Talk:Reference management software

message: A citation creator is different from reference management software (though both functions may be found together). If the articles are merged, it would have to be under a new parent name, but I don't know what that is. Unless someone can find such a name in wide use, the two articles should be separate. Dhaluza 11:05, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think the  generic is Personal bibliographic software , which can cover a lot of ground. As I understand the general  difference  PBS is intended to maintain a personal database and anything that does less, usually just converting things for a single use,  that is a citation creator.DGG 05:01, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The citation creators are mostly web based, so that's hardly personal software, which (to me at least) implies a licensed and installed client side app. Dhaluza 08:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Some of the personal bibliographic software is also--there is for example a web based version of endnote which Thomson gives away as a bonus with purchase of WebofScience, but does not sell separately. It interoperates with the client-based version. Other  manufacturers are probably going to introduce similar pairings to compete with it. DGG 03:22, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

text: good idea. 
But PBS can cover groupware, just as PC software like google spreadsheets can be used both ways, just as desktop searching programs can index servers as well as local machines. The technology is merging, the server based programs are developing companion stand alone products, the stand alone products like Endnote are developing server based versions, and people may not always even know where the data and the programs reside. Ask a non-techie where their email is. DGG 04:00, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed merge

message: Is it worth mentioning that the reference management nowadays involves also mentioning how to find the publication online or in a bookstore/library by providing DOI, PMID, JSTOR, ISBN or some other unique number (instead of author, year, institution, article/book/medium name)? Also, more and more reference management software can scrape all the information needed by providing only this unique identifier. Kazkaskazkasako (talk) 18:45, 5 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Digital object identifier|DOI]], [[JSTOR]], [[PMID]], [[ISBN]] and other unique (digital) identifiers 

message: The two categories "Retail" and and "Web-based" don't represent the complete complement of the category "Open-source." For example, Mendeley is not technically "Retail" since it is Gratis, but it is proprietary.  The category "Retail" could be changed to "Proprietary," so that these categories are complementary, and the web-based category could be left as it is, because presumably online systems could be either open-source or proprietary.  --Yoderj (talk) 16:02, 30 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal: Change subcategory "Retail" to "Proprietary" or something 

message: In my humble opinion, the relevance of some sections below the lead is dubious. "Reference management software among legal scholars" summarizes just one case study about the use of just three programs by student and scholars on just one law school. "Reference management in Wikipedia" is a bit self-centred and I wonder if the Wikimedia tools for citations can really be classified as a reference management application, as citations can only be 'managed' in the edit screen of individual articles, not in a separate database. The section "Citation creators" is more useful, although it seems that is a different kind, more limited tool than a real reference management application, even if the citations can be stored for later use doesn't this belong in a separate article? Bever (talk) 21:35, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: This may change, when wiki-community starts adding all cited articles and journals from Wikipedia to Wikidata (d:Help:Sources#Scientific, newspaper or magazine article). Kazkaskazkasako (talk) 09:54, 19 April 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irrelevant sections 

message: This all deal with one topic and should all be in one WP article. "Reference Manager" is the least comprehensive and surely should be merged into the Comparison article. Wish I were competent to do it. Bellagio99 (talk) 22:37, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why in 2 articles: Reference Manager, Comparison of reference managers? 

message: What is a reference management software? Is BibTeX part of it? BibTeX is not mentioned in the article.
One can build a .bib file with all references in the BibTeX format, one parameter is note, one can write something that can or can not be displayed in the printed bibliography.
The article mention several ways to print bibliographic entries, but that is part of the document generation module. In LaTeX/BibTeX, one put all references in a .bib file, one use some name to identify each entry, one use some consistent naming convention, to include the reference in the text is is sufficient to write \cite{entry-id}, compiling with latex name.tex && bibtex name && latex name.tex. one gets a document with the selected cite style, for example see [1] or see Auth99, at the end where the bibliography is printed each reference is printed in the chosen format.
The article mention some of them, but that is part of the way in which the document is produced.
To me a reference management software is what is needed to maintain the references file.
It should have a way to search the data from other bibliographic data bases, for example I want to cite an algorithm in the first volume of Knuth's Art of computer programming, but I don't remember all the details, like publisher name, year of publication, and the correct title/subtitle. 
searching Knuth art of programming should bring all the related entries, I can add them all or just the vols 1 and 3. I could add a note to tell what is each about, for example "this volume contains information about the tree balancing algorithm that I used, and more about b-trees, it also has an introduction to coroutines in MIX", I need to know the keywords to search books about data structures, analysis of algorithms, and get the entries with other books about this subject with my comments about what i liked or disliked about it.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2806:106E:B:611:8D9C:A504:E992:22F (talk) 03:58, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Per WP:NOTFORUM, talk pages are not for general discussion, but in case it leads to any clarifying edits of this article, I will say this: The BibTeX article says that BibTeX  reference management software, and there are GUI applications such as BibDesk that also use the BibTeX file format to store the bibliographic data. Back in the early days of BibTeX, people typically edited their .bib file by hand (emacs text editor has bibtex-mode specifically for this purpose) and then easily searched it with grep or other command-line tools, but now it is likely that most people use a GUI application such as BibDesk or Zotero with the Better BibTeX plug-in or other any app listed in . You can find another explanation of reference management software in the following chapter, which I added to the article's list of further reading:  Biogeographist (talk) 19:07, 15 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  It is not clear what is this about