The problem with the current flow of end user choice of style in EndNote Web is that it forces an institution to select from two bad choices: (1) either give users all the styles (3000+) and make them find their style by scrolling through a very long list, or, alternatively, (2) select a limited number of styles but in doing so permanently restrict the remainder of styles available. Option (1) lacks elegance, and option (2) lacks functionality, but they are the only available choices today, as I understand it. I’m fairly confident that the vast majority of undergraduates, for example, use one of three styles: MLA, APA, or Chicago. It’s an alarming waste of time to make them go through a list of 3000 styles to find these common styles. It’s also an unnecessary exercise to ask each of them individually to select their favorites. Why not give institutions the option of setting favorites, without limiting users to using ONLY those favorites. So here’s the way to do it: add an option to “See all styles” for institutions which have pre-selected available styles. That way, most users can view their small list and select MLA or APA, for example, without scrolling through thousands of useless alternatives, but for the rare user looking for an obscure style, s/he has the option to expand the choices and locate exactly the style required. Feel free to follow up with me for details on this request. David dwuolu@csbsju.edu
Hello David,
Thank you for your feedback; this is a great suggestion. I’d like to hear more, so I’ll send you an email to follow up.
Meredith
I too think there needs to be a revision in the way an institution can handle styles. We change the “installed” styles to a network location and provide a selected list of science related styles. I encourage users to use the web style finder (but the search is still a bit inadequate) and download the more rarely used styles for their own use. But a more user friendly way of finding a style would be welcome. Here in the styles forum, we did make a kind of code and give examples in early threads, so people could look for something close, but a web page that one could have examples of major options, and one could scroll thru to select the style by design rather than by every publication under the sun would be welcome.
While I am on the subject, WHY does every publication have to have their own version anyway! Couldn’t they have some sort of “compromise” that everyone agreed on. There could be one alpha (Author, Year) and two numbered (order of appearance and alpha ordered) and we would be done with it! Maybe a “drop the title” or et al, but if we submitted it as an endnote formatted version (or zotero, or ref man, etc), they could reformat with an inhouse style and ‘go’…
Those of us who write journal and other publications, we should unite/revolt/whatever! (okay, I have lived in my utopia long enough I guess).