Merging references

It would be great, if you could implement a function to merge reference in my library. For instance, if I have an incomplete reference with an attached PDF in my library. Then I can search for the full reference directly from the Endnote interface. However, to me it seems that Endnote only finds full reference, if a DOI number can be found in the attached PDF. This is often not the case. Then it would be convenient to import the full reference from Google scholar and mark both and maybe click right where a function could be found that says something like ā€œmerge both referencesā€.

9 Likes

Yes - this is something we have had on our To Do list for a while. In the meantime, if the goal is to ā€˜fill in missing fieldsā€™ for an incomplete reference, you can try the ā€œFind Reference Updateā€ feature in EndNote X6, just right click on a reference and choose theĀ ā€œFind Reference Updateā€ optin. This will attempt to match your [incomplete] record with data from several online databases including PubMed and Web of Science.

Jason Rollins, the EndNote team

Thanks for your reply. As I noted in my post, I am aware of the feature ā€œfind reference updateā€. However, this seems to work only if DOIs are embedded in a PDF. Otherwise I get hits only very, very seldom.

The Find Reference Update feature will match against basic meta-data - Author, Year, Title - as well as DOI - and fill in other fields from PubMed and Web of Science. If you have access to these databases, you will get results. I just did a few quick tests and it worked great.

Jason Rollins, the EndNote team

Actually, I find that this would be extremely helpful instead of deleting a duplicate reference, to have the option to merge the non-duplicated information from each reference into 1. Ā I really appreciate the find duplicate and then you can pick between the two, but sometimes there is information in one that would be nice to keep instead of deleting the entire thing. Ā It would save a lot of cutting and pasting steps to merge the two.

2 Likes

Agreed! Please add this feature! I recently imported my entire folder of PDFs. I now have the PDF as one reference (with no other fields filled in) and another reference with all the fields properly filled in (but no PDF attached). There are hundreds of them, so not really feasible to manually adjust it all.Ā 

However, it would be somewhat easier if I could drag and drop while using the ā€œfind duplicatesā€ feature. In other words, if I could compre the two and just drag the PDF over into the one that has the other fields filled in. Then delete the PDF only reference entirely.

Thanks!

3 Likes

I have exactly the same problem. I tried to move away from Refworks, where I cannot export my database including the attached PDFs. So I downloaded the trial version, exported my Refworks database as RIS, and imported it in Endnote. Then I tried to import all my PDFs via ā€œImport Fileā€. Now I have hundreds of duplicates and not enough time to clean them up. I thought that Endnote could help me save time, but without a feature like merging entries, itā€™ll cost me more time than it saves. So thatā€™s the end of my test.

I have exactly the same problem. :cry:

I have 109 duplicate references after importing all my PDFs. My university databases are not available for online search, so all of these would be a manual reentry.

Please, PLEASE escalate ā€œMerging Referencesā€ to the top of the queue for updates.

Many Thanks.

Dr Matt

1 Like

One more vote for this feature!Ā  It would be extremely useful.

Thanks!

NM

This would be great. Any word?

Jason Rollins seemed to indicate that it was on their to-do list. I wish there was a way users could vote for features to prioritize. For me, merging citations would be the single most useful productivity feature that is currently missing.

The way Iā€™d envision this to work would be:

  1. Ctrl/Cmd-clicking citations to select/highlight

  2. Right-click and select merge citations.

There are ways to approach conflict resolution efficiently:

e.g. one could select and move citations up and down. Conflicts could optionally be resolved by overwriting top -> down or down -> up.

2 Likes

Yes, he indicated this, but this was a year ago and still the feature is not integrated. So I have serious doubts that it will be available soon. To me, this is a must-have feature. Without it, I see no reason for me to buy a copy of Endnote.

1 Like

Hi Jason,

Any update and time scale about this feature ?

I cannot think about a more useful element than ā€œmerge referencesā€ for the next update of EndNotesā€¦ which could be followed by improving the way DOI are looked for and identified in a pdf file (which it-self could be complemented by extracting (at least) the title of a manuscript when the DOI is not foundā€¦).

The ā€œmerge referencesā€Ā feature seems to be expected by most customers and appears to be essential to convince new ones to purchase the softwareā€¦ maybe it is the time to wrap up and release this feature in the next update.

Best Wishes

2 Likes

There is a simple reason for this. New users probably already use another program for managing references. But most of these programs do not allow the user to export reference data including pdfs. So after an export, you end up with all your pdfs on one end and a text file on the other. You only get all your references back if you import both the text file and the pdfs. But in that case, EndNote poses the problem that you have lots of duplicates (in my case several hundred). This makes changing the reference software extremly time consuming, especially if your library is very large. But time is a scarce ressource for researchers. So probably many researchers will stick to the software they already use although they know it is less powerful.

1 Like

Has there been any further development on this?

I am using X7 and it hasnt got the feature.

1 Like

amen. Ā Please allow the merging of two references. Ā ā€“ Ancestry.com even lets us merge two similar ā€œancestorsā€ who should be one!Ā 

1 Like

The same problem PLEASE Ā” it would be extremely helpful

Another desperate userĀ”Ā”

Joaquin

The same problem PLEASE Ā” it would be extremely helpful

Another desperate userĀ”Ā”

Joaquin

Any news about that? I think that it is a must now ā€¦

july 2017 using x8 on Macā€¦ PLEASEā€¦ LET ME MERGEĀ