I’ve recently finished a master’s thesis. Like my undergraduate thesis, this was composed using Microsoft Word with EndNote providing citation management. This will be the last time I go in this direction. Without further ado, a list of my ideal solutions (demands, really), as I look for substitutes.

WORD PROCESSOR:

1. The citation software and the word processor must work together consistently. This may seem simple, but I had several periods when inserting a cite-while-you-write note in Word would cause Word to crash. This is, for obvious reasons, very bad. Upgrading to a new version of EndNote solved this once. Copy-pasting the entire document into a new Word doc worked another time. No one should have to solve this problem.
2. The word processor must give reasonable GUI controls over formatting. Word goes overboard on its GUI, but colleagues who say LaTeX is my solution overestimate my patience in looking at unformatted text. Perhaps I have missed some good solutions, but the only way I have found to make LaTeX work is to edit everything in a raw text editor. This is not how I prefer to see my words while writing. As an Apple user, I tried Pages, but this leads to another problem:
3. The word processor must have auto-save! Sure, we should all hit save frequently while working. The problem is that we don’t. Microsoft knows this; even WordPress saves automatically. Apple’s Pages is out of contention for my use, despite attractive type handling and intuitive formatting, because I would some day compose a few hundred excellent words and then lose them forever.
4. The workflow must handle non-Latin scripts. Some people have told me they eventually got it to work, but LaTeX simply does not like to handle Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. I haven’t tried other languages, but several attempts to set things up for mixed English-Chinese text on LaTeX ended in failure. For word processors where switching script is less trouble, there is still the problem of line spacing. If I set a paragraph at 12 pt type with 14 pt line height, this should not be overridden by the insertion of a Chinese phrase. Microsoft and others fail on this.

CITATION MANAGEMENT:

1. The citation software and the word processor must work together consistently. I know I’m repeating myself, but there are a few more notes on this compatibility front. First, now writing two weeks after starting this post, I have had another discouraging experience. Frustrated by EndNote and Word, I decided to use Mendeley and OpenOffice while writing a draft working paper that should be out some time this fall. In at least once case, inserting a citation caused OpenOffice to crash. I lost about 20 minutes worth of writing, which I was able to do better the second time. But this relationship needs to be stable!
2. The citation software should stand alone. This point is targeted at Zotero, the excellent Firefox add-on that takes and organizes snapshots of websites, and in some cases can do a decent job of grabbing citation data from academic article depositories. Zotero, however, is so far inextricably tied to Firefox, a memory hog that gives a less than ideal interface for these kinds of jobs. Luckily, Mendeley will ably import from Zotero.
3. The citation software should be in the cloud, but not only in the cloud. And this point targets RefWorks, a cloud-based package that many universities subscribe to. Problems with cloud-only solutions: Working while out of wi-fi range; using data after you leave a subscribing institution; lack of native GUI and dependence on keeping more browser windows open. I love the cloud. My e-mail and research are backed up there, but they also live on my laptop. Citations should obey the same rules.
4. Non-Latin script support. This echoes point four above. An additional concern: an ideal citation management system would happily deal with multiple citation styles. Say I am citing English sources alongside Chinese sources. The most effective convention might be to follow an English format for English and a Chinese format for Chinese. It would be nice if that would work.
5. File management is a must. Zotero and Mendeley are the primary examples here, but even EndNote has some infrastructure for keeping files at hand. These days, any research project means the accumulation of dozens of PDFs—of articles, books, maps, reports—and other file types including audio and video. My fantasy system would handle this all with grace.

Have I asked too much? I don’t think so. Mendeley is almost there. OpenOffice is a good package, if a little unstable. Zotero is working on a stand-alone application. But to make this work, we’re going to have to move these things forward a step.

The other possibility is that I’m missing some important solutions. Any thoughts out there?

Tags: academia, Apple Pages, citation management, CJK, EndNote, LaTeX, Mendeley, Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, software, word processing, workflow

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 11:06 pm and is filed under notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.