I have an old library that I imported first into Endnote Web and now into Endnote X7 (trial version). One of the things I would like to do is for Endnote to update all references with PMCID numbers when available. However, no matter whether I want to update an old ref, or one I just imported and simply deleted e.g. the page numbers, I get an error telling me that Endnote could not find an appropriate record to update from (these are all Pubmed references).
Any help would be greatly appreciated (yes, I saw the older X5 thread and watched the video!)
I don’t think PCMID is a very reliable field. All of my PubMed references (and I have > 2,500) update nicely all the time provided that I use the PMID number (note PCMID) on PubMed which should be mapped into the field of EndNote named “Accession Number”.
Most journals do a good job of filling in this accession number field with the PMID when I download a citation from a web link (and always when I search PubMed from inside EndNote), but some screw it up and map something else into the accession number (like the DOI reference). The PMID field can be found on the PubMed citation page at the lower left corner, and recent ones are eight digits starting with a “2” as they are up to 24 million citations. If I am not on the journal’s web page, I just create a new reference, cut and paste the PMID into accession number, and update the reference and EndNote retrieves all the other information. Once in a while that doesn’t work for a very, very new citation and I have to wait a day or two.
Tedious as it may be, if you have empty or incorrectly formatted acccession numbers the only thing to do is to search the PubMed web interface for the correct PMID, or use EndNote’s built-in search to find it. I have created a group to identify such orphan records and I clean them up periodically when I am bored.
thank you for your response. My question was really more about reference update than PMCID.
(I need to get the PMCIDs because my grant institution, NIH, is asking for it)
BUT the “Find reference update” is not working (independent of PMCID):
For example, if have downloaded doi 10.1007/978-1-60761-744-0_2 This refernce has a PMCID number an accession number, weblink etc. I delete the year 2011 and then try to “Find reference update” which should now, according to endnote help, fill in the missing year. It does not. It says it cannot find the link
Not sure, but have you made sure that pubmed is selected in the find full text preferences?
I have no idea, however, if that would affect the update function… It certainly helps improve my find full text and is off by default, when you install Endnote.
I just did a few quick tests using this “doi 10.1007/978-1-60761-744-0_2.” I found the reference and pdf on Google Scholar, imported the PDF into EndNote X7 for Macintosh and all of the meta-data - including PMCID. I then ran Find Reference Updates and got a note saying there where no updates availble - meaning this record already included everything that EndNote could find from PubMed or Web of Science. I then deleted the year field from my record and ran Find Reference Updates again. This time EndNote found updates - just the year field from PubMed.
Based on this test, things seem to be working in EndNote X7 for Macintosh. If there is something I missed, please let us know so we can look into it. I do suspect that for some very specific workflows where there is very minimal meta-data Find Reference Updates may not be working as well as it should. So any input you have to help us improve this would be a big help.
I had installed a trial version of Endnote X7 since I was in the middle of a grant application and needed to format the references differently from what Endnote Web allows. The grants is submitted without PMCIDs.
However, I did purchase a license now. I totally uninstalled Endnote X7 from my computer, re-downloaded it and installed using the license. I just tried it and it works now without a problem.
During the re-install, I was very careful to not have either a web-browser or an MSOffice product open. Now I don’t know whether that made the difference, the fact that it now is a licenced copy or just a bad install the first time around.
I’m writing here because I really need help.
I have to clean and edit an Endnote library not mine and in it there are hundreds of references totally corrupted (e.g the name is composed of a series of numbers, lacking author, year and name of journal).
I’ve found a video on EndnoteTraning youtube channel and it has been very useful.
But I wonder if there was a way to edit references and make them suitable (especially for including them in bibliographies) more quickly because using the method that is proposed in this video from minute 3:50 it’s necessary so much time for making references appropriate because the program find very rarely updates of references only inserting the correct title of the article and - as I’ve said- in my library are hundred and hundred the wrong references.
Thanks so much for your help.
I’m writing here because I really need help.
I have to clean and edit an Endnote library not mine and in it there are hundreds of references totally corrupted (e.g the name is composed of a series of numbers, lacking author, year and name of journal).
I’ve found a video on EndnoteTraning youtube channel ("Find Reference Updates posted on May 9th 2012) and it has been very useful.
But I wonder if there was a way to edit references and make them suitable (especially for including them in bibliographies) more quickly because using the method that is proposed in this video from minute 3:50 it’s necessary so much time for making references appropriate because the program find very rarely updates of references only inserting the correct title of the article and - as I’ve said- in my library are hundred and hundred the wrong references.
Thanks so much for your help.
Perhaps the tech support people are who you need to talk to, to see if they can help rescue the library?
Wouldn’t it be far easier to build your clean library by retrieving the needed records as you write? I am not sure what useful purpose the corrupted library is to you?
This may be 2 years too late. I faced the same problem and I discovered that the problem was that the reference type was defaulting to “Report” setting it to “Journal article” fixed the problem for me.