As an academic, I need to be able to insert citations frequently. Endnote is my favourite reference software and it is fully integrated with Word. With a few clicks, I can insert a citation and automatically generate my list of works cited. With a few more clicks, I can completely change the bibliographic style of my citations and references. I have already written to Endnote to request that they consider integrating with Scrivener, and I’m writing to you to request the same.
Although I am really enjoying working in Scrivener, it is a major drawback that I cannot use Endnote within it. I don’t think I will be able to continue with Scrivener as a writing tool if there is not a better way to cite references as I go. It’s too difficult to manually add references as I write, and there’s too much of a risk that I will miss vital information or create an incomplete or inaccurate list of works cited.
I wrote my doctoral thesis with Scrivener and used EndNote as my citation manager. You can’t use CYWYW, which is fine with me because in Word I’ve found that CYWYW causes nothing but pain (that increases exponentially the longer and more precious the document, or tight the timeframe, so it was never going near my thesis). However, drag and drop worked perfectly, as did cut and paste. When the draft is complete, simply compile to Word and then format the references as per usual.
I’m an academic, too, and I also use bibliographic software with Scrivener. I gave up with Endnote many years ago, switched to Bookends, and have recently switched again to Sente (I’m a Mac user, and both of those are Mac programs). They work perfectly well with Scrivener. Neither of them have CWYW, but I don’t regard that as a disadvantage – CWYW is a right royal pain in the neck in my experience and I wouldn’t use it even if it were available. I far prefer inserting temporary citations then doing a document scan on the final rtf to build the permanent citations and bibliography. This is a personal choice of course, but I certainly find that it works very well for me, and if it came to a choice between writing in Word and using the Endnote plug-in, and writing in Scrivener with no plug-in, it would be no contest. Scrivener would win every time.
Just to (ahem) cite another reference manager: BibDesk cannot scan a generated rtf file, but you can do “cite while your write” style referencing. All you have to do, is to either drag an entry from BibDesk to Scrivener, or to copy from BibDesk according to a template, and copy to Scrivener.