EndNote Styles, Filters, and Connections

[ellendt]

Hello!

We are using EN X1 and for our department literature database (about 2000 entries - we do not have the time for manual labels ;-) ), we need a style with the first three letters of the first author and the year of the publication, so for example for

1.    Dhiman, R., A.G. McDonald, and S. Chandra, Predicting splat morphology in a thermal spray process. Surface and Coatings Technology, 2007. 201(18): p. 7789-7801.

it would be [Dhi07]

How can this be done?

thanks for any help!

Nils

Message Edited by ellendt on 08-13-2009 04:03 AM

[ellendt]

No ideas?

[Leanne]

Not within Endnote.  I am not sure if some clever individual could design a macro that would extract the information on an exported set of data and then reimport it into Endnote, and then to extract it from down loaded records, to import for future additions? 

[Leanne]

Besides, it would be unlikely to be unique - if the same first author wrote two papers in the same year?

[ellendt]

Then it would be Mey09a oder Mey09b or Mey09c

[Leanne]

Well, at risk of mentioning the "Z" word, it doesn't seem to have this ability either (Discussion).  But you might find some of the discussion and links helpful?

[myoshigi]

It's not en elegant solution, but you could make an output file that can be imported excel, and use excel's LEFT/RIGHT function and CONCATENATE function. To extract 3 letters of the first author's last name, use LEFT function. To extract 07 from 2007, use RIGHT function. Then, concatenate these two letters using CONCATENATE. Square brackets can be handled by Endnote.

You could do the similar thing using Filemaker Pro which has a powerful text handling functions. Once new filed is made, import them back to Endnote. This one can't do the "a", "b" thing, so you need to identify them manually. The question is how much you are familiar with export to Excel or Excel's text function, or Filemaker.

I made a quick sample of these functions in Excel spread sheet, but couldn't upload because it's got .xls extension. (This forum doesn't allow attachments having xls extension!!). I'll try sending personal message to you.

Message Edited by myoshigi on 08-17-2009 03:06 PM

Message Edited by myoshigi on 08-17-2009 03:06 PM

[ellendt]

I can of course write a script that will do that for me. Can I automatically add the generated labels to my database entries then? Otherwise, this does not make too much sense to me ;-)

[Leanne]

No, you would have to export your library, add  the modified labels and then import again.  Not elegant, I agree. 

The problem I see, is that this style is very specific: 3 first of 1st author letters with and without a, when is the a introduced, only when a b is present? or would there be a MEY09, MEY09a, etc- what happens if the authors last name has only 2 letters?

And has a number of variants   that I found on with some googling -- 4 first letters of 1st author; the first letter of the first 3 or 4 authors, Which complicates matters. 

And would the a,b,c you suggested be hardwired or is it publication specific? Is this a specific fix, you are suggesting or is this a published requirement?

All of this must be taken into account before the company undertakes the modification of the database programming and macros development within the program.  A need so specific might be solved by the  organization requiring the style?   I think that is what developers have done  here with merlin  which I don't pretend to understand. 

good luck!

[ellendt]

Export and import is a real problem, because probably all of our attached PDF-Files would get lost. That is no choice at all. I see that the style is more complicated that plain numbering, but programs like JabRef also do support it and at least in germany this style is really common. Thanks for you help, seems like we'll probably switch to a different software then...