Reference manager tutorial

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Reference manager tutorial

• Welcome to the biosciences society reference
  manager (RM) tutorial. In 10 easy steps you can
  have formatted references in a variety of journal
  styles for any essay you write. Never again spend
  hours toiling to get your references consistent
  and correct, do it all at the touch of a button!

1. Open RM, it is in your Novell-delivered
Applications ? Databases that starts when you
log in. Open reference manager
a. Click this button to make a new database. Call
it something memorable and save it somewhere.
b. Now youll see a very boring screen like this
it is an empty database which you will fill with
all the references you find.
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Finding references in Pubmed
2. Pubmed and science direct run services
supporting programs like RM. They will send you
an electronic reference for any paper you can
find in a format that will be understood by RM.
www.pubmed.com www.sciencedirect.com For
instance, if I go to pubmed and type alzheimer
presenilin amyloid plaque then I get 94
references. After looking at the list I see that
the first 5 are kind of interesting and I want to
put them in my shiny new database
a. Type your query/search in here
b. Tick the boxes next to the interesting
references.
c. RM requires these references in an electronic
format it can understand NLM MEDLINE. To make
the selected references appear in medline format
click here and select from the drop down list
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Info from pubmed ? Computer
4. The MEDLINE format screen should look like
this It has all the relevant information for
producing a reference, like page numbers, dates,
authors funny names etc etc
a. To get this to your computer select file
from the send to drop down menu.
b. Save the file, pubmed-result.txt to your
computer eg on the desktop. You can continually
overwrite the same file (as long as you import
the reference before you do!).
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Importing pubmed text file
5. Now you need to get the information from the
text file into your new database. RM has a
special import function designed specifically for
this.
a. Click on the File tab at the top of the RM
screen (once youve set up your database).
b. Then click the import text file option
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Setting up RM
6. The first time you use RM you need to
configure where it looks for text files and what
format to look for. You will only have to do this
once, every time subsequently this information
will be entered automatically.
a. First select the filter. Click on the
symbol next to the filter drop down menu.
b. Find the NLM-MEDLINE.cap file and open it.
(There are 3 .cap files with NLM-MEDLINE in their
names, choose the just NLM-MEDLINE one)
c. Second, select where you saved your
pubmed-result.txt file. Again from the symbol
next to the drop down menu.
d. Find where you saved the pubmed-result.txt
file.
e. Once youve set up your filters etc click on
the Import button. Hopefully you should see an
import successful screen.
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Your database
7. If the import was successful you now have 5
new highly exciting references in your shiny new
database!
a. This window pane tells you all the information
from each reference. Science direct also gives
you URLs for pages that will give you access to
the full text PDFs. From this window you can
modify/add to the reference.
b. This pane shows you a summary of all the
references in the whole database. Changing your
selection changes the info in the top pane
(obviously). From this menu you can
delete/edit/move references etc
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Inserting a citation, A
8. Now comes the fun part! Adding citations to
your funky essay-to-be. With RM open, open Word
2002 from the Novell client. If RM is opened
first then youll find you have a new tool in the
Tools drop down menu.
a. If RM is opened first then youll find you
have a new tool in the Tools drop down menu.
b. Once you have found a statement in your text
that requires backup. Click Insert Citation
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Inserting a citation, B
9. The correct citation now needs to be chosen. A
helpful tip tutors dont like lots of 2004/5
citations for reviews, it shows you havent done
the primary reading and are accepting one source
as gospel. Its easy to find the original work
that they cite in the review and then cite that
(although you should make sure its kosher,
sometimes papers are retracted!).
a. You can search amongst the references in your
database by typing here. I typed alzheimer
which considering the original pubmed search
parameters it isnt that surprising we get all 5
hits. You can select one or more or all of your
references and RM will insert them all.
b. This pane shows you all the information from
the file. Only the relevant bits of this will be
inserted into your essay according to the style
you choose for your bibliography.
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Setting up bibliography
10. You will probably not like the format that
your references appear as default. You can change
all your references in one smooth movement.
a. Select Generate Bibliography from the
Reference Manager 10 drop down menu in Tools.
b. I like the Journal of Neuroscience format
because it displays the principle authors names
and the publishing date. I think this is better
then Natures superscript numbering style because
you dont have to check the reference list the
whole time to understand the citations.
c. Finally, if you delete a citation from the
text the bibliography is accordingly modified. If
you move a citation around (and have reference
order in the order citied in the text) then the
bibliography is accordingly modified. Have fun,
Referrers!