Managing bibliographic references in OS X

December 6, 2005 5:49 PM

Help me choose a bibliographic reference manager for OS X...

I'm a recent Mac convert. I've used Endnote in the past on Windows, but that was when I was at a different school with an advisor who owned a license. Before I shell out the cash for a license myself I'd like to know what else is out there.

Must-have criteria:
- Relatively cheap (I think the student price for Endnote is ~$100. Any more than this is too much)
- MS Word integration

Would-be-nice criteria:
- Plays nice with LateX
- Lets me store references online
- Existing style/formatting files for ACM and IEEE reference formats

As a secondary question, what's your favourite LaTeX editor for OS X? Is TeXShop my best bet?

posted by sanitycheck to computers & internet (11 comments total)

BibDesk. Not sure what the ACM/IEEE requirement is for, that's Bibtex's job, not yours. Just find the appropriate .bst file. As far as LaTeX on the Mac, it doesn't get better anywhere than TeXShop. It's very nice.
posted by neustile at 5:55 PM on December 6, 2005

Neustile -
I know that if references are in bibtex format I can import them into Endnote/Bibdesk/whatever, but what about when I want to display them in my Word document? That requires some sort of style or formatting file. Does such a beast exist for bibtex files?
posted by sanitycheck at 6:04 PM on December 6, 2005

Oh, I wasn't clear on this in my question, but I really want something like Endnote's "cite while you write" which will let me easily add references in Word. From a brief look at the BibDesk site, it's not clear that it does this. However I couold be wrong and will investigate further.
posted by sanitycheck at 6:06 PM on December 6, 2005

Non-classic Word integration pretty much limits you to Endnote, to my knowledge. Note that Endnote 8 and 9 require Word 2004, specifically.

This link is a good reference for converting Endnote bibliographies to a form used with BibDesk, a free graphical OS X reference manager for LaTeX/BibTeX.

TeXShop is your best bet for a LaTeX editor under OS X, IMO, and it's free.
posted by Rothko at 6:06 PM on December 6, 2005

I apologize as I missed the Word requirement and thought it had to be in LaTeX. Rothko is correct there, there's nothing that'll do both save converting EndNote to Bibtex. Note that I have heard absolutely nothing good about EndNote on the Mac.
posted by neustile at 6:11 PM on December 6, 2005

Rothko is correct. TeXShop is best.
posted by about_time at 6:18 PM on December 6, 2005

I'm wrong about Endnote being the only ref. manager with Word integration.

This page is an excellent reference (no pun intended) about reference managers, and points to a couple that work with MS Word, such as Bookends and StyleEase.

That first link is also an excellent all-around reference for science applications for the Mac OS X platform. Share and enjoy.
posted by Rothko at 6:27 PM on December 6, 2005

I use Refworks for my bibliography, it even allows for "read-only" access, so I can give my thesis advisor an account to check up on my annotations, etc. My University has a site-license for it, which means anyone affialiated with the University is permitted to use it free of charge.
posted by vkxmai at 7:48 PM on December 6, 2005

Re: Word integration.

While I *wish* I could move to using LaTeX for everything, most of my colleagues still use Word and rely heavily on the "track changes" feature when we're co-authoring stuff... However I hope to use LaTeX for some individual course project stuff and it would be nice if I could use the same "bibliography" file for both (hence the mention of it in my question).
posted by sanitycheck at 8:16 PM on December 6, 2005

I switched a while back from TexShop to iTexMac, although as it happens I seem to end up using emacs just as often. My advice is to check both out, as you can always trash the one you like least.
posted by edd at 11:30 PM on December 6, 2005

Hey, it turns out my university also has a site license for Refworks! I'm going to try that out first, since there seems to be some sort of "cite while you write" companion software available for Word. I'll try to remember to come back here and give an update in a week or so.
posted by sanitycheck at 3:43 AM on December 8, 2005