But nontroppo’s comment is entirely relevant. For instance, with Bookends:
In Scrivener, you set up Bookends as your bibliography manager in the Preferences.
In Bookends, you set Scrivener as your word processor in its Preferences.
In Scrivener, while typing, you hit Cmd-Y to open the bibliography manager set in the Preferences (Bookends in this example). Bookends is launched.
In Bookends, you select your citation and hit Cmd-Y. This automatically inserts the temporary citation in Scrivener.
In Scrivener, you compile to RTF and then scan the document with Bookends.
You can do something very similar with Endnote, I believe.
How can you do this in Zotero? You can set up Zotero as your bibliography manager in Scrivener, but there seems to be no way of adding an arbitrary word processor in Zotero. So there seems to be no way of hitting a keyboard shortcut in Zotero that will automatically open Scrivener and insert a temporary citation (which would need to be done on Zotero’s end).
A quick look at the Zotero API seems to suggest that it comes with no UI and just a way of looking up citations in the user’s online Zotero database. This would mean I would have to build my own UI for inserting Zotero citations in Scrivener if I were to user their API. But then, their Objective-C API has the warning: “This is still in early stages of development, so proceed with caution when using this in a production application.”
I would like to inform that RTF/ODF Scan for Zotero is actually doing what was identified by the others as an integration with other reference managers.
My idea for integration is probably biased because I write in Markdown and I want when I compile in Scrivener to get .docx with the expanded bibliography and the appropriate citation style. I think that an opportunity for custom processor, as it is in some form available in MultiMarkdown->Web page (.html) by using XSLT post-processing, can provide the flexibility for integration with Zotero. Will this be a problem to be developed? I do not know will Scrivener 3 use custom processors. If it has it it will be good option to be user friendly in order we to add our arguments.
Thanks!
Probably “Zotero” should. But Zotero is an open source project and so has a few key people working on it with a lot of demands. So I am guessing if the Zotero-using Scrivener community (all of us?) really wants a plug-in we may have to build it “ourselves.” That is in quotes because I can’t code (easy to volunteer for things you can’t do). I wish I could.
Except I can’t can’t get that to work. For a one page document it just spins its wheels and nothing happens. Until I can figure out what I I am doing wrong I am just going to to put parenthetical marker where I want to put a footnote with name of author and page number and then after I export it to word I will put in the footnoots with Zotero so that I can edit the footnotes and generate a bibliography. That way I will be spending more time writing and less time trying to get the software to work.
Yes it must be something wrong with my machine if everyone else is getting it to work. Will have to figure what is wrong. I suppose that would be on the Zotero forum.
I would prefer to be writing than tracking down software bugs.
Honestly: don’t use Zotero. You get what you pay for, and Zotero is free/open source[1]. I do use Zotero to maintain a shared reference list with one collaborator, but it is painful to use compared to Bookends. Bookends was released in 1984(!!!), yet still gets monthly updates by a super supportive developer, Jon. Bookends fully supports extracting annotations from the PDFs it manages — AND you can use Applescript to copy these notes (with citekeys linked to page numbers) directly into Scrivener. It does a thousand other things better than Zotero (managing keyword lists, detailed duplicate management, SQL querying, a very flexible UI, amazing format and import editor, a version for iOS with full sync, including annotations etc. etc. etc.). I see Scrivener and Bookends as critical tools for a fluid academic workflow, and each is carefully crafted by a dedicated paid developer. Most pertinently to this thread, Bookends works flawlessly with Scrivener. Or if you really want to save money, probably take some time off writing, learn to code, and contribute to build a better Zotero…
[1] Zotero is currently going through a major transition. V5 broke most tools that were built for V4, but V5 is itself transitional. Firefox killed its extension system, and therefore Zotero will have to completely rewrite everything for V6. Most bits of the Zotero ecosystem were built by volunteers, who have other commitments and this will impact how fast we get the tools to work. And as Keith mentions, “This is still in early stages of development, so proceed with caution when using this in a production application.” is not a tempting prospect for a developer like Keith.
Thank you for your thoughts. Much appreciated. I had already installed Bookends before reading your post but am now more encouraged to learn how to use it and get a workflow going between Scrivener and Bookends so I can just focus on writing and not fiddling with niggling software quirks. I just want it to work.
If it is half as good as you say it is then it would be cheap at twice the price. I like Scrivener so much that even though I bought it I would like to give them a donation for having such good software and support.
I am curious regarding Bookends and PDFs. With Zotero it makes a duplicate PDF and puts it in a separate dBase rather than just making a link to the original. I don’t like that. I have a large number of PDFs (20,000 +) that I organize into my own library according to topics and I would prefer that the software just uses an alias to find and access the PDF rather than taking up disk space by making duplicates.
Also can you recommend any good tuturials for Bookends?
Is there a separate group on Scrivener for Bookend users?
I have even considered Endnotes. How is that in comparison to Bookends? I also just downloaded a copy of Endnotes, Papers, and ReadCube.
I just want to something that works out of the box.
One thing to look at when you test the different softwares is their abilities to search for relevant litterature. I tested Bookends and it can’t search e.g. Scopus or Web of Science, which are fundamental to my research. Papers can, and it is usually sufficient for my needs. As for exporting annotations to Scrivener, it is as simple as ‘Copy as’ in Papers and then choose what it is I want. The reference, all annotations, or something else. It also supports Apple script and their support has helped me and others to get script to do specific things for us. Everything is not perfect in Papers. It does end up with duplicate pdfs sometimes, but merging them is simple. But then I only have about a thousand references, not 20 000+.
A side note: where did you find the time to read and annotate 20 thousand references? I still have over a hundred references on my list that I haven’t had time to read…
Good point about search abilities, I never used that function before. Usually I just go into places like JSTOR to look for what I need. But search abilities would definitely be useful.
Just like I found out that Zotero is not the one for me, though it may be useful for grabing online citations if others don’t do that, I will have to explore each software over time and see what they are good at for what I need and assemble a tool box.
To answer your last question. I am not a student. I’m an independent researcher. I paid someone to scan in my whole library (it took almost 7 years scanning 8hr/day, 6 days/week) that I collected over a 40+ year period. I read a lot. I learned to read fast. Most of them do not have digital annotations but hand written marginalia (from when I read them in paper form) that I use as landmarks for later digital annotation. My topics of interest are different than yours; things such as cross cultural interchange of knowledge in the ancient world. I have not read every item - yet. At one point I download anything that looked useful for my research for future reference as opposed to trying to find and download that interesting looking title I remember seeing last year. If it is useless then delete.
For Bookends, you can use an existing directory to link to your existing PDFs, but it probably will not handle sub-folders. But it does usually work with PDF files directly and not aliases (I think anyway, I haven’t tested it). 20,000+ PDFs is a colossal amount
Lunk’s point about search options is fair; Bookends does support Web of Science (and JSTOR, though I don’t use it), it doesn’t support Scopus (I asked why and Jon told me the Elsevier’s access fees for a single developer app is exorbitantly high). But you can simply use a web browser, and export to your reference manager (bookends has a bookmarklet, and can find refs in a web page as long as it supports the CoINs standard). Papers is a very capable choice, and a fair distinction from Bookends is that Papers is more elegantly designed and is more PDF centric (it started off as a glorified PDF manager/reader), Bookends is better at detailed reference editing and customising bibliographic styles (it started off as a glorified database before PDFs existed )
I tend to prefer to want deeper reference management and read my PDFs in a dedicated program. I use PDF expert now, and annotations sync back to Bookends. However if I want an annotation with a page number then I do that in Bookends. What I miss in other reference managers is things like carefully standardising Journal names and abbreviations, combining multiple author name variants, detailed SQL searches and the like. But I would happily use both Bookends and Papers way over Zotero.
r.e. the behemoth Endnote (by Thompson Reuters): IMO inferior to Bookends or Papers. I occasionally use the latest version (X8) because of a collaborator (although I’ve now made a script to auto-convert Endnote citations to Pandoc ones during a Scrivener compile). Of course their federated search is second to none (especially Web of Science!), but everything else is second rate.
r.e Readcube — I remember downloading and playing with it some time ago and giving up, not designed for deep reference management but perhaps it has changed since then? Oh, Papers has been bought by Readcube so it seems? Well, if they combine the best of Papers and Readcube, they may have a juggernaut app on their hands! Something needs to take Endnote down!
I’m going to sidestep the whole “you get what you pay for” claim about open-source software and just point out that there are plenty of reasons besides price why someone might go with open source and be very happy with that choice (Pandoc, anyone?). On the other hand, it’s also true that with open-source you might need to do a little more legwork on your own instead of dumping your problem on the developer. The issue is simply whether your individual needs are being met.
FWIW, it sounds like a lot of the magical things Bookends does–I’m a Windows user, so I don’t have first-hand experience–can be handled with Zotero plugins such as ZotFile. And there are lots of Zotero plugins.
I think it’s a philosophical question to some degree, or personality trait. I did a fair bit of coding back in the 1980s and 1990s because the softwares that were available weren’t capable of doing things we now take for granted. Today I don’t code and I don’t spend time asking developers to change their apps. Instead I find the apps capable of doing what I want and use them as they are, which gives me more time to do my job.
Not always coding. A lot of open source software requires the user to do more work integrating it into workflows. Look at some of the hijinks our Markup and LaTeX communities sometimes have to go through in order to ensure they’re getting the right scripts/stylesheets to run, even when they’re using scripts developed by other people.
Some people just don’t want to spend the time rolling their own. That doesn’t make open source bad or good, just a different experience, and it’s not universal to all open source software. Some of the biggest pains-in-the-apps I’ve used were commercial, and some of the most user-friendly were open source.
Dear liz, you are absolutely right and I regret my wording somewhat. It is the case that with open-source projects, if the tool fits your needs, then it can be every bit as good (or far better) than a commercial one. Pandoc is a good example. It is an utterly brilliant tool, powerful and very well documented. But it isn’t perfect, and there are people who’ve wanted Pandoc to do something they critically need and have had no luck for years, no one has been able to help and learning Haskell is a leap too far. In my case I do try to contribute back to Pandoc where I can (bug reports, templates and one simple haskell patch), and the benefits I gain from Pandoc far outweigh this time invested.
Indeed commercial tools like Scrivener comes with ample warnings about what it can and cannot do. So all software comes with limitations. But it is the case that when something doesn’t work right in Bookends or Scrivener, I bug Jon or Keith, and they will fix it or tell me of an alternative route to do what I want. There really is something to be said about a well supported program from a dedicated and passionate developer & support team.
Zotero is likely a brilliant tool for some, and perhaps I am over harsh, but my personal take is that it is mostly just “good enough”; the original novelty that it was deeply intertwined into your browser doesn’t make up for the other weaknesses. That is a personal opinion of someone who uses it for one project alone. But especially at the moment, Zotero’s is going to go through a painful transition. And that results in friction for its users.
A workflow with a solid reference manager the minimises friction can hugely enhance the writing flow for writers who cite. So you have to know that Zotero may work for you but obviously doesn’t work for numerous others (hence the regular Zotero threads here) and solutions that worked in V4 are broken in V5 and will likely be broken again in V6.
At one point I download anything that looked useful for my research for future reference as opposed to trying to find and download that interesting looking title I remember seeing last year. If it is useless then delete.
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