Looking for help from anyone experienced using Endnote software.

What is the best way to practically use the software? All the tutorials and online help that I’ve seen focus solely on the features and menus and not how to best incorporate the software into your research work-flow (i.e., I’m looking for “best practices” not what each menu item does).

Do I create a separate reference for each and every fact I want to reference in my paper? (i.e., multiple references with duplicate data for each work cited, using the notes field for the unique info pertaining to that fact)

Or do I create one reference per work cited? In which case, how does one keep track of the specific facts and notes?

Or is Endnote simply not designed to be a database for research results and only intended for formatting the final product (which would seriously limit its utility and be a major drawback for such an expensive product).

I’ve been using Citation so far, which has two types of records, one for cited works and another for notes (which are associated with a cited work). Citation is easy and intuitive, but it’s a bit buggy and becomes unwieldy for larger projects. I’m trying to figure out if Endnote is a better solution for me before I plunk down $100 to buy it.

Hi Dave,

I have used Endnote a moderate amount, although my last use was several years ago. 

I would recommend against creating multiple references per cited paper.  It will cause confusion in the end, and you could wind up with multiple entries for the same published paper in the bibliography of your work.

Keeping track of what facts go with what papers is essentially the user’s job, but IIRC there is a field in the database entry for each paper for the abstract (which you can add to manually) and I think another field for user notes.  I would use these to create machine-searchable reminders about what relevant facts from each paper you wish to cite.

That’s what I was afraid of. What I really like about Citation is that it doubles as a research database. You can add quotes from cited sources into the database and then later insert the quotes and citation into the document with a press of a single button. Too bad it’s buggy and not all that scalable.

Any suggestions for a robust, but not excessively complex database program for keeping track of research notes? MS Access is just too user unfriendly. Although if someone has an Access template for research notes, that would work. (I probably should check to see if MS has included one with the software.)