Upgrade StorageAdvocacy for switching: EndNote vs Zotero
I'm working at a Fraunhofer Institute (an applied research institute with close ties to universities, http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/ ). About a year ago it was decided to introduce EndNote as the standard tool here. Now I'm trying to persuade THOSE WHO DECIDE to allow Zotero as the second tool of choice, and gathering arguments. From my current point, I am only interested only in comparing Zotero with EndNote X1 (the version installed at our institution), not with other tools.
The resources I've used to gather information are listed in the following Zotero report:
http://home.arcor.de/web_bill_be58/Zotero-Put2web/Bibliography-on-Zotero/report.html
1. The following table shows bibliographic management tools recommended by (libraries of) the top 10 US universities:
http://home.arcor.de/web_bill_be58/Zotero-Put2web/Recommended_tool-top_10_US_Universities.pdf
Zotero is recommended by 8 of them, EndNote by 9.
2. I have tried to find a "ready to use" side-by-side comparison table, but didn't really like any of what I could find: either too little, or too much and unordered, mostly obsolete, and sometimes plainly wrong. E.g. most of them state that Zotero supports about a dozen of output styles, whereas more than 1000 of them are available now.
Therefore I decided to do it better ;) Here are the results (as PDF and also as an editable RTF file).
http://home.arcor.de/web_bill_be58/Zotero-Put2web/zotero-2_vs_EndNote-X1.pdf
http://home.arcor.de/web_bill_be58/Zotero-Put2web/zotero-2_vs_EndNote-X1.rtf
Though I'm certainly proud on my job ;) I realize that I'm not an expert in Zotero and even less so in EndNote, so probably the document is improvable. Some claims are copied from those comparison tables without having been checked by me.
I would be grateful for any corrections and suggestions concerning this document. I'll leave the document on my server for a while, but can't guarantee I'll stay there forever, and may decide to pull it without notice. Everybody may redistribute the document "as is" or with any changes, with or without acknowledging the source. Maybe, zotero.org would find a place for this document or whatever may become out of it.
The resources I've used to gather information are listed in the following Zotero report:
http://home.arcor.de/web_bill_be58/Zotero-Put2web/Bibliography-on-Zotero/report.html
1. The following table shows bibliographic management tools recommended by (libraries of) the top 10 US universities:
http://home.arcor.de/web_bill_be58/Zotero-Put2web/Recommended_tool-top_10_US_Universities.pdf
Zotero is recommended by 8 of them, EndNote by 9.
2. I have tried to find a "ready to use" side-by-side comparison table, but didn't really like any of what I could find: either too little, or too much and unordered, mostly obsolete, and sometimes plainly wrong. E.g. most of them state that Zotero supports about a dozen of output styles, whereas more than 1000 of them are available now.
Therefore I decided to do it better ;) Here are the results (as PDF and also as an editable RTF file).
http://home.arcor.de/web_bill_be58/Zotero-Put2web/zotero-2_vs_EndNote-X1.pdf
http://home.arcor.de/web_bill_be58/Zotero-Put2web/zotero-2_vs_EndNote-X1.rtf
Though I'm certainly proud on my job ;) I realize that I'm not an expert in Zotero and even less so in EndNote, so probably the document is improvable. Some claims are copied from those comparison tables without having been checked by me.
I would be grateful for any corrections and suggestions concerning this document. I'll leave the document on my server for a while, but can't guarantee I'll stay there forever, and may decide to pull it without notice. Everybody may redistribute the document "as is" or with any changes, with or without acknowledging the source. Maybe, zotero.org would find a place for this document or whatever may become out of it.
The "direct search of catalogues" I think is a bit misleading - since Zotero sits in Firefox, this "direct" search is built in. In fact I would argue it's far superior because you don't have to switch to the clumsy built-in browser.
I don't know much about Endnote, but are you sure you can't harvest from the web (albeit in a more complicated way)?
The search stored pdf line is a duplicate, as is the create report one.
For styles: Zotero actually "only" has about 160 different styles - the remaining ones (about 1100) are all dependent styles - i.e. the same ones for different journals.
The thing is - what really matters are the 160 - adding another 1000 journals who use Chicago or APA style would probably be easy, but a rather dull task.
We don't know that number for Endnote, though. I'd suggest to mention style creation on request here on the forums. It's been going quite swiftly recently.
What about support? Zotero has very good support overall, with an active forum that includes the developers. How is that for Endnote?
Zotero on the other hand makes every effort to fully and correctly support both established and open standards. It is much easier to get your Zotero data in EndNote than the other way round — and that's because Zotero is really being the gentleman here, whereas EndNote seems unwilling to let you go.
> The "direct search of catalogues" I think is a bit misleading
- I'd try to re-phrase it. Or maybe someone has any suggestions
> The search stored pdf line is a duplicate
- thanks, is corrected and uploaded
> as is the create report one
- well, in the meanwhile I've found out that reports DO NOT contain metadata, only bibliographies exported as HTML contain. So I've replaced "reports" by "bibliographies"
> For styles:
- thank you, changed accordingly. Have now idea how is it with EndNote, need help from forum
> What about support?
- well, I have already thought about it and first decided to omit it as I have no experience with EndNote support (I know they do have a user forum). But now the item is included in the hope somebody tells about their experience. As an average Zotero user is probably younger and certainly more enthusiastic I would expect much better forum support.
@ mark - thank you!
> On interoperability ... it would be fair
- I must admit that being fair is not my aim ;) My target is to persuade THEM to establish *co-existence* of EndNote and Zotero at our institution. Because the alternative is having EndNote only. Thus I would be reluctant to argue that EndNote behaves ungentlemanly towards co-existence.
>- I'd try to re-phrase it. Or maybe someone has any suggestions
- changed now.
Also added a few corrections
> For styles: Zotero actually "only" has about 160 different styles ...
> We don't know that number for Endnote, though.
If you name me something like a dozen styles which are equivalent on Zotero - I could look into the corresponding EndNote style files to find out if they are different or not
on the style repository, just toggle the "dependent" styles of and on.
If you click on one of the dependent styles (not install it) you can see what actual style it links to.
But what I need is not the path from a random dependent style to the "original" one, but a list of styles depending on some (random) "original" style. And not IEEE (which would be probably the easiest thing), as there is apparently only one IEEE EndNote style.
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But I have compared the EndNote styles for "J Comb Theory A" and "J Comb Theory B" - and - guess what - they are almost identical :) The only differences being the publication name (A vs. B) and the creation time. That is at least some of these famous thousand styles are just clones. But it would be nice to have an estimation, just how much.
:) well, that way somewhat easier (I can't find out any more why it didn't work from the beginning)
Still, I would need many hundred of clicks to get the information I need (a dosen of styles descending from a single one). Or write a script - but that would border on limit of my programmer's skills. Maybe there exist an easier way?
I'll try to take a closer look soon, but just a couple of quick things:
It's important to mention the number of languages that Zotero works in?!
I think it's 34 at the moment (though some are very similar).
Re number of styles:
There's currently 171 independent styles (and 1260 counting dup's).
Probably best to either report the total number ("1250+" if you are comparing with Endnote) or report the Endnote's independent number as "unknown" !
And to add to your list of US universities, both Oxford and Cambridge Universities have information on Zotero.
A good comparison! A while ago, before I actually switched to zotero, I posted to the forum about the major downsides I perceived in making the switch from Endnote to Zotero that you describe. Although I was hesitant, I went ahead and switched to Zotero, and I'm very glad that I did. With that in mind, some comments:
1. I still think the original two stumbling blocks I identified are not adequately dealt with in Zotero. The first, Zotero's obscure file structure, in which all attachments are stored in randomly labeled folders in the depths of the user's Firefox user profile, seems like an odd way of putting together a program that seeks to behave nicely with multiple operating systems and to be open to modification and multiple uses. This requires a workaround-- if you want to access your PDFs, etc., through the OS and not just through Zotero, it is necessary to store all PDFs in a repository folder, and then use links to those PDFs within the Zotero interface. Having said this, I have to say that this is a quite painless workaround and works well, especially when using the Zotfile plugin.
2. My second original hesitation, that creating user-styles is complex and not accessible to non-programmers (and requires reliance on the Zotero community), still stands. In your comparison chart, under "Create/edit styles" you note that this process in Endnote is a moderately complex task, while in Zotero it is a relatively complex task. I must say that when using Endnote I created styles for myself quite easily, and was glad for the ability to create very personalized styles for myself for any given task. I have looked into this on Zotero, and it's just not possible for someone with limited programming skills and no interest in acquiring them. While the Zotero community is quick to help with styles, that is not the same thing as being able to easily tailor output to one's personal needs (and it does not always result in success, as in this case).
3. Making the switch itself: With over 2000 items in my Endnote library, I found the process of transferring all of those references to Zotero to be very time consuming. I had to strip out dead links, editors of collected volumes showed up as "contributors" in zotero, etc., etc. I realize this is as much Endnote's fault for using its own fields and then exporting a lot of stuff rather unfaithfully to the RIS export format, but regardless, it took me about a week to really get my library in shape. (Please note, too, that because passing information back and forth between Endnote and Zotero is not seamless, it really is a matter of using one or the other--you can't do your research in Zotero, then pass all of those references back to Endnote and use Endnote for formatting bibliographies).
4. Having said that, this was one of the more productive weeks of my recent life as a researcher, because Zotero's research tools are truly impressive. Without trying Zotero, I don't think one can get a good sense of how it allows you to effortlessly search for, scoop up, and organize relevant research. So, as I was putting my library in shape, I found myself using Zotero in combination with Google Scholar, JSTOR, and numerous other databases, and really building my library and getting a sense of where my discipline and my interests are at the present moment. I wouldn't have been able to do any of that with Endnote.
5. As a final point, though, to my mind Zotero is still really a work in progress, and some pieces of what will be a stable system are not yet in place. The more you work with it, the more you stumble on those small pieces. Here are links to some of those that I've personally found to be important: drag/drop links, better support for non-Western name alphabetization, support for original publication date in brackets; sorting by multiple columns, etc. Most of these are items that have tickets and will be addressed, but items can linger on the workbench for over a year before they are resolved. As a result, I think an important question for an individual or institution will be how comfortable it/he/she is with being part of a work in progress.
If one of the developers has a minute to talk about how and if they think these will be addressed, I think that would be very helpful - for users as well as "proselytizers".
http://www.library.wisc.edu/citation-managers/comparison.html
(subject bibliographies, batch editing, duplicate detection, journal abbreviations, database size, lack of cutomizable items and/or fields.)
We have people who would stick to EndNote, and I can understand them very well - it works for them. We have people who would prefer Zotero (like me). We have students which we can't really provide with EndNote on their computers - just too expensive. Those who write papers would probably have an EndNote/MS-Word plug-in anyway. And I would be wary of installing both Zotero and EndNote plug-ins simultaneously. So - why not export 10 to 20 references to EndNote for inserting them into a paper? We mostly use just "typical scientific" types of references.
@ adamsmith
- yes, the comparison from U of Wisc was one of the main sources for "my" table
@ komrade I'm not sure (for my purposes). The people who are able to do scientific research - are sufficiently fluent in English anyway. Well, there exist documents mentioning Zotero... I wouldn't really call this "the University recommends".
@adamsmith: Endnote treats textual export the same way it treats citation styles. You can do the same with Zotero (see the BibTeX CSL style as one example). However, note that CSL shares some of the same limitations as the Endnote styling system & javascript-based export (which you can also create) is much more flexible.
@adamsmith It appears, EndNote scores more points here: Extensive written documentation, help function built into the software, multimedia tutorials, webinar classes, support by phone and e-mail (the software may be English only, but the support apparently available in other major languages). And a forum as well - apparently active and helpful.
Concerning using Zotero to harvest and manage information, and EndNote to prepare publications: My impression, it would be OK. EndNote imported my datasets without problems. Also, for a scientific paper citation list you don't need most of the fields anyway: if anything were wrong there, it wouldn't affect the result.
More on import/export, probably, in some of the related threads. I think, it's VERY important. But first I have to do some tests.
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As an aside: Zotero localization is IMHO more a hassle then an advantage. Usually, I work on my Mac, have an English Firefox, thus see English Zotero only. Now I took home my "official" Wintel notebook for EndNote experiments, with "officially supported" software, includung German Firefox - and germanized Zotero. First, "Eindeutschung" is incomplete - there is a mixture of English and German menu items. Second, the translation could be better in parts. So it is just aesthetically not pleasing to use it. And that is with German, a "major" language.
But more important point: You have the localized Zotero, but if you need help - the documentation is for all practical purposes English only (translations into other languages are patchy at best). Have you ever tried to use a documentation which is in a different language from the software? Масса удовольствия! Furthermore, if you want to ask question at a forum - go guess what is the name of the things in English, if you software is in a different language!
As many people stick to browsers in their native language - probably allow the user select the Zotero language (though I have little hope to be heard on that point by the developers).