Discontinuing reference manager?

There’s rumors here that Reference Manager is being discontinued.  Please verify if that is true or not.  Thank you.

Janis

Thomson Reuters does not have plans to discontinue Reference Manager and we will continue to support it. We strive to deliver the best reference management tools to our users.

 - Mathilda Edmunds

Director, Product Strategy Authoring & Collaboration

Thomson Reuters

“does not have plans to discontinue”      How will you continue it?

  1. What existing functionalities do you hope improve in the next release?
  2. Are you focused more on improving performance of the existing capabilities, or focused more on new capabilities?
  3. Are resources being spent improve RM?
  4. Do you plan to continue this product into the next version of Windows (8)?
  5. What is the status of redesign of the IFE?
  6. Will search be fixed so that the manuals from version 8, 9, 10… become factual?

“we will continue to support it”

  1. How specifically?
  2. Does Thomson Reuters have a development map or planning document which could be shared in some version with the client base to help us plan?  I am thinking here of EndNote and Procite as well as RM.
  • a. Interoperability between the 3, sharing and transforming files.
  • b. Which program(s) will have what focus?  For example, only RM (last time I looked anyway) is a fully multi-user textbase, allowing multiple users to all edit simultaneously.

TIA,

_K

It certainly looks as if RM is being left behind.

I’ve beeen looking closely at EndNote, which is having regular updates.

It imports my RM database succesfully, and has some neat features, but there are some RM features which I would miss.

Still…

Given that T-R must have limited resources, I can see the sense of having just one program, but why not manage the transition properly - add the missing features to EndNote, then offer a cheap cross-over license…

It sounds so good that you plan to continue with RM. I have tested the others, none is the same.

But as I understood - RM is the last software officially supporting only WinVista - Windows 7 is not on the specification list. The last release came out about 2 years ago - all other Bibliography softwares are being developped - RM stays the same old RM 12.

And somewhere in this forum I found a statement that new versions of RM will not be released anymore.

I would happily buy the current version (I am still using RM 10 under XP), but only if I know that a new version is going to come.

So - does continuous support mean that you are updating RM 12 from time to time to make it more stable or are you actually planning to come out with a new version (which would eg. include direct pdf-import into the database when scanning folders)?

Thanks for your input

I guess thats it. On the 26th of april, I asked if you will ever put out a new version.

Up to now not even a small answer.

RM is dead. Better we get used to it.

I have tested Citavi - not yet perfect, but developing. It even can import pdfs and download automatically the bibliographic data, works well with win7 64 bit and word 2010 (by the way, word 2003 is freezing with CWYW on 64 bit systems) and it costs the same prize.

All features which I severely miss with RM. And no hope they will ever come.

I have purchased Citavi today. I will not miss a 2y old, no more developped program. At least you should admit it and not sell it for full prize without informing customers that there will not be a new version (at least within the next 5 years I assume)!

You disappointed me a lot. 

Follow up:

Thomas Reuters contacted me and sent me a genereous apology for all the inconvenience, which I have accepted.

However - everything concerning RM remains unanswered, which I consider as sad.

No more bad feelings for TR, but I still miss RM.

Would be nice to hear a response to _K’s queries. Yes?

Responding to madscientist’ 8/20/12 and Coliver’s 8/21 posts.   I have not receive any answers about RM. Madscientist received an apology without answers.  TR wants to have it both ways: "buy our product, don’t expect fixes or useful improvements.   I have stuck with RM as we need a multi-user network product. [The claim that Endnote is a network application is perhaps 33% true.  1 editor and multiple viewers does not make a useful db product for me.]

I plan to recommend we drop all of our licenses (we have more than 20) and move to another product as soon as we can.  However, I have to admit that finding a replacement that suites our needs has been hard. We have tested another product for over a year, but it has its own issues.

posted 2012-08-23.0920

I appreciate your frustration and concerns about Reference Manager. We’ve been focusing our development activities on EndNote based on feedback from our broad customer base and while we are not actively developing Reference Manager, we continue to offer it to customers who feel it is a better fit for their reference management needs than EndNote, and we continue to provide technical support for those customers.

We are currently working to add expanded multi-user access functionality to EndNote and are enlisting Reference Manager customers to help us define all the appropriate use cases. If you would like to participate, please reply here or send me a private message with contact details.

Below are some details that I hope address the questions posted:

 - EndNote does have some multi-user access options beyond what is mentioned earlier in this post through EndNote Web’s Group Sharing. If you are interested in learning how that works, please let me know or take a look at this video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrVnfZxECVw. We will continue to improve this feature so feedback is appreciated.
 - EndNote has many additional features not available in Reference Manager that may interest you, such as Find Full Text, PDF Viewing options, Find Reference Updates, Sync with EndNote Web, and more.
 - Regarding interoperability, last year (X5.0.1) we added the ability for EndNote to open and convert Reference Manager databases and CWYW formatted documents.
 - The Fall update for EndNote X6 will include compatibility with Windows 8.

 Again, we appreciate your feedback and ask for your participation in our upcoming multi-user research initiative. It is a great opportunity to help shape this feature.

- Tilla

 

 

Mathilda Edmunds
Director, Product Strategy Authoring & Collaboration

Thomson Reuters

I sympathise greatly with everyone on this forum. I work for an organisation that has been forced into using Reference Manager due to its network capabilities, and have had the bad luck of being part of a very small team trying to develop a referencing system for the entire organisation to use. It hasn’t been easy: technical support has been sporadic, and it has reached the point that a lot of our users don’t want to use the program because it has so many flaws.

Mathilda, I think TR has missed the point that web-based network systems are not appropriate for everyone. Our organisation’s IT department nixed the idea instantaneously when we suggested EndNote Web as an alternative to Reference Manager. Therefore, Reference Manager should be considered important in its own right, and should continue to be developed for organisations to the same extent that EndNote is developed for individuals. It frustrates me when I can’t do something with RM that I know EN can do, but the RM networking abilities are really good and that gives me hope that with a bit of care this could be an incredibly valuable program.

Yes, I agree with S completely. The “take it to the web” solution has security, application feature, and technical questions. Some of our clients don’t find that acceptable, because that is not how they work. We have not found any web product that is satisfactory in all the above categories. My company (and I myself) prefer a networked software application in the manner that RefMan works. 

I can’t think of any new features for RM that I would call ‘urgent,’ but fixing some long-term bugs and making the app a bit more friendly/stable with Office 10 would be fabulous …at a minimum.   Specific fix requests available upon request.  PLEASE note though that the years have degraded my faith in the suggestions email box at the RM web site.  I wonder, does anyone submits to that with hope? Sometimes we have gotten a fix to import filter, but I think that’s the limit.

Feeling more hopeful just having this dialog,

Librarian _K

1 Like

I have a copy of endnote 6 but still come back to using Refman because it is better to use. One can customise the views how one reads abstracts etc not the straight jacket view that endnote and other programs’ have. Why cant you customise the views in Endnote? If you added just some of the wiz-bangs of endnote to Refman we would better off! Some one out there needs to combine the best of endnote, Refman, readcube, pdf expert, Iannotate rather than excelling at just one aspect. Any one interested?

Hello! I am having issues with my RefMan 12.0.0 on my Windows 7 platform. Everything was fine until I upgraded.  Please advise on whether 12.0.3 would fix the bugs or if there is known issues.  Or, more specifically - since it sounds like RefMan might be discontinued - is it time to switch over to EndNotes?

Thanks

Kat

Kat, for any or all reasons I recommend trying 12.03 before actively considering a switch.  We had troubles with 12.00 on Win XP that were solved by 12.02 or .03–I forget.    We are currently running 12.03 on Win 7 sp1 and I am not aware of any issues.  Of course environment or system configuration may render my experience useless to you.

-luck

_K

Mathilda,

There are one very useful and unique characteristics in Ref manager DESKTOP.

One is the multi user concurrent editing of the local database shared in a hard drive (it is quite different to concurrent access to cloud databases shared with a group) At present no other software do that. Only Reference manager has the capability to allow concurrent editing (not the same reference, but in the same BD for different team members).

Other is the possibility to configure ID as AuthorYear… all the other software has only the automatic numering ID, but identify ID references with authorYear is fundemantal for me and my team. I dont know if EndNote has this capability

And Last, We have aa lot of own format styles .os . Is easy to import them inEnd note? (as easy than importing BDs or formated documents)

the advanced search, duplicate search and copy field between references is more flexible and accurate than other software that i have compared (End-Note Web, zotero, Mendeley, RefWorks)

15 years ago I suffer the nightmare of migration from endNote to ref Manager (a decade before, REf Manager was the Best in class ans star for Thompson… Now is End-Note).It sounds great that End-Note can import not only databases (is the easier part), but also formated or cited documments.

The last point is is Reference Manager clients, can access to End-note desktop license paying similar fee as an Upgrade (not the full price for “New” customers).

We are 2015 now…

The latest version of Reference Manager is v12.0.3 and was released in 2010

The latest version of Endnote is X7 and was release a few months back in 2014

It would help if TR communicates more open about their plans… 

I’m a research consultant to several colleges.  In the past, I’ve used Reference Manager and been fairly happy with it. However, when it came time to upgrade a year ago, I discovered that RM was not being kept current.  I eventually decided that Thomson Reuters was discontinuing RM, and so I converted to EndNote.

Now, I’m being asked by a new college for a recommendation with regard to reference management software.  I’ve been disapointed by inadequacies in EndNote that were handled rather well by Reference Manager.  Thomson Reuters has been surprisingly obtuse about the whole issue of Reference Manager’s future.  And, they appear to be unresponsive to user requests and recommendations.  This is TERRIBLE behavior for a company that offers a line of software to the education and technical community!

Care to guess what my recommendation will be concerning any of the Thomson Reuters products?

Chuck Henderson

Chuck,

I have been using Reference Manager for over 22 years.  We need a networked environment in the department I work for, and after nosing around on the Endnote forum, I am not at all happy about what they consider to be a replacement.  Right now users seem to be very unhappy about the lack of a patch making Endnote compatible with Word 2016, and also are very unhappy with transparency about this situation.  So I would like to ask: what would you recommend to replace Reference Manager?

Susan

Check out Mendeley (

<a href="https://www.mendeley.com/">website here</a>

).

  • It’s free (with options to upgrade).
  • It’s cross-platform (Windows, OSX, and Linux).
  • You can view and annotate PDFs.
  • You can import citations from PDFs
  • You can insert citations into Word, etc.

I don’t work for them, but I’ve been using them for years, and I’m a huge fan.