Retrieving online references but preventing possible duplicates from being Copied/Pasted to a local library

This has been asked before here: “Preventing duplicating during copying online references”

https://community.endnote.com/t5/EndNote-How-To/Preventing-duplicating-during-copying-online-references/m-p/132576/highlight/true#M24309

However, it still has not been resolved yet.

  1. You search online PubMed for references and e.g. found 5 refs.
  2. You want to retrieve ref #1-5.
  3. If you have turned on “automatically discard duplicates”, those that are duplicates in your library will not be retrieved. You will not have a chance to see what they are.
    But if you have turned off “automatically discard duplicates”, all the 5 refs will be retrieved.
  4. Now you want to add them to your local library. All the 5 refs will be copied/pasted to your library even if you have tuned on “automatically discard duplicates”.

Ideally, at step 3, all 5 refs should be retrieved, so you have a chance to see what have been found. then at step 4, if those to be moved into your local library are possible duplicates, you will be reminded to stop it. this will give you a chance to abandon it, e.g. checking before copying/pasting. This is the way that “Reference Manager 12” uses to deal with possible duplicates. I wonder why EndNote handles it in such a bad way!

In addition, EndNote now treats “Smith, H.K.” and “Smith, H. K.” (a space between H. and K.) as different authour names when determining if two references are possible duplicates.

A close look at the suggestions have found this feature has been requested by others as well:

Duplicate check between databases, for references of a search result or group, for single references

https://community.endnote.com/t5/EndNote-Product-Suggestions/Duplicate-check-between-databases-for-references-of-a-search/m-p/153154/highlight/true#M12592

Basically, EndNote lacks an very important feature of “Reference Manager 12”, which I used for many years. 

Again, becasue EndNote thinks “Smith, H.K.” and “Smith, H. K.” (a space between H. and K.) are different, if you try to “Find Reference Updates”, it will show “All are up to date” for “Smith, H.K.” although there is an update with “Smith, H. K.” (a space between H. and K.).