Advantages of EndNote over BibTex, if any

Question

Strictly speaking, this is not a LaTeX question. However, I suspect it will be very interesting to LaTeX users.

What are the advantages of using a commercial reference management system like EndNote over using BibTex? I suspect the primary reason people use EndNote is because they are using Word and Word doesn't support BibTex. Are there any other reasons to use EndNote instead of or in conjunction with BibTex?

I ask this because systems like EndNote strike me as something that I would have to use a fair amount to understand the relative advantages. I would prefer that only individuals who have significant experience with both EndNote and BibTex answer this.

My field is computer science, and BibTex is usually not too hard to come by in computer science. However, some bibliography services support EndNote but not Bibtex.

Answer 1

I don't use Endnote, but I frequently edit Word documents whose bibliographies have been prepared using it. The following contains much extrapolation from personal impressions.

They have different ideas about use. Endnote is a bit more like Zotero than traditional Bibtex, stressing its access to official abstract and bibliography servers, with many users who have never either edited a bibliography entry themselves, or felt that they are maintainers of a bibliographic database, because they haven't felt the need. The idea is that that the professionals have taken care of the massive Endnote bibliographic database, so that you don't have to worry about it. This idea of being taken care of is supported by the work that the Endnote producers (recently Endnote was acquired by Thomson-Reuters, now one of the world's two giant news & professional information agencies) have put into cultivating a dialog with the major style guides, such as APA, so that their output is accepted by the authority as being in conformance with the official style.

The results are pretty good, but not as good as users expect. Very commonly I received manuscripts from clients who say I don't need to look at the bibliography because it was prepared with Endnote. I then look over the bibliography to see if I find any errors. Inevitably I do, occasionally serious ones, which I report back to the sometimes very surprised client.

Endnote allows export to Bibtex format. If you do so, the promises about conformance to style guides become worthless, as the Endnote representation of reference metadata does not cleanly correspond to Bibtex's. I have the idea that the same problems will apply if one tries to convert Endnote's format into the new Word 2010 reference format, but I have not confirmed this.

Bibtex is free. The standard Endnote package has an RRP of $300, and will require fairly frequent paid upgrades for most of its users.

Answer 2

I've had some issues with EndNote over the years, some of which have been addressed in more recent releases or perhaps 'go away' if you switch from .doc to .docx Word files. My boss wrote a paper about 18 months ago with a large EndNote library and sent it to another academic for some editing. This all worked fined until my boss wanted to alter the references a bit. Our colleague uses OpenOffice, and although it preserved the look of the references it lost the library element. So they all had to be re-done by hand. As I say, that was a document in .doc format, and we might have been better in the more open .docx format.

I've successfully used BibTeX4Word in the past, as it lets you use a BibTeX database and style file with Word (provided you are reasonably careful). For me that's always been a good balance: I have to use Word at work, but prefer to have my references in BibTeX format.

Charles is quite right that the big selling point for EndNote is the idea that the user doesn't have to worry about the 'bibliography management' side of things. However, I'd also agree with Charles that this doesn't quite work out as you'd like. At least in my field (chemistry) we reference stuff that is in press or has complex notes to add to the references. Nothing automated is that good for these, so whatever approach is uses there is still a lot of typing to do.

Answer 3

In my field, i.e. Ancient Philosophy, EndNote looks like the only choice: BibTex presupposes that the main address field looks more or less the same in all bibliographic styles and, because of that, uses much less database fields. EndNote allows me to play with issues like multiple editors, authors, series vs book editors, or source text editions made in the same book by a different author than the one who did translation and the other one, who did the commentary. I re-define the styles included with EndNote, as they contain too many errors. Actually, I am looking for a method to use directly my Endnote databases in Latex, i.e. without Bibtech, but I cannot find any efficient solution.