Bibliography Software
Recently I had the need to convert pieces of bibliographic information,
which were exported from a number of different literature data bases, into a
more useful format. For me, that means BibTeX. Being short of time, I thought
I'd be pragmatic and make use of the endnote program offered to me by the
university. Big mistake.
Endnote
Most formats exported by data bases can be imported into endnote, but the one
from ieeexplore.ieee.org, which I needed most, can not. The import filter
(which the library had to make first), doesn't work reliably, and can't be made
to work. The BibTeX export filter needed some serious work, and even after
that, information keeps on getting lost somewhere. It also generates an
enormous amount of rubbish in between the sueful bits. Support for BibTeX
export from the university library is non-existing (although BibTeX is
advertised as supported). Support from the company which makes endnote isn't
where they say it is (that whole server doesn't even exist), and once found,
over half a decade out of date.
Summary: endnote is a complete waste of time. If I'd programmed filters
myself I would have functional software now, for the same amount of time
spent.
Bib-fixer
This started as a filter to correct the broken output from ieeexplore.ieee.org.
After all the trouble with endnote I extended it to do the conversion to BibTeX
as well. As a third function, it tidies up most of the mess in endnote's BibTeX
output. Download
Notes: Some of the IEEE journal names are translated into a macro. The macro
name is identical to the one used by the official IEEE software. Most (all I
encountered) of the HTML constructions in the citation exported from
ieeexplore.ieee.org are translated into correct LaTeX equivalents.
Installation: unpack into any directory which contains executable
programs.
Other Programs
bp, perl-bp Originally from Dana Jacobsen, March 1996, ported to
current software versions by David Kaplan, part of sixpack http://sourceforge.net/projects/sixpack/.
These did an ok job for inspec and ovid input, but both needed manual fixing.
See the bug report.
bibutils From
Chris Putnam. Converts RIS and medline to BibTeX. I have used version 2.2 with
good success. Manual correction may be required in a few cases. I compiled
Linux packages.
bibtool Good for pretty printing, sorting, and copying entries within
or between files. The source code is available from CTAN, or from my compiled packages.
Other Material
- I have assembled samples of various formats exported by literature search
data bases, including ovid/current contents, inspec, the IEEE broken special
(this looks like RIS, but apart from being buggy uses different field names),
and others whos name I'm not sure of. Perhaps useful to anyone who'd like to
improve existing filters. [download] [more info]
- A brief review of some bibliographic programs
(the list of programs is by no means complete).
- Journal names of the IEE, for BibTeX. It's probably not complete and not
as nicely compiled as the IEEE one by Michael Shell, but it's all I need at
the moment. [file]
