Sonny Software

Hi!

Some time ago, I switched to Bookends from Endnote and am happy with that. Bookends outshines Endnote by far in most important ways, especially when it comes to managing references and associated pdfs. There are of course some things that Endnote does better, and one such thing is the number of journal formats that is provided with the software.

Now, making a new format isn't difficult in Bookends, but it is a bit tedious. Sonny Software is a small company and I think their development time is certainly better used improving Bookends than adding journal formats, but I wonder if there would be some way for us users to help building a more complete collection of formats?

I know there is a "Looking for formats" forum here, but it isn't that useful, I think.

My first thought was some kind of repository where (registered) users could add formats. I think Endnote has this too. But another, and perhaps better, solution could be if there was a way from within Bookends, like in the formats manager, to upload user-created formats directly to Sonny software, so that they can choose to include them with coming releases of Bookends.

Quality control would be a problem of course, but an "almost correct" format would be a better starting point than nothing. Bookends could also provide two lists of formats, one "official" and one "user contributed" that is provided "as is" (or some other way of identifying a format in the list as non-official). If I find a format that is not perfect, I could also correct it and upload the corrected version. Perhaps there could also be some kind of rating/verification system where users can verify that a format is complete (all reference types dealt with) and correct?

I can see two buttons on the edit format view: "upload corrected" and "verify" (official formats would not have these). With enough verifications, Sonny software could choose to move a format to the official list.

What do you say?

Best, Niklas

Hi niklas,

I would be delighted to have users submit formats for us to include (we already do include some third party formats, like SBL from Danny). I'm not sure a dedicated feature built into Bookends is the way to go. But I would encourage you and anyone else who has created a format we don't provide to share it with the community by sending it to me. I will add a comment in the Notes field that the format was contributed by you (i.e. the submittor, if that's a word), including contact information if you wish (maybe not).

Jon
Sonny Software

Jon wrote:Hi niklas,

I would be delighted to have users submit formats for us to include (we already do include some third party formats, like SBL from Danny). I'm not sure a dedicated feature built into Bookends is the way to go. But I would encourage you and anyone else who has created a format we don't provide to share it with the community by sending it to me.

Sure, but you will probably get very few user-contributed formats this way. I think if you want to build a more impressive set of supplied journal formats you have to make it really simple for users to submit a format (and what could be simpler than pressing a button in the area where you actually create the format?). I guess you could have a form on your web pages too, for example, but I actually believe that doing this from within the program would reduce the amount of "junk" you would get (people uploading the wrong file for example), and of course, increase the number of formats you will actually get.

I sit on a few formats for specialized journals in my particular field, and I can send them to you, but I'm sure we all sit on a few of these, and taken together it will probably be quite few...

This may seem a bit silly, because all journal formats are really quite similar (or are at least variations on a few basic themes) and can easily be modified for each particular journal. Still, I do believe (well, know) that this is something that makes some people stick with Endnote, even though almost everything else works better in Bookends. First, because it looks impressive (Endnote "Includes more than 1,300 bibliographic styles", Bookends comes with 156), and second, because most people really don't want to mess with editing bibliographic formats (believe it or not...).

I will add a comment in the Notes field that the format was contributed by you (i.e. the submittor, if that's a word), including contact information if you wish (maybe not).

Heh, no, maybe not...

cheers, Niklas

niklas wrote:Hi!
My first thought was some kind of repository where (registered) users could add formats. I think Endnote has this too. But another, and perhaps better, solution could be if there was a way from within Bookends, like in the formats manager, to upload user-created formats directly to Sonny software, so that they can choose to include them with coming releases of Bookends.

One of the problems with this is that each reference manager product has their own proprietary style format. It seems to me to be a better long-term solution to use an open XML style format. Then have an online repository that has an API that allows different products to use the same files.

Sounds great. But it is totally impractical. First, the different products vary enormously in the formatting features they support. Second, as the major player in this area ISI would have to agree to this, and even their own products (EN, Reference Manager, and ProCite) use different style definition files. Third, it would be enormously cumbersome to maintain.

Jon
Sonny Software