Consolidating citations generated by RefMan

ivorist

I just began to use Zotero and like it very much. However, when I pasted some older text containing citations generated by RefMan and tried to create a consolidated bibliography, I found that Zotero does not recognize the RefMan citations at all, and thus I have two separate numberings and bibliography in my file...

In my case, it would be painful to redo the citations using Zotero. Is there any easier way to build a consolidated bibliography?

adamsmith

no.
RefMan is close source and Thompson Reuter and litigious company, so this is probably not even theoretically possible (because the standard by which RefMan inserts citations is closed and proprietary).
You'll have to manually re-insert every citation put in by RefMan, or finish your project in Refman and start using Zotero for the next one.

DWL-SDCA

Revising a lengthy document that was saved using RefMan and converting it to a working document using Zotero isn't really all that painful. I accomplished converting a 296 page document with 410 different references (about 475 in-text citations) in less than one-half a day. After converting the RefMan database to Zotero format, I did this by: 1) using a numbered citation format; 2) stripping the RefMan field codes; 3) printing the reference list; 4) going page by page inserting Zotero reference codes and then 5) deleting the old RefMan-inserted numbers. Using a printed copy of the reference list greatly facilitated inserting the Zotero codes and keeping the correct citations. During the conversion process I actually found a couple of citation errors that had been overlooked during proofreading (twice) the original document. The process was simple and error-free. Thus, I am comfortable with assigning it to a research assistant next time. Accuracy can be tested by comparing before and after reference lists.

ivorist

Thank you all for clarifying my question! =)