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EndNote Library Management

Hints for Using EndNote for APA Format

APA is a very complex style; too complex for EndNote to format all references properly. This help sheet will help you identify and make any manual changes to your manuscript or project. [Note: Page numbers in this handout refer to the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, which is available on reserve at the Carlson and Mulford libraries.]

In this guide:

Getting the Updated Version of the APA 6th Style

Visit Endnote Output Styles on the endnote.com web site and follow the installation instructions.

Editing In-text References

With APA format, in‐text citations do not always follow the form (lastname, year). Sometimes the author name or year need to be excluded, or page numbers added when using direct quotes. To edit specific citations, open your paper in Microsoft Word, right-click on the in‐text citation that you would like to edit, and select Edit Citation(s) from the EndNote menu/ribbon and make the desired changes:

 

 

Excluding the author from the in-text citation: If you mention the author(s) by name in the sentence, you may not need to include the name in the in‐text citation (see Ch. 8.11, pp.263, 266 of the APA 7th Manual for an example). To exclude the author from an in‐text citation, click on Exclude author.

Excluding the year from the in-text citation: If you mention the year in the sentence, you may exclude the year from subsequent in‐text narrative citations. Include the year in parenthetical citations (see APA 7th manual, 8.16, p.265). To exclude the year, select the option for Exclude Year.

EndNote can handle most cases of subsequent citations, such as when a citation is cited a second, third, etc. time in the paper. What EndNote cannot do correctly is format a subsequent citation in the same paragraph. For a subsequent citation in the same paragraph, exclude the year from that citation.

Adding prefixes or suffixes: The prefix field is for information to include before the citation; the suffix field is used for information after the citation. Use the prefix field in situations like see also or i.e..

Including page numbers for a direct quote: When citing ideas verbatim from another source, the citation to the original source includes page numbers (p. 270, APA 7th Manual). If you need to cite just the page numbers (see example, first quotation on page 171) , insert the citation in the Word document, go to Edit & Manage Citation(s) in the Word EndNote toolbar, select the citation to format, and under the Formatting drop-down choose Exclude Author & Year.

Abbreviated corporate authors (“Groups as authors”) for subsequent citations: If you cite a work by a corporate author (like an organization, task force, committee, etc.) more than one time, APA format provides for an abbreviated group name for citations after the first one (p. 268 of the APA 7th Manual). In Word, add the abbreviation to the first citation; for subsequent citations, exclude the author and enter the abbreviation in the prefix field.


Editing the Reference List

Eight or more authors:

In APA 7, up to 20 authors may be listed in the reference list. More than 20 requires that the first six author be listed, followed by three ellipsis points (periods), then the last author (see p. 317 of the APA 7th Manual, example citation 4). The APA 7th style in EndNote has developed an upgrade to handle this. EndNote X9 will download  and install with the updated version. Users of older versions of EndNote can download the updated version from Endnote Output Styles on the endnote.com web site.

Citation CleanUp:

Even when using EndNote to format your references, you still need to review your references for completeness and accuracy. If the format is incorrect, it needs to be fixed in EndNote before you submit your manuscript to a publisher or submit your project or thesis to your advisor. Here are some things to check:

Author names: Are they correctly spelled and formatted? Are the in‐text citations correctly formatted?

Corporate author names: Are they displaying correctly? If EndNote is treating the corporate name as an individual author by using a last name/initials format, make sure to add a comma at the end of the name in author field in the EndNote library record. Multi-level corporate names may show like this:

National Library of Medicine, National Institute of Health may show as National Library of Medicine, N. I. o. H.

Adding a second comma after Medicine in this case will cause the name to show properly.

 

Anonymous works that don’t list Anonymous as the author or that don’t have a corporate author: In APA format, anonymous works use the title of the article in the reference list, and a short title in the in‐text citation. Open the reference in EndNote and enter the desired short title in the Short Title field.

Titles: Are they capitalized correctly? (Sentence case for article, book, book chapter, web page titles; title case for journal titles.) If not, make the tweaks in EndNote.

Journal titles: Are they correct? For APA format, use the full title – no abbreviation, no subtitle, no “The” as the first word. This is probably the number one field that needs to be edited after importing references from a database. Be careful with some journal titles, the official full title looks like an abbreviation. For example, the full title for JAMA is JAMA, unless you are citing an article published before 1960, and then it is Journal of the American Medical Association. If you have any questions about the correct title of a journal, contact the Libraries. If you will be importing references from PubMed, see the section below.

DOI (Digital Object Identifier): Make sure that only the DOI is in the DOI field, as some database imports put additional information in the DOI field. (The DOI will look like this example: 10.1016/j.jocn.2008.08.009).

In a pinch, you can make the above corrections in Word, but those changes are NOT transferred to EndNote, so the next time you format the document or if you cite the citation in another document, the error will still be there. The best thing to do is to make all corrections in EndNote.

Here’s another edit that will need to be made in the final version of the paper, after the link between EndNote and the document has been broken:

Alphabetization of reference list. Check the alphabetization of your final reference list against the APA Manual (pp. 181‐183). EndNote cannot alphabetize according to APA format. After the link with EndNote is broken, move references in the reference list around as needed.


Using PubMed?

[For information on importing the list into the journal list and on tweaking the style, see the EndNote Import/Export table and Working with Styles in EndNote]

Journal title list

When you create a new library (preferably before you enter/import any references), import the most current list of the medical title abbreviations into your journal list. This allows EndNote to replace the PubMed abbreviated titles with the full title as required by APA. You will also need to tweak the APA style: Journal names >> Use full journal name.


General Reminders

Remember that EndNote can only do what it’s told to do with what it has…that’s why it is so important to get reference information into EndNote in the correct way (check the Help feature within Endnote or the EndNote Getting Started guide for more information).

Don’t forget to back up your EndNote library regularly. In EndNote, under the File menu, use Save a Copy…

When you remove the field codes from your finished document (this breaks the link between EndNote and the document), make sure that you remove the codes from a copy of your document, NOT the master copy. (If you are using EndNote with Word 2007, the command to break the link is Convert Citations and Bibliography >> Convert to Plain Text. In Word 2007, this has been reported to cause problems with some formatting, like complex page numbering.)


Need Additional Help?

Contact Reference Services at one of the University Libraries: http://libguides.utoledo.edu/askalibrarian

Setting APA Style to show the full Journal title

To set up APA to provide the full journal title (if available from the journal title list):

Go to Edit -- Output Styles and select Edit "APA 7th" (or latest version) from the list:

 

 

From the top of the menu select Journal Names and then "Use full journal name":

 

Title case can also be selected for footnotes or bibliography in the same manner as above by choosing Title Capitalization from the menu under Footnotes or Bibliography