Upgrade StorageMore comparison of Zotero and EndNote
Most of the discussions comparing Zotero and EndNote are rather old, so I’m starting this new one to offer some ideas that I haven’t seen in previous discussions. These ideas are based on at least 20 years of experience with four bibliographic databases, most recently EndNote and Zotero. Many of the basic features of EndNote and Zotero are similar, but here are some key differences. Some of these are strengths of EndNote, others are strengths of Zotero. Of course one fundamental advantage of Zotero as open source software is that the developers are more responsive to suggestions from users for improvement.
Here are the main advantages of EndNote:
1) EndNote has a cleaner user interface (others may disagree).
2) EndNote includes the option of relatively straightforward modification by users of import filters and output styles. There is also some capability of editing reference types, for example, changing the names of fields and the particular fields that are displayed.
3) EndNote includes the capability of global editing.
4) EndNote includes rich-text formatting in database records as well as bibliographies. This facilitates such things as italicizing scientific names in titles of articles.
Here are the main advantages of Zotero (for me):
1) Editing of tags (keywords in EndNote) is MUCH easier in Zotero than in EndNote. In EndNote, all the keywords for a particular record are contained in a keyword field. This means that if a user wants to modify a keyword in all records in which it occurs, delete a keyword from all records, or add a keyword to a subset of records, he or she needs to use the global editing tools for the keyword field. This typically requires several steps, and must be done very carefully. For example, suppose you want to change the keyword ECOSYSTEM to COMMUNITY but also have the keyword ECOSYSTEM-ENGINEER in other records in your database. If you do a search for ECOSYSTEM in the keyword field and change all occurrences to COMMUNITY, then records with ECOSYSTEM-ENGINEER in their keyword field will now show COMMUNITY-ENGINEER (This is not an ideal example, because ECOSYSTEM and COMMUNITY don’t mean the same thing, but I think it makes the point).
Making these kinds of changes of tags in Zotero is much more straightforward and reliable. In addition, finding all references showing a particular keyword requires a search in EndNote, but can be done much more easily using the Tags Window in Zotero. This is actually reminiscent of a feature of ProCite, which was a better program than EndNote but is no longer maintained by
Thomson Reuters, which owns both, presumably because ProCite didn’t sell as well as EndNote.
2) Zotero seems to do a much better job of importing bibliographic information from the Web, and has several different options for doing this. I especially like the “Add Item by Identifier” feature, although retrieving metadata from pdfs is also exciting.
3) The ability to create multiple notes for a record is a strength of Zotero, as is the ability to link different records.
Other users of Zotero will have other features that they especially like, and I look forward to reading about these.
Here are the main advantages of EndNote:
1) EndNote has a cleaner user interface (others may disagree).
2) EndNote includes the option of relatively straightforward modification by users of import filters and output styles. There is also some capability of editing reference types, for example, changing the names of fields and the particular fields that are displayed.
3) EndNote includes the capability of global editing.
4) EndNote includes rich-text formatting in database records as well as bibliographies. This facilitates such things as italicizing scientific names in titles of articles.
Here are the main advantages of Zotero (for me):
1) Editing of tags (keywords in EndNote) is MUCH easier in Zotero than in EndNote. In EndNote, all the keywords for a particular record are contained in a keyword field. This means that if a user wants to modify a keyword in all records in which it occurs, delete a keyword from all records, or add a keyword to a subset of records, he or she needs to use the global editing tools for the keyword field. This typically requires several steps, and must be done very carefully. For example, suppose you want to change the keyword ECOSYSTEM to COMMUNITY but also have the keyword ECOSYSTEM-ENGINEER in other records in your database. If you do a search for ECOSYSTEM in the keyword field and change all occurrences to COMMUNITY, then records with ECOSYSTEM-ENGINEER in their keyword field will now show COMMUNITY-ENGINEER (This is not an ideal example, because ECOSYSTEM and COMMUNITY don’t mean the same thing, but I think it makes the point).
Making these kinds of changes of tags in Zotero is much more straightforward and reliable. In addition, finding all references showing a particular keyword requires a search in EndNote, but can be done much more easily using the Tags Window in Zotero. This is actually reminiscent of a feature of ProCite, which was a better program than EndNote but is no longer maintained by
Thomson Reuters, which owns both, presumably because ProCite didn’t sell as well as EndNote.
2) Zotero seems to do a much better job of importing bibliographic information from the Web, and has several different options for doing this. I especially like the “Add Item by Identifier” feature, although retrieving metadata from pdfs is also exciting.
3) The ability to create multiple notes for a record is a strength of Zotero, as is the ability to link different records.
Other users of Zotero will have other features that they especially like, and I look forward to reading about these.
1. I s a matter of taste - I hate the Endnote interface.
2. Output styles are forthcoming: http://csleditor.wordpress.com/about/
Endnote citation styles are also rather limited in what they can do - starting with (but not limited to) the fact that you need some macro-based hack to switch between footnotes and in-text citations
3. Will almost certainly happen in Zotero 3.5
4. As you know, Zotero allows rich-text formatting for bibliographies, you just don't like how it's implemented (and devs have said that they'll eventually try to handle that better).
Some of the trade-offs between Endnote and Zotero are certainly a matter of taste.
But the big downside to Endnote is that you can't get your data out properly. In 25+ years of existence they haven't been able to develop and maintain a well defined, stable, and documented output format. Their RIS output violates the specifications (which are published by T&R!) in multiple ways. Their own .enw xml format is not documented and apparently changes frequently. At this point it is hard to believe that this is not done on purpose to lock long-term users in.
Any citation styles or output filter you created with Endnote - Endnote claims they belong to them and you aren't allowed to use those with any other software, too. Any Zotero citation style you customized, you can freely use in Mendeley, Papers2, Sente, quiqqa etc.
If people have been working with Endnote for 20 years I can very well understand why they'd want to stick with it. It's reasonably stable and works reasonably well - but new users really should stay away from that product.
It's a small thing, but I like how Zotero sorts tags alphabetically as they are added to records.
Many users would probably appreciate the synch feature of Zotero, but I got in trouble once using it. I eliminated all records in some collections in the online version of my library, then tried to update them by synching with my office desktop. Instead, the records in those collections on my desktop were eliminated. Now I simply copy the current folder with Zotero data to a flash drive to transfer it from office to home or vice versa.
I actually haven't used EndNote that long. I started with a DOS program called Papyrus that I liked very much, but the author of that program got squeezed out -- I think by Thomson Reuters, so stopped updating it. Then I switched to ProCite, which was much better than EndNote. But I beleive TR acquired the company that developed ProCite, then stopped maintaining and updating it. I will probably switch completely to Zotero at some point, assuming I become convinced that it can handle a very large database (< 10,000 records). And I routinely recommend Zotero to students who want to start keeping track of references in a systematic way.
I know there are many users with libraries between 10 and 20k and no problems. Above 20k I can't tell you much, the main downside at some point is speed, so it also depends on the computer.
The actual number of records in my EndNote database is 14,520, so your experience suggests that I won't have a problem when I make the conversion.
Thanks a lot for your comments.
If you have other sync questions, start a new thread for those and we'll be happy to explain further.
- While Endnote has a style editor, the style system itself is extremely limited and basically hasn't seen seen any improvement in over a decade. Bookauthor anyone? A proper humanities citation style is almost impossible to achieve with Endnote.