Collaborate With Other Researchers
There are a number of issues to consider when two or more researchers are collaborating to write a single publication, using EndNote.
EndNote is a single user application, and multiple researchers attempting to use a single shared library on a network will find that the library or individual records may be locked by other users.
Different versions of EndNote
Recent versions of EndNote are not compatible with version 7 or earlier. When collaborating, all users should be using EndNote 8 or a later version. Versions from EndNote 8 upwards are mutually compatible. The Windows and Macintosh versions of EndNote are also compatible with each other.
Different versions of Word
You can directly share your Word 2000, Word XP, Word 2003, Word 2007, or Word 2010 files, together with formatted EndNote citations with colleagues.
Each formatted citation includes field codes which contain the full reference information (also referred to as the Travelling Library). If you want to convert your document for use with a previous version of Word or a different word processor, you should unformat citations before saving in the different file format. You may be able to reformat the citations and reference list, as long as the corresponding EndNote library (or libraries) are available.
Note: Cite While You Write codes are directly compatible between Word 2000, XP, 2003, 2007 and 2010.
Converting to plain text (with in-text citations and references)
In order to send a final, formatted document to a publisher, or someone who does not use EndNote, you may first want to remove the Field Codes from a copy of your document in order to save the formatted citations and bibliography as plain text.
To learn how to remove field codes from your document, please see pages 174-178 of the EndNote Help PDF.
Options for Collaboration
The University of Queensland Library has a webpage on Using EndNote for Collaboration which describes the collaborative use of EndNote.This includes situations where:
- Researchers are at the same institution and using a single EndNote library, located on local network
- Researchers are using a single EndNote library, which is not on a network
- Researchers are each using their own, separate EndNote library
The Travelling Library
Each formatted citation in your Word document is saved with field codes that embed information about that reference in the document. The document contains a Travelling Library of the cited references.
The first time a citation is formatted, EndNote looks in the open library and finds the corresponding reference. Because reference data is kept with each formatted citation, you can collaborate with other authors on a paper without each author having the same EndNote library. The reference data saved with each citation includes all fields except Notes, Abstract, and Figure.
Note: Do not unformat your document if you do not have the original references in your EndNote library. Unlike formatted citations, unformatted citations require that you have the corresponding EndNote libraries open in order to format references.
