Thinking about switching from Endnotes to Zotero... Your experiences!

philosopherdog
Hi,
Zotero looks very interesting. I'm trying to get a sense of whether I should try to make the switch from Endnote x1. I'd be curious to hear your experiences, especially if they're comparative. I'm using the legendary word processor Textmaker! So, I won't need any of the plugin support for Word or OO. What I'll mostly be doing is importing my 2000 items from EN. What I'm concerned about is: 1) whether I can import straight from Google Scholar, 2) whether I can import from my library catalogue or Library of Congress catalogue, 3) whether I can import from Philosopher's Index. Also, I'm a bit concerned about speed. I'm using FF3. Is Zotero going to grind my browser to a crawl? Anyhow, this looks like a fantastic little product. Very exciting. Help me decide.
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  • bdarcus
    I suggest you try it yourself. It's free.
  • Tjowens
    1) whether I can import straight from Google Scholar,
    Yes
    2) whether I can import from my library catalogue or Library of Congress catalogue,
    Yes
    3) whether I can import from Philosopher's Index.
    Yes
    Also, I'm a bit concerned about speed. I'm using FF3. Is Zotero going to grind my browser to a crawl?
    No, it should have minimum impact on your browsing.
  • philosopherdog
    Hi,
    Thanx so much for the reply. Zotero does look amazing. Are folks using it to replace Endnotes or are most using it just to collect from especially electronic sources and web clipping? I realize you can't exactly customize styles as you can in Endnote, at least not easily from what I've been reading. But personally I've moved away from MS products, including Word and love the idea of moving to open source bibliographic software. I've been using EN since v4 and have never been enamoured, and the cost is simply prohibitive for many low paid academic types.
  • kieren
    Firefox 2 + zotero used to be a little slow on older hardware. Now it's fine with firefox 3.
  • bdarcus
    Are folks using it to replace Endnotes or are most using it just to collect from especially electronic sources and web clipping?
    I think there are a lot of former Endnote users who use Zotero in much the same way. I'm one of them.
    I realize you can't exactly customize styles as you can in Endnote, at least not easily from what I've been reading.
    Just a minor correction: you CAN customize styles, and the style language (that I wrote) is more powerful and flexible than Endnote's.

    OTOH, to do so ATM, you need some skills in XML. So, for example, if you have some comfort with hand-editing HTML, you'd probably be able to figure out how to edit a style.

    But ... most people don't have this skill, so the consequence is that from those users' perspective, you can't ... customize the style as you can in Endote. But this is a problem that will get solved.
  • bdarcus
    Oh, also worth noting that the latest release can read Endnote style files.
  • WickedGirl
    I found Zotero first, fell in love and then decided to try Endnotes one day because I have to use IE for school. After installing and using Endnotes for about 5 minutes, and then several times after that as well, I went back to Zotero. I love it!
  • philosopherdog
    Thanx for the feedback. Obviously it would be awesome if someone would put together a tutorial on how to create styles or edit them. I understand there are plans to include some sort of editor in upcoming releases. That seems essential. I had a look at information about importing Endnote styles but couldn't find out how to do this. Is there a link or instructions somewhere?
  • protein function
    edited July 23, 2008
    I have been using EndNote since it was introduced (I believe) and Reference Manager before that. All I can say is there is no looking back for me. Zotero is so much more compatible with my research work flow and the Internet than EndNote. EndNote was so much extra work and so clunky, that it was nearly useless, like lead ankle weights. I don't know anything about porting my old EndNote into Zotero ... but I don't care. Zotero immediately proved itself to be superior and invaluable. Really quite impressive. I have had a few bugs and compatibility issues with Firefox and was considering IE again, but now that Zotero is available, I will not even glance at IE. Zotero is a godsend. Fantastic. To my mind it is a no-brainer. Zotero.
  • kieren
    protein function: thanks for a rather brilliant piece of advocacy - I think I will print it out and take it to a meeting I'm having with my research director when she gets back from maternity leave next month (in which I argue that my outfit needs help modernising parts of its research process and I'm the guy to help)
  • asdir
    @bdarcus:

    When exactly will personalizing styles be implemented? And if it is not implemented: Is there a how-to or some other kind of help to learn how to do it? Where would the files be that I have to change?
  • sean
    http://dev.zotero.org/creating_citation_styles
  • asdir
    So I take it there is no simply way of adapting an already existing style to my needs unless I get the files of the original from its maker? Or are there any .csl-files on my harddrie already. (I searched for them but could not find any.)
  • sean
    edited July 31, 2008
    Styles can be previewed and downloaded from our styles repository. There is also the beginnings of a style generator available off-site, but it does not yet generate validated XML.
  • Tjowens
    @ asdir You have the CSL files for each of the styles you already can use on your local machine. Aside from the style generator Sean mentioned you can also play around with the basic live editor included in Zotero. See this thread for more info launching and using the live editor.
  • adamsmith
    I switched to Zotero having used Biblioscape before. I could get a free campus-license for Endnote but never liked it all that much and now with Zotero there's really no reason. (by now I'm also using linux so Endnote is out of the question - another big advantage of Zotero).

    My general experience is that Zotero wins out on most accounts (we actually did a "competition" at our University library which we won with Zotero http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/2340/help-zotero-win-citefest-competition/).
    Converting old citations (actually using endnote export from biblioscape) worked like a charm.
    I'd say the biggest issue currently is the style generator. There's also the occasional imprecision in one of the citation styles.
  • Rachelle A.
    IMO, Zotero is far and away the best when it comes to collecting research materials online. EndNote is not even close.

    Since I already have EndNote, and since most of the people I work with use EndNote, I still use EndNote styles for writing papers. Zotero doesn't have as many packaged styles, and creating new styles isn't worth it to the people on my project at this point.

    However, if you aren't constantly formatting and re-formatting papers for different journals, but just need a basic array of popular academic citation styles, Zotero is perfect. Compared to EndNote, Zotero's paper writing interface is more adaptable to different word processing environments, and the interface with Word, in particular, is simpler.

    I think it would make sense to buy EndNote if you already knew that you were comfortable with EndNote's output styles, felt the need for a vast style library at your fingertips, and didn't have the time or mindset to delve into Zotero's style creation capabilities. Even then I would suggest using Zotero for creating libraries, and using EndNote as a secondary citation tool.
  • ammodram
    Just downloaded Zotero, and the major drawback I see at the moment is that it doesn't seem to support italics in Titles and other fields yet, the way that EndNote does. Until this happens, its utility for those of us who work with italicized Latin names in the sciences will be limited. Probably the single biggest disappointment I have with Zotero.
  • philosopherdog
    Dear ammodram,
    Not sure what you mean by Z not supporting italics? Do you mean you can't input italics? Or you can't output italics? You don't need to be able to input italics for obvious reasons. But Z outputs italics according to the style you choose; if it didn't that would surely be a problem that would render the program nearly useless. So, if you pick Chicago Author-Date as your output style, for instance, that will italicize book titles, but not journal articles, since that's the rule in Chicago. Anyhow, so unless I have misunderstood you, I think you'll find that Z does support italics. :)
  • bbolker
    ammodram & philosopherdog,

    s/he means italics _within_ fields -- as in
    http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/667/

    one of the tickets in the bugs data base says:

    Starting with Revision 1456 of core.vb (1454 of Zotero.dot), text surrounded by underscores will be italicized in citations and bibliographies inserted with the Word plugin

    I haven't tested it (don't use the Word plugin), but maybe that is
    a sufficient workaround for philosopherdog for now?

    Ben
  • adamsmith
    the walkaround doesnt work well and doesnt work in open office.
    On the positive side of things, however, this has a ticket assigned
    https://www.zotero.org/trac/ticket/439
    and has just been upgraded to major priority. Landmark is version 1.5 so lets hope for the best
  • jackholt
    I switched from EndNote, but now I'm going back... I love Zotero's import functionality, grabbing information from web pages. However, the formatting of citations and bibliography has proven to be nightmare for me. I really really wanted this to work well and replace EndNote entirely, but Zotero keeps screwing up the ordering of multiple citations, and every time I refresh it changes in a different way (and always wrong). Tried to get help in the forums, to no avail. I hope the situation improves someday because I do like many of the features. I might continue to use it to import reference information.
  • bdarcus
    edited August 12, 2008
    As my comment to jackholt suggests, I don't think his problem is Zotero; it seems like it was the style he was using (though would appreciate confirmation).

    It would be good, BTW, if Zotero's style preview on the repository included multiple citations.
  • bdarcus
    Rachelle: Zotero now reads Endnote style files, so in theory, styles aren't a problem.
  • jackholt
    bdarcus: Posted in the troubleshooting forum, apparently your fix worked!! I can stick with Zotero... whew.
  • Rachelle A.
    bdarcus, thanks for the info. Will poke around and see if I can figure that out for a paper I'm working on now.
  • zmg
    Problem is with zotero, that it is very unhandy if you have a huge base of sources and respective child excerpts and want to group them into outlines for chapters, articles, etc. That's almost impossible to do, because you can't manipulate child notes (eg. exerpts) the same way you can manipulate their parent objects (eg. books).

    I really love zotero for its simplicity, but it is a fatal flaw, that you can't group the notes you take into collections and generate reports on them. zotero would be cool, cool, cool if it had that functionality !!!!

    (Especially on MacOSX, where we are used to itunes-type of gui, but have no publications/excerpts management software which is that simple to use. zotero looks like a great start, but it's its missing that simple important feature. Why? For what zotero does up to now, you can almost always use BibDesk on Mac which is also free and more mature.)
  • bdarcus
    @zmg: you've made your point elsewhere; no need to keep beating on this. This thread is about comparisons with Endnote. The last I recall, Endnote only allows one note per record, so your complaints here don't seem relevant.
  • noksagt
    edited October 8, 2008
    zmg: all of your posts have been on this topic. I think that everyone understands that you have this feature request.

    BibDesk is great & some of my colleagues use it as their primary BibTeX tool. However, it can't do nearly everything that Zotero can (though it can do a few things that Zotero can't). Off the top of my head, BibDesk lacks word processor integration, supports info retrieval from fewer databases, and the annotation/note taking aspects (which you want to see improved in Zotero) are almost non-existent.

    EDIT: beaten to the punch by Bruce. Preserving the post for the BibDesk comparison, though.
  • zmg
    edited October 9, 2008
    @bdarcus: You're right on that Endnote doesn't have an excerpt management feature. That' s a point where zotero could score easily - both against BibDesk and Endnote, which are both widely spread inspite of their outdated design concepts (they are really not state of the art ...).
    There exists software that can do excerpt management and thus meets the needs of academic writing processes - I did an extensive internet research on that: Scribe3 for example does it, but it' s not as simple to use as zotero and thus blocks your creativity. Also, it is not developped any more. Another very, very good software - which is being used throughout all my faculty - is the swiss made citavi. It is much, much, much more powerful and state of the art than Endnote. It has citations, exerpts and notetaking management and many other features Endnote doesn't. But it's commercial and it only runs on Windows machines. zotero could even score against citavi, because it has portability which is becoming increasingly important.

    EDIT: After two days of struggling, I now found a way to run citavi in MacOSX (citavi in Windows in a window ...) - being happy. Will look back to zotero from time to time, cause it's free. Maybe some day I can use it for my purposes.
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