Wither Endnote?
One obvious question is, what does the new citation and bibliographic support in Word 2007 mean for Endnote? Short answer: the final end to a slow death that began when ISI bought the company that originally produced it.
Somewhat longer explanation:
By standarding the details of citation and bibliographic coding in Open XML, Endnote loses any technical advantages behind lock-in. In theory, any application should now be able to serve as a database for Word. So the playing field is leveled; ISI will now have to compete on the merits of their product. Will see if they use the new support in Word 2007 in their latest version (out this month), or if for some reason they simply continue to implement their legacy non-standard approach.
The problem for them, I think, is that reference management is increasingly moving to the web. My library catalog can now automatically load a bibliographic record into a RefWorks account, which I can then access from any web browser. This is really useful to me, and it’s a trend that will only accelerate over time.
Endnote users often trumpet the ability to search catalogs from within the app, but I really don’t think a) this is that hard to do (there’s open source code to do it from Index Data), and b) it’s not where the future it. As a user, I want to load reference data from my web browser. Also, Microsoft has the Research Pane tool, which should be able to be configured to plug into any number of library web services.
So why would a user spend $100/year to stay up-to-date with a limited, buggy product that is bound to the desktop?
Of course, it seems ISI recognizes the need for a response, and this press release states it is coming in the form of a web-based version of Endnote. I won’t be using it, instead sticking with RefWorks for the short-term, and hoping to contribute to better open source solutions long-term. Ruby on Rails + AJAX + a few smart designers and coders really ought to constitute a killer alternative.
