I am excited to report that last week I finished my sixth term as a doctoral student at Capella University. With only two terms of courses remaining before my comprehensive exam and dissertation, I have decided to spend my course break exploring and experimenting with software to track articles, books, and web resources that I have and will continue to gather.
During my previous terms I used Refworks because access is provided by Capella University. The web-based program is great for tracking articles as they are located for assignments, and when the citations are exported they follow APA 6th edition, with minor adjustments. The problem that I have encountered is that I do not reference the site when I am conducting new searches for articles to incorporate into discussion posts and assignments. The database has become a repository of citations that I seldom reference prior to looking for new postings.
I have determined that I would like a reference program that does the following, and more:
- Collects citations from database searches, web sites, etc.
- Allows for PDF uploading and editing with comments, notes, highlighting, and typing, preferably using Adobe Acrobat.
- Has an easily accessible location for typed annotation of the article – this will be helpful to collect previous annotated bibliography write-ups.
- The citation and PDF should be searchable to help locate relevant resources.
- Keywords or groups will be helpful to begin collecting articles that will relate to possible dissertation topics.
Based on the recommendation of a classmate I began my exploration with Mendeley. Exporting my references from Refworks and importing them into Mendeley was very simple. Attaching PDFs to the citation is drag and drop and Mendeley and if the article is not already in the database the program pulls data from the PDF to fill the citation fields, which can then be verified or searched for using Google Scholar. This process was very easy and accurate, most of the time. The problem I encountered was when I wanted to edit my PDF in Adobe Acrobat because I found that I needed to export the PDF and re-import it with my new citations. For a few articles this would not be a problem, but if I plan to use this regularly this will be a lot of extra steps in the process. I really like the field that can be used to mark if an article has been read or not, but all were set to read when I imported my references. Also, the Safari add-in did not work smoothly, but I did not spend a lot of time troubleshooting the problem either. Due to the limits with Adobe Acrobat I moved on.
Last year I purchased EndNote version 4 so I reinstalled the program to evaluate if it would be useful now. I quickly remembered why I did not stick with the program, because it is not intuitive to me. When I imported the references from Mendeley a reference to the PDF file followed, and Endnote makes it very difficult to remove the broken reference. Also, I was not able to locate a quick and easy tool for adding my notes and annotations to the citations. I did not spend much time, because I would most likely need to upgrade to version 5 and spend additional money on the program.
Based on a recommendation from a member of a PhD Facebook group next I looked at Zotero. The desktop version of this program is free, which made me smile right away.
- Importing my references from Mendeley was very easy, and again the broken link to the PDF was included. However, here it was very easy to remove although a bit tedious. Also, the abstract for many articles was added in the citation and as a note. I spent about an hour removing the broken links and extra notes.
- Once the database was cleaned up the addition of PDFs is very easy because it is drag and drop. The PDFs are added as a file under the citation and so are post-it notes. When a PDF is clicked there is a notes window displayed on the right that allows for text additions that could include an annotation.
- To edit the PDF in Adobe Acrobat on a Mac I complete the following steps: control + click the PDF, Select Show File, double-click the file (I have PDFs defaulted to open in Acrobat), and begin editing. Comments and notes are automatically saved to the file referenced by Zotero.
- All citations and files are saved in my documents folder, so they will automatically be backed up. Saving new citations has gone very smoothly.
- I have encountered a couple errors in Safari, but I copy the URL to Firefox and the new citation saves into Zotero seamlessly.
- PDFs are indexed as they are uploaded which helps to extend keyword searches.
- There is a web version of the program available that allows for collaboration and web based storage.
- The iPhone app did not return accurate or detailed results, but the Add item by identifier did return accurate book details when the ISBN was entered. The Add item by identifier has worked seamlessly for adding textbooks into my database.
- This program keeps getting better and better.
At this point my program of choice is Zotero. I will keep you posted on my satisfaction as I upload all my PDFs and begin adding notes and annotations electronically. Happy citing and tracking!
The following is a list of the programs that I have experimented with. For quick reference I have included a few notes regarding my experiences. Please feel free to share your experiences and software suggestions in a comment.
- Zotero - http://www.zotero.org/ This is my program of choice and the bonus is that it’s free. PDFs can be uploaded and using Adobe Acrobat they can be commented in. Safari and Firefox add-ins work great to collect references from pages. Notes feature is great for adding annotation directly to the citation.
- Refworks – http://www.refworks.com/ This was great prior for reference tracking only. Capella University provides access to it. References easily transfer from database searches and export to HTML works wonderfully for APA6.
- Mendeley - http://www.mendeley.com/ Reference adding was simple, but I did not find the program to integrate seamlessly with Adobe Acrobat for adding comments to PDFs.
- EndNote - http://www.endnote.com/ Great program but the downside is the price. I purchased x4 shortly before x5 came out and the upgrade was not included which became a big turnoff.
Tags: PhD