Review of Pro-Cite 3 for Windows

Abstract

What has been once published is spoken of as known and it is too often forgotten that rediscovery in the library may be a more difficult and uncertain process than the first discovery in the laboratory". (Lord Rayleigh, 1884, quoted by Bartlett, 1967. 1 This statement may be applied to reference filing systems as wellshow much time have you spent looking for a lost reference or a lost reprint? Over 50 reference management or bibliography formatting software packages are available on the market to cope with just this problem. 2 ProCite version 3 for Windows is the newest in the line of the ProCite bibliographic management packages. Previous DOS/Windows and Macintosh versions of ProCite have been extensively reviewed and/or compared to similar packages. [3][4][5][6][7][8] ProCite along with its companion software BiblioLink-II has changed ownership a few times over the years and is now owned by Research Information Systems, a subsidiary of the Institute for Scientific Information. It survives as a flexible package on all platforms for collecting and indexing literature search results or drawers of reprints.Applying various checklists for the evaluation of such packages [9][10][11] shows that ProCite ranks as a versatile, powerful package for fulfilling the dream of reference organization and the integration of citations into the preparation of manuscripts. Cibbarelli's Surveys gave ProCite version 2 an overall rank of 7.2 out of a possible 10. 12 I found that many of the criticisms of the package noted in this review have been remedied in the new Windows version.ProCite provides fill-in-the-blank workforms (templates) for 30 different types of referencessfrom letters to movies, and if you have a need for a customized blank workform, it can be easily created by copying and modifying a similar one. The workforms are based on ANSI Standard Z39.29-1977, allowing for both print and nonprint entries. An authority list is automatically created during entry of the author's name(s), source (e.g., journal title), and keyword fields. You can maintain these authority lists separately for each database or have one "external" list that can be used while in any of the databases. Once you have entered the data, it is in the list, and you never have to type it in again. The package allows for a virtually unlimited number of records with each containing up to 32 000 characters in each of the 45 variable-length fields. It is unfortunate that the fields for language and medium are not saved as authority lists, although global editing of marked records can be used to fill these fields in one step. The shortcut keystrokes work nicely once you have tired of using the mouse.It is far easier to import the results of a database searchsfor example, from Chemical Abstracts or Medline or Biological Abstractssthan to type all the citations in one at a time, a labor-intensive task. ProCite's companion package called BiblioLink-II facilitates this process, converting saved, downloaded references into the ProCite readable format. This package mak...

ProCite v. 3.4 for Windows and Its NetCite and Biblio-Link Components

“…A thorough review of ProCite 3 for Windows appeared in a recent issue of this journal . Therefore, the present review will concentrate on ProCite's Internet capabilities and its data import facility via Biblio-Links.…”