EndNote

EndNote is a reference management software that can be used on Windows and Macintosh computers. It allows you to create a collection of bibliographic records and files to use for your research and writing.

Remove author initials from in-text citations

For some referencing styles, author initials are supposed to appear in in-text citations when you have multiple authors with the same family name. Most times the problem is multiple variations of a single author name. For example, if one author’s name is entered as "Williams, S J" in one reference in your EndNote library, as Williams, Susan Jennifer in a second reference, and as "Williams, Susan J" in a third reference, EndNote will treat them as three different authors. You will start to see variations such as S Williams and S J Williams in your in-text citations. It is not an EndNote error. It is a data entry error.

You can end up with multiple versions of a single author's name because each database has different ways of dealing with author names in its records. Authors may also use different versions of their name for different publications. You will need to clean up your records to fix the issue.

There are 3 parts to this process:

  1. Tidy up your Author Terms List to remove unwanted versions of the name.
  2. Tidy up your records to make sure than names are consistently formatted.
  3. If the first 2 steps don’t work, edit the citation style template in the Output Style as a last resort.

Part 1: Tidy up your Author Terms

The first step is to edit your Author Terms List to remove unwanted versions of the name, e.g. you would delete Williams, S J and Williams, Susan J. Williams, Susan Jennifer is the most complete version of the name, so that is the one to keep. If you later add a paper by Williams, Susan Jemima to you library, having full names for both authors will enable EndNote to distinguish between Susan Jennifer Williams and Susan Jemima Williams

  1. Open EndNote
  2. Open the Library menu and select Define Term Lists. (In X9 it was the Tools menu).
  3. Select Authors in the Terms Lists window, then click on the Terms tab to open the list of author names you’ve entered.
  4. Scroll through the list and delete any versions of the name that you don’t need.
    NOTE: Names deleted from this list will not be deleted from the records of the references they appear in.
    To delete a name, highlight it in the list and click Delete Term. The name will be removed. The list will automatically refresh and it will return you to the top.
  5. When you’ve finished editing your Author Terms List, click Close.

 

Part 2: Tidy up your records

Now that your Author Terms List is clean. The individual records need to be edited to ensure that each entry for the same author is consistently formatted. If you have the Reference Panel open on the right or at the bottom, it will speed this process up. The deleted versions of author names will appear in red in the EndNote record. This makes them easy to spot for editing.

  1. Open the All References group. Working one at a time, locate each record that contains a name that needs editing. Highlight the reference. This will open the record in the Reference panel on the right. (Double click the reference if it doesn't open.)
  2. Click Edit to open the editing pane. You will see that the author name is now red.
  3. Delete the red name and start retyping it. The autocomplete function will fill the rest in.
  4. Save the change to the record and move to the next one that needs editing.
  5. When you have finished editing all of the records that you need to, open your Word document.
  6. Go to the EndNote toolbar.
  7. Click on Update Citations and Bibliography in the Bibliography section of the EndNote tool bar. The citations should now be free of author initials.

 

Part 3: Edit the output style to remove initials

If tidying up all of the author names in your Author Terms List and individual records doesn't fix this issue, and you do not want any initials in the citations in your document, you can edit the output style to turn off this feature.

In EndNote:
  1. Open your EndNote library.
  2. Select the style you wish to edit, e.g. harvard-cqu.
    • You can select the referencing style from the Output Styles submenu of the tools menu.
    • OR you can select it in the output Styles box of the right-hand panel where you can see the summary of a record and edit it.
  3. Open the Tools menu and go down to Output Styles to open the submenu.
  4. Choose Edit “style name”, e.g. Edit “harvard-cqu”, from the submenu. This will open the style edit window.
  5. Select Ambiguous Citations, under Citations, in the left-hand menu.
  6. Uncheck the box that reads Include author initials or full name in citation.
  7. Select Author Name, under Citations, in the left-hand menu. Uncheck the box that reads Use initials only for primary authors with the same name.
  8. To save changes go to File. Select Save As and give the style a new name e.g. harvard-cqu_edited
  9. Close the edit window.

 

In Word:
  1. Go to the EndNote toolbar and select the newly edited style in the Style box.
  2. Then click the EndNote Update Citations and Bibliography command to reformat the references in your document using the amended output style.

How can I get superscript numbers for in-text citations?

You can modify the citation templates of any style to use superscript numbers for in-text citations. If you are already using a numbered style, you only need to modify the Citation template. For other styles, edit both the Citation template and the Bibliography layout. Choose the style you need for your reference list. For these examples, I’ve used harvard-cqu.

 

Edit the citation template (Windows)

  1. Open your EndNote library.
  2. Select the style you wish to edit, e.g. harvard-cqu.
    • You can select the referencing style from the Output Styles submenu of the tools menu.
    • OR you can select it in the output Styles box of the right-hand panel where you can see the summary of a record and edit it.
  3. Open the Tools menu and go down to Output Styles to open the submenu.
  4. Choose Edit “style name”, e.g. Edit “harvard-cqu”, from the submenu. This will open the style edit window.
  5. Go to Templates under Citations in the left-hand menu of the harvard-cqu Style window.
  6. Delete the existing text from the field for Citation on the right.
  7. Click Insert Field and choose Bibliographic Number from the menu.
  8. Highlight Bibliographic Number and click the A1 superscript icon to select superscript as the format. The text will appear as superscript in that field once you’ve done this.
  9. If you want to be able to cite an author so you have, for example, Smith3 found that …, you’ll need to repeat steps 6 to 8 for the Citation Author (Year) field as well.
  10. Next, to get matching numbers in your bibliography, go to the Layout section under Bibliography.
  11. Insert your cursor in the Start each reference with box.
  12. Open the Insert Field menu above on the right, and choose Bibliography Number.
  13. Insert your cursor after Bibliography Number in the Start each reference with box and add any punctuation your style requires.
  14. Spacing – you will need to put at least one space between the number and the reference:
    • Use the spacebar to add a single space, or to add a specific number of spaces.
    • Choose Tab from the Insert field menu to insert a Tab space.
  15. Save the amendments to the style and name your new version of the style, e.g. harvard-cqu_superscript. It will be saved to the Styles folder in your documents on your computer.

 

Edit the citation template (Mac)

  1. Open your EndNote library.
  2. Select the style you wish to edit, e.g. harvard-cqu.
    • You can select the referencing style from the Output Styles submenu of the tools menu.
    • OR you can select it in the output Styles box of the right-hand panel where you can see the summary of a record and edit it.
  3. Open the Tools menu and go down to Output Styles to open the submenu.
  4. Choose Edit “style name”, e.g. Edit “harvard-cqu”, from the submenu. This will open the style edit window.
  5. Click on Citations in the left hand menu of the Style window. Delete the existing text from Citation field on the right.
  6. Click Insert Field and choose Bibliographic Number from the menu.
  7. Highlight the words Bibliographic Number in that field
  8. Open the Edit menu from the toolbar. Go to Font and choose Superscript.
  9. Next, to get matching numbers in your bibliography, go to the Layout section under Bibliography.
  10. Insert your cursor in the Start each reference with box.
  11. Open the Insert Field menu above on the right, and choose Bibliography Number.
  12. Insert your cursor after Bibliography Number in the Start each reference with box and add any punctuation your style requires.
  13. Spacing – you will need to put at least one space between the number and the reference:
    • Use the spacebar to add a single space, or to add a specific number of spaces.
    • Choose Tab from the Insert field menu to insert a Tab space.
  14. Save the amendments to the style and name your new version of the style, e.g. harvard-cqu_superscript. It will be saved to the Styles folder in your documents on your computer.

 

Use the modified style

  • In EndNote: Choose Select Another Style in the Output Style box and select your new style from the list.
  • In Word: Go to the EndNote toolbar and select the style from drop down menu in Styles box. Use the Select another style option if the style is not already in the list.

Journal title abbreviations for your reference list

EndNote creates Terms lists, thesauri, of author names, keywords and journal titles from what you enter into these fields in your references. These lists can be edited.

Some referencing styles require the abbreviated journal title instead of the full journal title. EndNote’s Journals Term lists helps with this. The full journal title still goes into the Journal Title field of the record for the journal article. When you insert your citation, EndNote finds the abbreviation in the term list and uses it in the reference when the referencing style requires it.

To show abbreviated journal titles in your reference list / bibliography, you will need to replace the existing Journals list with one of the supplied journal abbreviation lists.

  1. Open EndNote.
  2. Open the Library menu, go to Open Term Lists, and select Journals Term List. (In EndNote X9 this was under the Tools menu.)
  3. The Term list window will open at the Terms tab. Highlight all of the terms in the list.
  4. Click Delete Term to delete all existing terms from your list
  5. Click on the Lists tab and highlight the Journals list.
  6. Click Import List.
  7. If the Terms lists folder isn’t open in the File window, you will need to find it. Navigate to the EndNote Terms Lists folder on your computer. It will be something like C:\Program files\EndNote\Terms Lists. (The program folder for EndNote will include the version number.)
  8. Select the discipline area list you want to use.
  9. Click Open to import the journal names and abbreviations from the file into the Journals term list

For further information open Help in your EndNote library and read the chapters about term lists.

My document has 2 reference lists

When you convert a copy of your document to plain text for submission or review, it keeps the Word formatting, but removes the active links between your EndNote library and the in-text citations and bibliography in your document. EndNote is longer be able to recognise the citations it originally inserted for you when the document was actively linked to it. If you insert new citations into this plain text version, EndNote will start creating a new reference list at the very end of that document. This is how you can end up with 2 reference lists.

This issue is most often a result of working in the plain text version of a document you sent to your supervisor for review.

When you receive the feedback from your supervisor, you'll need to have 2 documents open.

  • Open the plain text version to view the comments.
  • Have your original EndNote formatted document open as well, and make your changes to it.

This way you will only have one reference list and you will avoid any issues with the Review comments formatting in Word clashing with the EndNote formatting.

It will also help to name your files clearly and consistently to avoid this kind of confusion. For example, you could put ForReview on the end of the file name.

When I insert a figure from EndNote it doesn't appear where I put it.

You have 2 placement options for Figures inserted from your EndNote library.

  • A list of figures at the end of the document
  • Figures inserted near their in-text Figure citation.

The referencing style you have chosen may have been set up to create a List of Figures at the end of your document. If you want your figures to appear in text, but your diagram or picture is nowhere to be seen near the in-text citation, you will need to edit the style. A figure citation looks like (Figure 1) for example.

  1. Open your EndNote library.
  2. Select the style you wish to edit, e.g. harvard-cqu.
    • You can select the referencing style from the Output Styles submenu of the tools menu.
    • OR you can select it in the output Styles box of the right-hand panel where you can see the summary of a record and edit it.
  3. Open the Tools menu and go down to Output Styles to open the submenu.
  4. Choose Edit “style name”, e.g. Edit “harvard-cqu”, from the submenu. This will open the style edit window.
  5. Go to the Figures & Tables section at the bottom of the style edit window and select Figures.
  6. Tick the radio button for Insert figures in-text near the reference to the figure, under Placement.
  7. Tick the radio button for whichever placement you prefer for your Captions.
  8. Go to Separation & Punctuation to set preferences for spacing around Figures, and punctuation for Captions.
  9. Save the amendments to the style and name your new version of the style, e.g. harvard-cqu_edited. It will be saved to the Styles folder in your documents.
  10. To use the style, choose Select Another Style in the Bibliographic Output Style box and select your new style from the list.

EndNote thinks my equations are in-text citations

What you see in your Word document is different from what EndNote sees. EndNote is only reading its own formatting code. For example, when you see (Martin, 2018), EndNote is seeing {Martin, 2018 #17}. This is the issue. It's very easy to fix.

  1. Open Word
  2. Go to the EndNote tab
  3. Open the Configure Bibliography window.
    • Windows: Click on the arrow in the bottom right corner of the Bibliography section of the EndNote toolbar in Word.
    • Mac: Click on the down arrow beside Bibliography in the EndNote toolbar.
  4. You'll notice that the Temporary citation delimiters boxes on the Format Bibliography tab are set to single curly brackets. Add a second curly bracket to each box so that your delimiters are now {{ and }}.
  5. Click OK to set this preference. EndNote should now ignore your equations when it's dealing with your in-text citations.