RefWorks wish list

OK, RefWorks is a nice tool, very nice in some ways, but ideal? No, not yet. Over the weeks and months I have collected things that could make RefWorks better. That wish list is below. Some wishes are very general, benefitting lots of users, others are targeted to special purposes. By commenting on this post you can add your wishes. RefWorks is reading this blog as well, so perhaps they'll pick some of these points up for a new release.

1. Better customizability of the list view (user fields, link to local file, option to add colums to the list view irrespective of output styles)
2. Stop the overload of confirmation messages ("successfully moved 1 item to antoher folder" etc.). It slows the workflow.
3. Fully shared folders, allowing for multiple editors of a folder and allowing folders to be part of several databases.
4. Find and replace functionality (for any string, across the database). This allows easy correction.
5. Create an output style that lists all information in the records (however incomplete that might be for some records)
6. Easier linking to local files (on hardrives or portable drives)
7. Faster operation by use of modern web technologies such as Ajax etc, making it possible to change pages without reloading them. This would be nice for instance for showing/hiding abstracts (more or less as implemented in Scopus).
8. Easier editing of page numbers in citations
9. ....[your ideas]

Ten times more space for your attachments

Up to now, your account had a maximum of 10 MB for uploading attachments. As of today this has been raised to 100 MB. The maximum size for a single attachment is 5 MB. This enlarged attachment upload space is still not very suitable for uploading full text PDFs of all articles in your database if you are a big user. However it is nice for those documents that were hard to find or for which you have access only during a limited period and of course also for attaching tables or graphs. For large numbers of PDF-files it still seems better to either rely on the UBUlink service to full text access or to add links to local files on your own hardrive.

It is possible to request for an upgrade to 200 MB. To do so, send a message to j.bosman [at] uu.nl.

Linking to local files

As the space to upload files to your RefWorks account is limited, people sometimes ask how to link to local files. Especially, the hardcore Endnote users have grown accustomed to collecting large numbers of article PDF's on their hard drives. With RefWorks being a fully webbased service and with RefWorks supporting the UBUlink, linking to local files might seem odd or unneccessary. On the other hand if you work at the same location most of the time links to local files are safe, fast and easy to use. And in some cases local files may be the only thing you have (e.g. your own unpublished papers).

Anyway, it is good to know that linking to local files is possible in RefWorks. But bear in mind that in many cases, because of safety measures built into Windows it is not possible to open files on your C:\ drive from a webpage. So you have to put your files somewhere else. You can use other drives or partitions (H:\ or U:\ or whatever letter the partition has been assigned). If your harddrive only has one partition, it may not be possible to link to local files from RefWorks.

The link you add to your records consists of a standard prefix, the path and the filename, like this:

file://H:\MYFILES\ARTICLES\Einstein-1905.pdf

The file:// bit is the standard prefix and necassary for the link to work.

Further I think this works easiest if you:

1) Use a user field (which can be renamed to "local file" or something like that) for storing the link to your file. Of course you can also use the link-field or URL-field, but this way you prevent your local links from showing up in bibliographic output with some output styles. The link to the file then shows in full view.

2) Use a global edit on all references to fill that user field with a standerd path to the files (e.g. file:\\/H:MYFILES/ARTICLES) on a 'non-C' harddrive/partition. That way you only have to copy/paste the filename and append it to the field. Of course for new records, you still have to add file:\\/H:MYFILES/LITERATURE part manually.

3) Avid RefWorks users might want to force RefWorks to show the links in the reference lists within your Refworks folder, to avoid having to open the full record view. To do this you can adapt an output style solely for this purpose by adding that user field and use the customize page to make that style one that you can use for presentation within Refworks.

This might all seem complicated, but for some it is certainly worth the effort.