be grouped together in a tree structure)
    • glance (often-used queries are organized in a tree view eg Country expands out to UK, USA etc).
• There is not much documentation on using Biblioscape with other database engines (Paradox being the default) except for using Microsoft Access. Microsoft Data Access Components 2.1 may have to be downloaded and installed to update the ODBC drivers

Scribe

• very simple search facilities that only allow search for complete title for example

Library Master

• B-tree indexes used
• searches may be lexical (ignore letter case and accents)
• good search conditions eg Date = 1980 would even match the entry 1975-1990
• case distinguished by using special operator == eg Authors=="Shapland"

• very simple search facilities

Addition, deletion and modification of references

As many validation procedures as possible should be performed at the time update is requested (before indexes are rebuilt). Index rebuilding should be unnecessary during normal updates. There should however be utilities to rebalance or repair corrupt or unbalanced indexes. Data should never need to be reloaded purely for tuning purposes.

	Papyrus	Endnote	ProCite	Ref Mgr	Cit7	GRef	Bibliog	Biblios	LibM	Refs
validity	much	no	*no	no	no	yes	no	no	no	no
range check	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
spellcheck	no	no	no	yes	yes	no	no	yes	no	no
dup ref check	yes	*yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
term lists	4	32	6+create	3	6	0	3	yes*	8	3
journal list	yes	yes	no abbrev	yes	yes	no	subst rule*	yes	no abbrev	no abbrev
keyword list	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes
author list	yes	yes	yes	**yes	yes	no	**yes	yes	yes	yes
glossary	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
list count	kw, auth, jrnl	no	yes	no	no	no	kw	yes	no	no
list auto update	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no	yes	yes	yes	no
auto keyword scan	no	no	no	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no
synonym editor	jrnl	jrnl	no	auth, kw, jrnl	jrnl	jrnl	jrnl, kw	no	no	no
repair indexes	yes	no	yes	yes	no	yes	kw	yes	yes	no
global editor	kw, jrnl, auth	any fld	*yes	kw, jrnl, auth	no	no	no	good	yes	no
batch loading formats	190	191	19	230	16	100	44	90*	50*	4
free update	yes	yes	no	no	yes	yes	$15	yes	yes	?
mailmerge	yes	define	hard**	no	no	no	no	yes*	?	no
labelled(tag)	yes	yes	extra	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
usr-delimit	yes	define	hard**	no	no	no	no	no	?	no
fixed format	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no
MARC	no	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no
userdefin	yes	yes	Bibliolink	yes	hard	no	no	yes	yes	no
Papyrus	yes	.flb	delim	.flb	no	.flb	no	no	yes*	no
BIDS formats	18	3	0	3	1	1	1	4	0	1
debug IP format	some	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
batch reject file	yes	no	no	no	no	yes	no	no	no	no
2 digit year entry	yyyy	yy	*yy	yyyy	yy	checks	yy	yy	yy	yy
extended ascii	yes	yes	yes	*yes+greek	yes	no	**clumsy	double byte	yes	*
OLE link	no	yes	v4 on	v8 on	no	no	no	yes	no	no
Z39.50	no	yes	Bookwhere	Bookwhere	no	no	no	no*	Bookwhere	no
auto capture text contents of web page	no	?	yes	no	no	no	?	yes	no	no

Notes

Most external references come as tagged input in various styles hence the need to be able to define an appropriate format. Surprisingly, BIDS formats varied as to which fields to ignore, and which field information was stored in which field! Surely this should be consistent. It is also surprising on the variance of how many BIDS formats should be needed

All hard to debug import formats. Papyrus just apologises but at least gives helpful logs and parsing display. Reference Manager gives a misleading message. All except Papyrus tell you what has been imported, but not what it has not. It would be really nice if the packages gave a clue as to which line they did not like or even admit they could not import the references since often a message saying that references have been imported successfully is obtained even when they have not

To import mailmerge(word documents) or delimitered files (one record per line)- one would have to try to import the file into Microsoft Access and then write a report to output it in tagged form which is very cumbersome if a delimitered format is not available

Papyrus

• Manchester have provided 18 BIDS formats for Compendex, Embase, IBSS, Inside Information, ISI, ISTP
• required all fields to be surrounded by quotes for import if mailmerge format was used
• gave the most useful information when importing files ie new journals, keywords, authors, capitalisation information, and one could at least watch it scan the text. It also held duplicates and rejects in other files for checking purposes
• checks authors names etc and if typed in in lower case, whether this was correct
• the most flexible package since one could specify the layout of the tags. There was no control over indexing. Separate files were created to hold rejects and duplicates but the only assistance to check why import failed was to watch parsing with Caps lock on
• will enter a date as yyyy if only the last 2 digits are supplied,

Endnote

• EndNote can now connect directly to remote databases over the internet. Import references directly from PubMed, Ovid, OCLC, Medline and many other database servers without using Bookwhere.
• built-in import options for Refer, BibIx, ProCite, Reference Manager. conversion utilities for Papyrus, Notebook, Notebuilder, REF-11, Publish, SRS, REFLIST, Bookends, Citation
• To import delimitered files, Endnote provided tab delimitered format which also needed authors separated by ; before import. It was easy to provide a user-defined delimitered format
• Only one BIDS format. Imported Day and month into issue, RF into keyword (ignored in Papyrus), CR (cited ref into Papyrus comment), NA (address) were all ignored
• Term lists not updated automatically which was confusing, and did not seem to add new authors even when the update request given. The term menu options were often greyed out making it hard to update term lists
• Specifying import formats very straightforward. I created one for BIDS ISIS with no problem. The biggest problem was that no log was kept of new Journals, keywords, and any omitted data so although data was imported it was sometimes incomplete. It was also difficult to decide where to put the extra information such as address, and minor keywords, so the Notes field got filled up with different kinds of information with no way of separating it. The BIOSIS file I tested out (which inconsistently does not have indented abstract information even though all other continuation lines are indented) only entered the first line of the abstract starting in column 10 and ignored the rest.
• very good at interpreting authors names
• makes no attempt to add a century indicator, nor is it possible to add a century indicator later except manually since a text field
• can create a term list for each field
• no good at detecting duplicate references once they were stored
• A Papyrus .flb file is obtainable from ftp.niles.com to export from Papyrus. This file is then imported as Refer/BIBIX format
• formats obtainable free from ftp server

ProCite

• *global editing found under Database/Edit marked records rather than a higher level menu
• 19 formats were provided supporting 360 database providers
• ** ProCite delimitered importing was difficult. Required 45 fields per reference, all fields to be surrounded by quotes for import if mailmerge format was used
• **Trying to define a custom delimitered file format to reduce the number of fields did not allow one to specify the order of the fields making it totally impossible to import files originally created using Word
• Biblio-Link II (free separate product) allows format creation and modification. I did manage to write a BIDS ISI format to import my file correctly but duplicate records were not detected on import. One has to configure ProCite beforehand not to accept duplicates.
• Technical support is free- they can advise on how to edit your own format. One may use the database conversion service provided by the company programming staff at $250 per conversion and $.05 per reference- more if one is in a rush (normally 4-8 weeks)
• If year is not included, it is not added automatically
• *Date fields do not have to be entered consistently, and include the day and month. The only problem is that the international settings are ignored so 26/1/99 and 1/26/99 are both accepted (1/9/99 is 9 Jan) as is April 99 etc
• multiple authors entry was messy since one had to separate each by 4 slashes. Book author and journal author were distinguished
• global edit was very limited in that it could not if the word had a different font. It could only add prefixes and suffixes, not replace words or authors
• built-in import options for Reference Manager
• web form in version 4 to enter data.
• titles and journals distinguished in version 4
• only full and abbreviated name information could be held about journals
• To transfer from Papyrus, create a format to create a 43 field comma-delimitered file
• input format editor BiblioLink needs to be purchased separately if using Version 3.4
• formats obtainable from web free. One can pay maintenance fee to be automatically sent new import filters, program fixes an minor upgrades

Reference Manager

• conversion utility to import from Endnote, Papyrus, ProCite. Papyrus flb file must be provided and then the resulting file imported using the Papyrus format (not described in help).
• updated formats from the web are available. Maintenance fee payable for new formats
• BIDS formats provided are Tagged, Embase, ISTP. My test BIDS ISI file loaded correctly (apart from not picking up duplicates)
• format editor did not seem to be able to specify author name format
• Technical support is free- they can advise on how to edit your own format. One may use the database conversion service provided by the company programming staff at $250 per conversion and $.05 per reference- more if one is in a rush (normally 4-8 weeks)
• could scan titles and notes so that keywords already in the term list could be added as keywords to relevent references
• it appeared to be quite easy to import a tagged field into the wrong Reference Manager field due to it being generic. In fact, the BIDS tagged format put address into the notes field, since there is no address in the journal reference type definition (could relabel user-defined1 as address but then one is out of sync with other users). The BIDS format also put abstracts into the Notes field!
• Authors initials can import as part of the last name if delimiters not specified correctly
• if one entered a new author name in lowercase, it stayed in lowercase with no comment, but if already known, it was converted to mixed case
• get the standard message "reference too large to import" if format does not match with no more help
• cannot import non-tagged files- one has to use the database conversion service provided by the company programming staff at $250 per conversion and $.05 per reference- more if one is in a rush (normally 4-8 weeks). Help is available free
• XX was imported to a field if there were unexpected carriage returns in the file
• *Extended characters worked better than before but ¾¼ did not get inserted using the symbol button. Greek letters now work well.
• **entering a new author in lower case, did not cause automatic case conversion. Only entering a known author would case not be distinguished. It was also necessary to change an option to allow fullnames, despite this, Reference Manager still asked to initials to be separated by dots

• version 8 included the ability to store the path to an OLE object. A click launches the relevent application to display the object
• version 8 enabled web URL, email addresses an medium to be embedded to enable direct access to the web
• Could not get hold of input format editor from suppliers
• keyword synonym and author synonym editor allowed alternative names to aid searching
• can build a list of terms so that casing changes are not performed on import

Citation

• spell check even checked authors and initials!
• term lists held in external files which are edited with Notepad
• Format editor looked horrendous, very program-orienated
• import files "converted" into temporary file to check wich is then added to the main datafile. Addfile gave a pagefault in kernel (Windows95)
• import instructions for Endnote, Notebook, ProCite, Reference Manager, Papyrus. Have to get Reference Manager flb to get data from Papyrus in suitable format
• bids format put first author and date as unique identifier (access key)
• when new journals were input, one had to open the journal file and add new journals manually so that abbreviations could be added. There did not seem to be a tool to add journals from a datafile that were not in the datafile. There was also a publisher abbreviation file

GetARef

• good validation on authors and journals
• auto-detected BIDS format!
• Import facilties provided for EndNote, Reference Manager and Papyrus, ProCite, Bibliographer, RefII
• To import from Papyrus have to export using PAPX format. Keywords are placed at the end of the abstract field
• formats obtainable free from ftp server
• comes with journal abbreviations for 17,000 scientific names
• Extended characters obtainable from Windows Character Map

Bibliographica

• Althought each record has a field where you can add key-words you cannot write directly into this field. To add a keyword to a record, you need to pick it from a list of keywords. You can edit and change this list any time you like, but the keyword needs to be part of this list before you can add it. Similarly when importing references, keywords are not imported!
• BIDS ISI is for presentation format and does not work
• it is not possible to edit or creat import formats. $15 is charged for the first format, $10 for the rest which are then placed on the web for everyone else to use.
• import formats are provided for Citation 7, Endnote, Library Master, ProCite and Reference Manager but not Papyrus.
• the delimitered file format is a very specific format so is totally impractical to use
• There is no validation on date, so it is quite possible to put 32 May 1999 (there is not separate field for day, month) but then retrieval does not find the reference with the criterion year=1999 (or May). In fact if you store date as mm dd yyy as suggested, retrieval on date=5 will recover 1995 references and the May reference. Thus adding day and month is not very practical.
• subst rule*. no abbreviated form for journal name stored. One has to set a substitute rule eg American Economic Review = AER
  American Economic Review = Am.Econ.Rev
  American Economic Review = AmEconRev
  which is a temporary substitution unless applied
• the author index could only be used to insert the first author
• ***The alt key or character map key has to be used to insert extended characters
• ***Bibliographica stores records according to the initial character of the first authors family name. If this character is such a special "nonASCII" character, the program needs to be told, how to handle this. If you have a reference from Ueberla (with "Ue" being the German umlaut u), the program needs to be told how to store the "umlaut u authors" together with the "plain u" authors. Bibliographica uses file UMLAUT.INI for this. You can edit this file with any author and add any rule to it. If this file contains the line #u = ue (with "ue" being the German umlaut u), this will tell Bibliographica to handle umlautuauthors like uauthors. These rules are case sensitive. This means that you may have to add two lines for each special character: one for the uppercase and one for the lowercase
• the journal list seemed to work very inexplicably. It was supposed to be updated automatically but it did not list all the journals given by the references

Biblioscape

• Not Z39.50 complient since it can not be used as a client but the integrated web browser can be used to search web bibliographies.
• 97 downloading formats on web
• Global editing facilities let one insert at the beginning of a field, replace, clear, convert to title case, upper case etc.
• Importing a delimitered file, the order and number of fields has to match the Biblioscape structure of 39 fields
• By default Biblioscape can format references in most foreign languages. For double byte languages (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean), you need to go to “Tools/Options/Format Manuscript and keep box “Format double byte language ”checked No facilities regarding forign language characters.
• terms lists do not work when low on memory
• straightforward to create BIDS format. May show records were apparently imported successfully but get blank references

Scribe

• omitted since no import format editors provided and no documentation describing the format required to import a file

Library Master

• multiple formats in each import filter
• could change delimiter between field items in import filter using a subfield parsing feature- not immediately intuitive
• import filters for dBase, ProCite, Endnote, InMagic, Notebook, Citation
• Import filter editor was not intuitive and I failed to create filter for BIDS
• Papyrus filter provided by Balboa failed with invalid tag error

• no method of editing import formats unless you know about windows resource scripts and writing dynamic link libraries. These formats are not compatible between windows 3.1 and windows NT. Only 4 formats provided
• BIDS test data was loaded, but into another database. To merge into one database you need to select the references you want, drag them with the right mouse button to the window of the database you want to put them in (not obvious).

Formatting and output of retrieved references

	Papyrus	Endnote	ProCite	Ref Mgr	Cit7	GRef	Bibliog	Biblios	LibM	Refs
predefined format	126	333	340	461	100	9	26	57*	28	12
page headings	yes	ref hdg	no	no	yes	no	no	yes	yes	no
duplicate ctrl	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no	yes	no
sort	any fld	yes	yes	yr,auth,id	newfile	yr,auth	no	au,yr	5 fld	3
margins	yes	no	yes	yes	no	no	no	yes	yes	no
indentation	yes	messy	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	no
page length	yes	no	yes	no control	no	no	no	yes	yes	no
page nos	yes	no	yes	no control	no	no	no	yes	yes	no
underlining	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no
bold,italic	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no
super/subscript	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	no
capitalisation	yes	no	all caps	all caps	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	no
change fonts	no	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	no
alter author format	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	3 fmt
et al	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
save format spec	copy	yes	yes	copy	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes
printer op	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	no	yes	yes	yes
rtf op	no	yes	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	yes	no
ASCII file op	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	no	yes	yes	yes
spec printer info	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	no	yes	yes	no
Word interface	1-8	1-8	7-8	7-8	6-8	6-8	6-8	1-8	rtf*	no
Word add-in	no	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no	no
cite directly into word	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	crude	no
cite into footnote	no	yes	yes	yes	.	no	yes	no	yes	no
web output	userdef**	yes	yes	v8 on	yes	userdef	yes	yes*	yes	no

Notes

If the fonts cannot be changed, then a word processor has to be used. The windows packages allowed one to highlight fields or text.

Most packages could only cite with Word6 documents, requiring documents to be saved as Word 6 if using a later version so did not support later versions properly

Word Add-in made citing easier since did search for reference and bibliographical generation from Word

Papyrus

• **possible to define an HTML format for a list but not in-text citation.
• also supports Word Perfect, PC-write, Word-star, xywrite/Signature, Tex, latex, Chi writer, Ami Pro, ASCII, ASCII with line breaks
• citation prefixes and suffixes can not be specified
• Papyrus lists default to the Word default style setup
• latest version supposed to support Word 7. If the text extract fails then the document must be saved as a Word 6 document

Endnote

• provided an HTML format for both a list and an in-text citation.
• installs add-ins (16 bit for Word 6, 32 bit for later) into the tools menu in Word 6 onwards (and Word Perfect) to format and cite. (Endnote Paper menu not used with Word 8 unless one saves Word 8 documents as Word 6/7 or rich text format before scanning but no warning in help files.) To edit a Word 8 document with any other version of Word, unformat the citations before transferring the document.
• also supports Word Perfect, RTF, Ami Pro, ASCII
• allowed citing from different databases provided they were all open
• reference and citation prefixes and suffixes can be specified

ProCite

• also supports WordPerfect
• installs add-ins into the tools menu in Word 7 and 8 (and Word Perfect) to format and cite
• v3.4 supports Word 6, 7, 8. v4 supports Word 7 and 8
• can only list 6 fields (recno, author, title, date, keyword) when scrolling
• style editing intuitive

Reference Manager

• wizard to create new outout style
• also supports WordPerfect, Word Pro, Ami Pro, Wordstar
• option to create add-in in Word makes it easy to serach for references from Word
• could not switch off the pagenumbers from the bibliographic list or change page layout
• v7 compatible with Word 6, 7 since it works with 16-bit word processors. v8 compatible with Word 7 and 8. Version 8 onwards is written specifically for Windows 95 and NT so it is designed to work with Word 8 and utilises many NT features such as right mouse support.
• If you want to use Word 8, you must use Reference Manager version 8 onwards since if you use v7 with Word 8, you have to save the document as an RTF file, change word processor to ascii in Reference Manager, change the citation delimiters. If the journal format includes any special text style, the bibliography will have to be MANUALLY edited. The RTF format only retains the font styles of the original document, not the in-text citations or bibliography list.

Citation

• Also supports WordPerfect
• citing needed the user to identify each reference by user-specified unique "access key" rather then automatically generated record number
• citing (add-in in Word only switched back to Citation7), required the user to put {} round the pasted access key. Generate citations from doc then correctly added the cites in the appropriate style, but unless the reference list box was checked no list was generated. The list had a different font and size to the rest of the document. Generate Biblography confusingly created a list of all references
• sorted output was placed in a new datafile, as was selected data, so a plethora of files was created (sorted and selected required 2 files).
• the only way to print was to generate a bibliographic list where Word was already open so the output went directly into the current document. If one output to file, Word 6 could not open it since "file is not a Word Perfect document". The other option was to output to the clipboard

GetARef

• When citing, can only scan rtf, ansi, ascii, Word Perfect, WordStar, Ventura Publisher Sprint.
• Add-in merely opens GetARef. To cite one must use GarDoc program

Bibliographica

• citing style was not set as described in the manual and could be very confusing. I ended up getting only html regardless of whter html was chosen or not
• When editing a new bibliography style, the preview does not look like as expected because fontstyles (eg italic) are not displayed when turned on, but when turned off!
• Word can crash if using turabian format
• if @ is used as the temporary citation marker it may be interpreted by Word as an email address
• The cited reference is marked in the document by an abbreviated form of authors, year and title rather than reference number which is very inefficient and impossible to find if the reference is modified
• The bibliography style editor can only edit a bibliography style as a sequence. It is not possible to jump to a part of the style and edit it. One has to undo all items until the incorrect formatting is undone
• German keeps creeping in, eg send LeztAutor in the format style file

Biblioscape

• style editor fairly straightforward to use
• 275 syles on web
• Biblioscape uses Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) to integrate with word processors. The scripts for Word and WordPerfect are provided and they are not protected. It only takes a few lines in word processor script to achieve the integration. 99% of the work is done inside Biblioscape. Integration with other word processors such as StarOffice can be done in one day if the scripting language is known.

• can not be used to cite references
• no style editor- just packages to pay extra for to output in APA, MLA or ISO style

• also works with Ami Pro, Word Perfect, Notabene
• html and ascii ouput set by unintuitive Edit/Preferences/Report
• To cite one had to add the value of a special field called abbreviation that the user had to input at the time of entering the reference data. Word document had to be saved as an rtf file before citing (works better with WordPerfect)
• used dot commands to set report formatting eg:
  .Begin Record Loop
  .Hanging Left 0.25
  <RECORD>
  .Begin Field <Description>
  .Indent Left 0.25
  Summary: <Description>
  .End Field
  .End Record Loop
  

• no citing facilities
• limited style editor

Documentation and help facilities

	Papyrus	Endnote	ProCite	Ref Mgr	Cit7	GRef	Bibliog	Biblios	Scribe	LibM	Refs
User manual	1	1	2	1	1	0	yes	1	1	2	?
manual on web	no	.	no	no	.	.	yes	yes	yes	yes	no
Reference manual	1	no	no	no	yes	no	yes	no	no	yes	?
Tutorial	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	no	yes	yes	?
Readability	good	good	good	good	average	average	average	average	sparse	good	?
Index	good	good	good	good	poor	poor	poor	good	no	good	?
keyword help	no	yes	yes	yes	limited	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	limited
in context help	some	no	yes	yes	no	no	yes	yes	no	yes	some

Reference Manager

• Missing links in help system eg "Refine" pointed to "Refining a Search" for which there was no link

Biblioscape

• help files vastly improved from previous versions and very informative with plenty of screen dumps
• Welp mode accesses web based help system. From there, you can ask questions, get latest patches, participate in online discussions, etc.

Scribe

• The help index fell over on installation so only partially worked

• documentation in Word Perfect so needs tidying up to view in Word

Summary of Advantages and Disadvantages of Each System

Papyrus

Advantages

• only £700 for a site licence
• has a versatile bulk-import and bibliographic creation facilities
• good interface to word-processors
• good search and sort capability
• most "helpful" of all the packages for importing since logs kept
• journal, author and keyword counts
• good free support from vendor and other Universities
• runs on Mac and Windows. Mac version of PAPYRUS is available for free downloading from Web site (late beta version now, limited/demo version later), and has many new and greatly-improved features compared to Version 7.0.
• checks keywords, authors and journals on input against existing values
• can import mailmerge file and define user-delimitered files
• able to distinguish between major and minor keywords

Disadvantages

• needs full windows facilities, cutting and pasting limited, no scrolling
• brief on-line help
• handles eight reference types. It cannot easily store references to manuscript collections.
• citation is a 2 step process requiring switching between applications
• cannot define html citation style, only for bibliographic list html
• can run on network provided all users read only

Endnote

Advantages

• good on-line help, 16 pre-defined reference types and over 300 pre-defined output reference styles,
• input and output formats can easily be modified by the user.
• Endnote less fussy than Papyrus when importing references especially with author names where smart parsing could be used
• good support from vendor
• works well with Word 8
• runs on Mac and Windows with same features (unlike ProCite and Reference Manager)
• can import mailmerge file and define user-delimitered files
• connect command uses Z39.50 protocol to access remote online bibliographic databases using Endnote's search facilities (which should be better). Results appear as Endnote references to store in own library. Pre-configured connection files provided for 100 Z39.50-compliant databases

Disadvantages

• limited search facilities
• author search confusing, and limited retrieval operators
• term lists not updated automatically
• no term list counts
• were far less fields for each reference type than Papyrus
• fell over if file handles exceeded necessitating reboot
• Must deactivate Norton anti-virus before installation to avoid freezing
• can run on network provided all users read only (but no special license needed)

Reference Manager

Advantages

• Available for both MAC (earlier version) and PC
• large number of pre-defined reference types.
• Five user definable fields available, and able to rename other field labels
• wide range of citations from biomedical reference sources can be imported
• direct interface to web (version 8 on)
• Windows 95/NT version with 32-bit, property sheets, common dialogs, OLE, long file names, small icons, and right mouse support)
• can run on network provided only 1 user writing, other users (max 4) read only (with special license)
• Formats may be downloaded from the web (if you can find them) and then edited but only if you pay maintenance.
• open multiple databases
• synonym editor for authors, keywords and periodicals
• full greek alphabet support
• can scan text for automatic keyword assignment looking for words already in keyword list. New phrases added using these words
• good duplicate detection

Disadvantages

• Must run version 7 if one has 16 bit system, version 8 with a 32 bit system which makes support difficult.
• The journal reference type was very limited since it did not include journal series, supplement, day and month, issue title, editors of issue, address, location, or distinguish between major and minor keywords. In fact, importing BIDS data using the BIDS format put address and abstract into the notes field, and BIDS notes and day and month got discarded.
• bad search facilities
• no user-definable fields for own use
• BIOSIS import formats did not match the file that I had.
• The suppliers will create formats for a fee (but offers advice for free). Formats can not be loaded from the web, the user must pay a maintenance charge to obtain the latest formats
• very confusing to distinguish between primary and secondary authors.
• no term list counts
• The extended character set did not work very well.
• Mac version did not have the same features as the NT version
• can not import mailmerge file (useful for users who created database with Word or Access)

ProCite

Advantages

• Available for both MAC and PC
• has an attractive interface with on-line help
• many CD-ROM databases offer output in ProCite format.
• Windows 95/NT version with 32-bit, property sheets, common dialogs, OLE, long file names, small icons, and right mouse support)
• good search facilities
• term list counts
• direct interface to web (Netscape only). Can capture URL and title into a new record.
• Formats may be downloaded from the web (if you can find them) and then edited but only if you pay maintenance.
• can run on network provided only 1 user writing, other users (max 4) read only (with special license)

Disadvantages

• expensive, especially when one has to pay extra for import formats, and one cannot specify ones own unless using NT version (4). Formats can not be loaded from the web, the user must pay a maintenance charge to obtain the latest formats
• Mac version did not have the same features as the NT version. The latest version 4.03 has the same features in Mac and Windows versions.
• no journal synonyms
• can not import mailmerge file (useful for users who created database with Word or Access)
• delimitered file import with 43 fields totally impractical

Citation 7

Advantages

• cheap

Disadvantages

• no Mac version
• hard to create import formats, limited number available
• had to scan rtf file to format citation document
• no link to OLE compliant files

GetARef

Advantages

• Intuitive import, telling user which format the file was in
• cheap

Disadvantages

• no Mac version (but can work on Power Mac emulating windows)
• limited number of reference types
• no journal synonyms
• reference types omitted keywords and comments fields amongst others with no spare fields to store extra information
• confusing to run different programs for each function-GetARef to edit and retrieve, GarConv to import, GarComp to compare, GarList to create reference lists, GarForm to create formats, GarDoc to complete a text document and GarSort to sort a reference file
• had to scan rtf file to format citation document
• could not write own import formats
• no link to OLE compliant files
• not one-step citation

Bibliographica

Advantages

• cheap
Disadvantages
• no method of creating own import formats (and BIDS format incorrect)
• charged to have import format created and there is a very small number of formats to use
• day and month impossible to use. Journal abbreviations clumsy
• keywords lost on import
• no mac version
• prone to crashes (both memory problems and Word problems)
• style editor annoying even though used windows facilities

Biblioscape

Advantages

• cheaper than Endnote, Pro-Cite and Reference Manager
• smart parsing of author name on import
• simple effective tools which are usually intuitive
• automatic date stamping
• good global editor
• database folders
• choice of database engine. Borland enables foreign language support and multi-user access
• good integration with the web, both importing directly from the web and publishing own databases on the web (provided one has web server software installed). Also very easy to search external databases on web
• customisable spell-checker
• good range of search tools including SQL
• can link references to documents and images
• new version coming out every month and implementors very receptive to changes Although Biblioscape is a small, new company there were no support issues.They provide very good tech support in this sector. All emails and user forum postings are answered within one day. Visit http://www.biblioscape.com/user_comments.htm to see some user comments. The user forum at http://128.192.2.200:8002/bw_forum demonstrates how fast a posting is answered.
Disadvantages
• does not work on Mac
• fixed length storage
• documentation did not cover different database engines
• does not work with Netscape. (Biblioscape has an integrated web browser which requires the presence of IE to directly load into Biblioscape. If user has Netscape only, he or she has to save the browser content as text file, then import that file into Biblioscape. So there is one extra step)

Advantages
• cheap
Disadvantages
• no citing
• no import specification unless knowledge of windows resource files
• import specifications not compatible between windows 3.1 and windows nt
• no style editor
• limited search
• does not run on Mac or DOS

Advantages
good search facilities including ability to search for extended characters or not
Disadvantages
• Extended characters entered using control keys.
• citation worked better with WordPerfect than Word97
• worried about specification of unique citation abbreviations when entering new references
• does not run on Mac
• import and style editors confusing and unintuitive
• If one is still using Widows 3.1 one has to use version 3.03 which is the DOS version so put up with limited clipboard facilities, no mouse and too much use of function keys

Advantages
• cheap
Disadavantages
• limited search facility
• no import filter editor
• no citing facilities
• no journal synonyms
• limited style editor

Summary (* indicates important features)

-	Papyrus	End note	ProCite	Ref Mgr	Cit7	GRef	Bibliog	Biblios	Scribe	LibM	Refs
DOS	v7.0.116	yes	v2.2	6.02	no	no	no	no	no	3.03	7.8
MACINTOSH	v8	v2.3	v2.1	v2.51	no	no	no	no	no	no	no
Windows3.1	7.0.16	v2.3, 32bit	v3.4	v7	v7.1	3.2	v6.5	no	no	3.03	7.8
Windows95/NT	7.0.16	v2.3, 32bit	v4	v8,9	v7.1	3.2	v6.5	3.4	3.5	4.0	7.8
over network	read only	read only	yes	conc rw	.	.	conc	conc rw	no	conc rw	no
over browser	no	Web Poster	Web Poster	Web Poster	no	no	no	I Exp 4,5	no	no	no
backup facility	yes	no	no	no	.	.	no	yes	no	no	yes
Vary fields	yes	yes	yes	no	.	.	no	yes	no	yes	no
vocab list	yes	no	yes	yes	.	.	no	no	no	no	no
Intuitive	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	fairly	usually	usually	fairly	yes
Reference Types	8	16	28	36	38	3	13	20	6	50	3
Reference fields(max)	32	27	45	33	25	10	15	39	10	65	12
user-def types	no	yes	yes	no	.	.	no	yes	no	yes	no
ext char set	yes	yes	yes	limited	.	.	yes	no	no	ctrl key	?
Link to OLE Files	no	yes	yes	yes	no	.	no	yes	no	yes	no
Search facilities	good	bad	good	bad	bad	good	bad	good	bad	good	bad
extra boolean ops	no	no	yes	no	no	yes	no	yes	no	no	no
Multiple Database	no	yes	yes	best	no	.	yes	no	no	no	no
Editing
validation	aut, kw, jl	no	no	no	spell	aut, jl	no	no	no	no	no
use term list	yes	yes	yes	yes	yes	.	yes	not work	yes	yes	no
global	some	some	limited	some	no	.	no	good	no	good	no
Import:
debug facilities	some	none	none	none	none	none	none	none	none	none	none
charge for formats	no	no	yes	yes	.	.	no	no	n/a	no	?
web library update	free	free	maint fee	maint fee	.	free	free	free	n/a	free	?
* user-def delimitered	yes	yes	no	no	no	no	no	no	no	yes	no
* format editor	Q+A	intuitive	now free	now free	hard	no	no	intuitive	no	hard	hard
dup ref check	yes	poor	yes	tailor	yes	.	yes	yes	no	yes	yes
Keyword Scan of Text	No	no	no	yes	no	.	yes	no	no	no	no
Output:
* style editor	Q+A	visual	visual	visual	hard	visual	messy	visual	n/a	visual	limited
* Word 6/7/8	save6	yes	7-8	7-8	6-8	6-8(rtf)	6-8	6-8	n/a	rtf	no
* one-step cite	no	yes	yes	yes	no	no	confused	yes	n/a	no	no
HTML format	can define	yes	yes	yes	yes	.	yes	yes	no	yes	no
web link	no	not yet	yes	yes	no	no	no	good	no	yes	no
Journal abbrev	yes	yes	no	yes	yes	yes	messy	yes	no	no	no
year 2000 compliant	yes	no**	mess	yes	no*	no**	no	no	no	yes	no

• *Year was a text field rather than a date field
• Reference Web Poster is a product costing $149.95, marketed by RIS to post Reference Manager, ProCite or EndNote databases on the web enabling anyone with a web browser to access the Poster site and search them

Conclusions

It is very difficult to arrive at a conclusion since no one package was good at everything, and all are going to cost departments a great deal of money. At least it is now very easy to try packages out due to being able to download trial versions and documentation. from the web. One either gets good search facilities and bad import facilities or vice versa. If only Papyrus had a proper windows interface there would be no need to recomend another package since it is cheap and powerful. One also needs to standardise on which fields one imports BIDS information into since each supplier had his own ideas. One could export Papyrus databases into all the packages, but principally this is done by providing the correct output format for Papyrus. On the basis that most of the support that the users require is for importing external references, I consider that Endnote and Biblioscape are the best packages since both provide the most intuitive, flexible facilities and good access to the web but Biblioscape has far better search facilities, is cheaper and is rapidly being enhanced with new features in response to user requests. In version 3.5, user can explore the relationship among records in an organization chart (http://biblioscape.com/bt_alllinks.htm)

• Endnote was good at importing, and supported Z39.50 but retrieval was confusing and limited, term lists were not updated automatically and network facilities were limited
• ProCite and Reference Manager offered interface to the web and OLE facilities but were bad at importing, and had to pay extra for formats every year. They have now redressed this problem so the hidden extras do not now hit you at every corner, but they still charge for creating formats.
• Reference Manager had synonym editors for authors and keywords to improve searches
• ProCite had good boolean operators but date handling was totally confusing and unacceptable. Did not provide a format for BIDS
• Citation7 was cheap but did not work on a Mac and formats hard to define. Had many reference types but no user-definable fields
• GetARef was cheap and good searching but one could not define ones own import definitions. Had very limited reference types with no keywords. Had to generate cited documents with rtf format
• Bibliographica was cheap but prone to crashes. Searching was poor. Did not work on the mac. One could not define ones own import definitions and very few available. Had very limited reference types with no keywords. Citing was messy and editing styles unintuitive. Editing style unintuitive
• Biblioscape was intuitive and has really good search facilities including SQL, a very good link with the web and online databases, the ability to attach images, cross links between references, good network multi-user access. It could be confusing to know how to search in a particular way since so many different ways were provided. Provided a choice of database engines (including Oracle and Access) to store data (but needs documenting properly). Import filters seemed to be straightforward to write and 4 BIDS formats now included, Needs a 39 field format writing to import from Papyrus
• Scribe did not have the facilities that we require.
• Upto the end of July 1999 Library Master (v3.03) was an expensive DOS based program but not as powerful as Papyrus. However the windows NT version (3.4) is reasonably usable but complicated to edit styles and import filters and works better with Word Perfect than Word
• Refs is cheap but too limited to recommend. No major development has been done since 1996 (7.8.1 supports page headings, extended author formatting, rtf inclusion in format, UNIX-style regular expression searching).

Appendix Glossary of database-related terms

Authority list
A list of phrases or words that may be used as a look-up table for indexing, control of document vocabulary, search list. Lacks thesaurus facilities of being able to expand search to broader/narrow subjects.

BIDS format
TI: title of reference AU: surname_initials, surname_initials,... NA: address (each line terminated by /) address (each line terminated by /) JN: Journal date as year vol.volume NO.no PP.page-page DT: document type PA: Cited patents CR: Cited references RF: Research fronts

Compact Cambridge format


   UI: UNIQUE IDENTIFIER
	reference identifier
	AU: AUTHOR
	surname initials; surname initials....
	TI: TITLE
	title of reference terminated by '.'
	SO: SOURCE
	Journal; date as year month; vol(issue); P pages
	AB: ABSTRACT
	abstract. ABSTRACT.
	

Database
A collection of interrelated data typically held in a series of relations which are manipulated by SQL.

Data dictionary
Data held about the data structure itself.

Document
An item of information in full-text form.

flb
The file type of a Papyrus file containing input and output formats

Go word list
A word list used to find documents and validate new words (an index)

MARC
MAchine-Readable Catalogue, a standard format for interchange of data between libraries. Each tagged line may contain any number of subfields. Reliance on numeric tags

Punctuation file
Defines bibliographic style sheets to format a bibliographic record.

SDI capability
Single Document Interface. This would enable users to search a database using the same criteria at regular intervals, retrieving only documents that have been added to the database since the last search was made.

SGML
Standard Generalized Markup Language.

SOUNDEX
A phonetic matching scheme.

SQL
Structured Query Language, the standard data manipulation language for relational databases.

Stop word list
A common word list eg 'and', 'or', 'the' which are not used to find documents. Used to save space by not being added to index

Thesaurus
A structured dictionary controlling the use of vocabulary. An integrated thesaurus is felt to be an essential component of the system. It should be possible selectively to control terms entering the database and to maintain authority files. Index terms should be retrievable and displayable in the same way as documents, preferably using the same commands and utilities.

Truncation
Example: If search for 'car' and retrieve 'cartoon'

Z39.50 ANSI/NISO Information Service and Protocol Standard. Defines the exchange of messages between clients and database-serving hosts. Means that one can browse remote library catalogues such as Library of Congress, UC MELVYL system, OCLC, National Library of Medicine, Ovid etc from the reference management software itself and request direct transfer into the software package without the need for saving results of a search to a disk and then importing

General list of Requirements

• good sorting and retrieval capabilities
• ability to handle sizable datafiles
• friendly, consistent user interface
• Windows interface
• Ability to handle large text fields
• Ability to import from a variety of sources
• Ability to define import format (tags)
• Ability to output to a variety of sources
• Ability to specify italics, bold, underline, fonts and capitals
• Ability to export to a word processing package
• Versions of Word supported
• Ability to change format of database
• Ability to handle articles, books, etc in same database
• simple and readable user manuals
• training aids
• context sensitive help
• switchable case sensitivity
• software tools to check for consistencies
• keyword and thesaurus tools
• cost and value
• licencing agreements
• networking facilities
• machine range
• web interface