Endnote help!!?? Please help!

[edoviak]

I'm also writing my dissertation. I will never let any office product (be it MS Word or OOo Writer) touch a single word of it. Word processors are nice for typing letters, but they should NEVER be used for academic work.

You may have noticed that a large share of the working papers have a certain "look." They all have the same fonts, formatting, etc. Those papers were written with LaTeX. If you're serious about a career in academia, then get serious about LaTeX and BibTeX.

The question is how to begin. It looks daunting, but it's not. The best way to think about LaTeX is to think back and remember that cool little "Reveal Codes" feature that WordPerfect used to have. In a certain sense, typing in LaTeX is a little like typing those codes along with the text of your dissertation.

Sounds daunting, but it isn't.

Here's why it isn't so hard: First, you're not going to type half the code. Second, you're going to copy and paste half of the code into your paper. Third, you're going to use Kile to insert the other half of the code for you. So don't let the code scare you !!!

But why would you even want to play with all that code? Here's one very good reason: Suppose you use a word processor to write your paper and the journal doesn't accept your paper. (I hope that doesn't happen to you, but suppose it does). You'll want to revise the paper and submit it to another journal. Before you can resubmit it however you'll have to spend weeks revising all of that formatting.

Now let's consider the same scenario, but this time suppose that you had used LaTeX. You change one line of code and the entire paper is automatically reformatted.

Here's another very good reason to use LaTeX instead of a word processor: When you type in a Word Processor, you always see what the printed version will look like and you start thinking too much about what it looks like and you stop thinking about what it says. ("Oh, let me just shorten that sentence so it doesn't run on to the next line." or "Oh, I'll put an extra hard return in there, so that the next section begins on a new page.")

In LaTeX, all you see is text, so you stop worrying about formatting and you start thinking about your paper.

But isn't it hard to type all of that code? No! Because you're not going to type the code! Here's what you're going to do: First, you're going to install Kile (a LaTeX front-end) on your Ubuntu system. Second, you're going to install Pybliographer (a BibTeX database) on your Ubuntu system.

Then you're going to log into MS Windows, you're going to export all of your EndNote references to BibTeX format, return to Ubuntu and import them with Pybliographer. Then delete MS Windows, EndNote and Wine from your computer and never ever touch that corrosive software ever again. They're like cocaine: "You can check out any time you like but you can never leave." Time to enter rehab!

I included some sample LaTeX code for you to follow (see below), but Kile's drop down menus are the best source of commands. With Kile, you can jump into LaTeX in five minutes or less.

Pybliographer is just database and it's really easy to use. The only thing you have to remember is that authors names must be entered this way: "Last, First" (without the quotes of course).

Then just insert a \bibliography{} command at the end of your document (see example below) and you're on your way to producing professional papers.

The first time you compile your TeX document, you'll get some error messages saying that it can't find the list of references. Don't worry about it. Just compile your TeX document again and view the pretty results.

Here are some websites with useful information:

citations -- http://users.aims.ac.za/~mackay/

document styles -- http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/L...Lay.php#docsty

tables -- http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~dwilkins/La...er/Tables.html

Hope this helps,
- Eric



\documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{abbrvnat}

\pdfpagewidth 8.5in
\pdfpageheight 11in

\setlength\topmargin{0in}
\setlength\headheight{0in}
\setlength\headsep{0in}
\setlength\textheight{9.0in}
\setlength\textwidth{7.0in}
\setlength\oddsidemargin{0in}
\setlength\evensidemargin{0in}
\setlength\parindent{0.25in}
\setlength\parskip{0.25in}

%opening
\title{Type the Name of Your Paper Here}
\author{Name Here}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\begin{abstract}

Type your abstract here.

\end{abstract}

Type an introduction here.

\section{Name of a Section}

Type a section here.

Assume that output, $Y$, is produced using capital, $K$, and labor, $L$, according to the simple Cobb-Douglas production function:
\begin{equation}
Y=K^{\alpha}L^{1-{\alpha}}.
\end{equation}

Then you need to type in a table of results:

\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{|l|ccc|}
\hline
\multicolumn{4}{|c|}{ \textbf{Table 1} } \\
\multicolumn{4}{|c|}{ percentage change in output } \\
\hline
& \textbf{ $ \gamma_{L} = 0.05 $ } & \textbf{ $ \gamma_{L} = 0.10 $ } & \textbf{ $ \gamma_{L} = 0.15 $ }\\
\hline
\textbf{ $ \alpha = 0.10 $ } & $ 0.110 $ & $ 0.120 $ & $ 0.132 $ \\
\textbf{ $ \alpha = 0.30 $ } & $ 0.319 $ & $ 0.339 $ & $ 0.362 $ \\
\textbf{ $ \alpha = 0.70 $ } & $ 0.714 $ & $ 0.728 $ & $ 0.742 $ \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}


\section{Conclusion}

Conclude here and don't worry about anything else because the next command will take care of all of your references for you.

\bibliography{/home/yourname/folder/dissertation_references.bib}

\end{document}

[hugmenot]

But why would you even want to play with all that code? Here's one very good reason: Suppose you use a word processor to write your paper and the journal doesn't accept your paper. (I hope that doesn't happen to you, but suppose it does). You'll want to revise the paper and submit it to another journal. Before you can resubmit it however you'll have to spend weeks revising all of that formatting.

Yeah, but unless he is in physics, mathematics and computer science there is a miniscule chance the journal will accept his manuscript as a Latex source. The big majority has workflows based on manuscripts being .doc, with pica sized text, double spacing, figures in the end and separately; and no frills.

[tweedledee]

I'm also writing my dissertation. I will never let any office product (be it MS Word or OOo Writer) touch a single word of it. Word processors are nice for typing letters, but they should NEVER be used for academic work.

You may have noticed that a large share of the working papers have a certain "look." They all have the same fonts, formatting, etc. Those papers were written with LaTeX. If you're serious about a career in academia, then get serious about LaTeX and BibTeX.

Echoing hugmenot, you are massively overgeneralizing. In my field (chemistry and biochemistry), LaTex is absolutely NOT allowed as a journal submission format. Not a single major journal allows it. Moreover, the researchers in the field are so welded to MS Office that even using OpenOffice to exchange files is frequently a painful experience. Is this rational? Not really. But it is the reality.

That said, having nearly lost my MS thesis several times to Word, I've found OO to be much better at handling my PhD dissertation. And while I'd love to use LaTex for it, and journal papers, the truth is that OO is not as bad as you make it out to be; as I stated earlier, a lot of this is really a matter of what you are used to.

[hugmenot]

Sure, that another point, collaboration with colleages. When you give your stuff to a collegue for review and particularly redacting (as in editing). You better give it to them in PDF format if they are not familiar with LaTeX. But then they cannot edit. Even worse, there’s no clean and newbie friendly way to track changes and merge revisions.

So in scientific reality, unless you work alone all the time you will stumble on hindrances mainly because your peers don’t use it.
If you work alone it’s perfect, but in a less geeky surround where collaboration is essential, it’s not practical.

[troy7777]

...In my field (chemistry and biochemistry), LaTex is absolutely NOT allowed as a journal submission format. Not a single major journal allows it....

ACS accepts TeX/LaTeX submission, according to this: http://pubs.acs.org/paragonplus/submission/tex.html

[edoviak]

Echoing hugmenot, you are massively overgeneralizing. In my field (chemistry and biochemistry), LaTex is absolutely NOT allowed as a journal submission format.

Perhaps you're right. I put the blinders on and forgot that their are fields other than economics.

That said, having nearly lost my MS thesis several times to Word, I've found OO to be much better at handling my PhD dissertation. And while I'd love to use LaTex for it, and journal papers, the truth is that OO is not as bad as you make it out to be; as I stated earlier, a lot of this is really a matter of what you are used to.

In economics, we type a lot of equations and MS Equation Editor simply does not cut the mustard. Not only is it difficult to format, but it frequently crashes and turns every equation that you painstakingly typed into an uneditable image. In fact, our university specifically forbids us from using MS Equation Editor in our dissertations.

I do like OpenOffice's Formula Editor and the textual way of creating an equation, but I never got into it because I started typing LaTeX with Kile at about the same time.

Even worse, there’s no clean and newbie friendly way to track changes and merge revisions.

Sounds good to me!!! I hate "Track Changes." I prefer that someone types up their comments. That forces them to comment on the content of the paper and forget about trivial stuff like punctuation.

(Punctuation and grammar is important, but odds are I'll revise the sentence at a later point anyway, so it's a waste of time to point out grammar and punctuation mistakes in an early- or intermediate-stage draft).

- Eric

[tweedledee]

ACS accepts TeX/LaTeX submission, according to this: http://pubs.acs.org/paragonplus/submission/tex.html

That's an interesting heads up, and a relatively new (positive!) development, apparently as part of their submission system upgrade. But I also noted all the caveats they put on the submission in that format.

[tweedledee]

Sounds good to me!!! I hate "Track Changes." I prefer that someone types up their comments. That forces them to comment on the content of the paper and forget about trivial stuff like punctuation.

While I don't actually disagree with your sentiment (as I suspect most do, as local collaborators almost always print the document and make changes by hand), most people I expect to be working with remotely prefer the "track changes" approach; or barring that, at least the ability to type the comments directly into the document (which you can't do with a PDF in any efficient manner). Again, much of these choices boil down not to preference or rational choices, but simply what other people expect. Windows users in particular tend to have a very low tolerance for anything outside their normal experience.