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Gerstein Science Information Centre

EndNote (Desktop version)

How to use a citation management program to organize your references and create in-text citations and bibliographies for your papers

Notice

Update: June 2018

This information on this page supplements our EndNote Level II: Advanced Techniques for Systematic Reviews workshop.  This section is currently still under construction and more content will be added throughout 2018.

If you have any comments/suggestions for this page, please email vincci.lui@utoronto.ca

Files for Advanced Workshop exercises

Gathering References

The limit for Medline and other OVID databases is 1000/export. It is recommended to export large sets of references in batches of up to 1000 (e.g. start by exporting records 1-1000, followed by 1001-2000, 2001-3000, and so forth).

  • Enter desired range for # of references  - e.g. 1-1000 (in the box next to 'All' at the top of all your results)
  • Click the Export link.
  • In the pop-up window, tick off Complete Reference.
  • EndNote will open automatically. References will be added to your All References, and appear temporarily in your Imported References.
  • Direct exporting from a folder only imports up to 50 references/time.
  • To export all references, go to Export Results > email the RIS file to yourself.

(Note: it may not arrive immediately; there could be a delay of a few hours to a day or two)

  • Open RIS file with EndNote.  References will be added to your All References, and appear temporarily in your Imported References.

Working with References

If you want to screen your references in Excel, you will have to save them as a text file before exporting them into an Excel spreadsheet.

Below are two modified output styles that help export your references into Excel. To save these styles to EndNote, follow these instructions:

  1. Double-click one of the output style files below (Options A or B) to download and open the file.  EndNote will open.
  2. In EndNote, go to File & choose Save As.  The name will appear as Tab_Delimited_ExportFromExcel_TitleAbstractScreening Copy. (You can choose to rename it if you want).
  3. Click Save, and then close the style.
  4. Go to the Output Style drop-down menu in the top left, and then click on the "Select Another Style..." 
  5. Find the name of the style you just saved (e.g. Tab_Delimited_ExportFromExcel_TitleAbstractScreening Copy), and then click Choose.

Note: After exporting results into Excel, some data cleanup may still be required.

You may want to use a systematic review program to screen articles by titles and abstracts.  EndNote is compatible with many of these programs, and references in your EndNote library can be transferred into the following ones:

 

Sharing References

There are two main ways that you can share your library with other team members:

  1. Saving and sharing a Compressed Library file (creates a zipped .enlx file that can be saved to a USB key or emailed as an attachment)
  2. Syncing and sharing a library via your EndNote Online account (in X7, with up to 14 people; in X8, with up to 100 people)

The video below shows how library syncing and sharing via EndNote Online works:

Using References in Your Papers

Some citation styles may require that you cite journals using their abbreviated journal title (rather than their complete title).  Below are steps on how to modify an output style to automatically insert an abbreviated journal name instead of its full title in your final reference list: