Comments on: Please stop using Endnote. Switch to Zotero

By: jccalhoun

jccalhoun — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:53:35 +0000

I think that anything that gives someone a reason not to use Endnote is a good thing. I’ve never seen such a horrible piece of software. Some colleagues keep suggesting that I use Endnote to keep track of my citations and so every year or two I give it a try. Even though they seem to update it every year it is still one of the worst programs I’ve ever used. It is unintuitive, offers no real error messages so you can’t tell if it is working or not, and its method of inputting citations by hand is frustrating and confusing.

I’ve only tried Zotero once shortly after it came out but hopefully it will survive this lawsuit and last long after Endnote is long forgotten…

By: Allison

Allison — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:02:15 +0000

A statement issued by Thomson Reuters can be read here:
http://www.thomsonreuters.com/content/press_room/sci/297063

By: Souvik

Souvik — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:56:28 +0000

Have switched to Zotero after reading about it on The Ludologist, a few months ago. All the references and the full bibliography of my thesis have been compiled using Zotero … and there is no going back. Open-source rules, period.

Even before this new update, it was still possible to transfer endnote data to Zotero via a two step method that involved exporting from Endnote to Ref Manager and thence to Zotero. Can’t remember exactly how but I found the info online and all my endnote data were in Zotero before I knew it.

Am quite ignorant about the complexities of the EULA but my best wishes remain with Zotero and its users.

By: Rick

Rick — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:23:42 +0000

Close. It is over the site license agreement between GMU and TR. TR alleges that GMU decompiled EndNote (probably not true) to make a converter that transforms their undocumented .ENS style files to the open CSL (not true–Zotero uses .ENS as-is), that they distributed .ENS and/or CSLs converted from .ENS (not true), and that they used the trademark “EndNote” to describe this feature (true, but O.K. with trademark law (may or may not be O.K. with the site license)).

By: Jesper

Jesper — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:09:37 +0000

As far as I understand it concerns the EULA stating that you may not reverse engineer the program or its file format.

By: Jose Zagal

Jose Zagal — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:03:26 +0000

I wonder what they’re claiming exactly in the lawsuit. I would imagine some form of DMCA violation? (ie, circumventing some protection over EndNote’s proprietary format?)