Citation Programs

[Alexandre Enkerli]

ProCite and EndNote are both really good and cross-platform (PC and Mac).
They're both owned by ISI now <http://www.isiresearchsoft.com/> along with
Reference Manager (PC only). ISI also owns Web of Science
<http://www.webofscience.com/> which is a set of citation databases
(including the citation indices such as SSCI). If your institution
subscribes to any of those citation databases (apart from Web of Science,
there's OCLC WorldCat, RLIN Eureka, etc.), you can basically download the
records and import them in your citation program. This can be done for
both books and articles. It doesn't work perfectly with all databases, but
it does save you a lot of time. And those databases usually include extra
information such as abstracts, cited references, author's address, etc.
Both EndNote and ProCite have their strengths. ProCite has recently been
updated to version 4. A very cool thing about EndNote is that, since
version 3, it can serve as a "Z39.50" client to library catalogs (what
Kristine was talking about).
ProCite, on the other hand, is very flexible for import functions (using
the included BiblioLink software).

Some citation programs have been reviewed by Chorus:
<http://www-writing.berkeley.edu/chorus/eresearch/index.html>
Unfortunately, not everything is covered.
For instance, the only version of Papyrus (a bibliography manager) that is
covered is an old DOS version. It's now available for both Mac and Windows
at: <http://www.teleport.com/~rsd/>

Most citation programs (for instance, those by ISI) offer a student price
of about $100. Some of them are cheaper: Bookends Plus (Mac only) is $69
for students (it was $49 at one point). Other programs (such as Papyrus)
don't have a student discount but are about the same price as the usual
ones.
As for standard references, well, you can always trade citation files with
someone in your field. For any combination of citation programs, there's
always a way to transfer references in a common format (such as Refer or
BibX).

Again, there are other ways to manage your references. Simple copy/paste
can be fairly efficient if you're very well organized. Building a custom
database in a mainstream database program could be a good solution in some
cases.

At any rate, the best thing to do is to download demo versions of citation
programs that look interesting. These demos are usually limited to the
number of references you can have, but they give you a very good idea of
what kind of magic it can make.

Hope this helps.