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RE: Author Names and Journal abbreviations
| RE: Author Names and Journal abbreviations |
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Author: Linda
Posted: Fri 1/21/2005 12:08 PM
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Brian from Leeds has questions on author names and journal
abbreviations.
On journal abbreviations--it doesn't matter form the names take in your
database, only what they do in your output styles.
F5, Term Manager / Periodicals is your periodicals "dictionary"--it
tells RefMan what the full name of the journal is, what the official
abbreviation is, and up to two local variants. The program will then use
the full version or the abbreviation (with or without periods) as the
output style directs.
If you are, as I surmise, in the field of psychology, then you probably
want to populate your periodical dictionary with the "medical" version
provided by RefMan ("humanities" is possible, "chemical" is unlikely to
be helpful in your case).
The option to have these names pre-installed by the program comes up
when you create a new database--it's under "Advanced Options".
As you've already got a database going, make sure you have the database
open in Read-Write Exclusive format. Then do F5, and under the Term
Manager drop-down menu, choose "Copy Periodicals".
You can, if you like, go into F5/Periodicals, click on each abbrev.
version, and do a global edit to change it to its full name. However,
two caveats. One, this only changes what is already in your database,
not future additions. Second, you can't simply delete the abbreviation
from your database, even after changing them all, or the software won't
recognize duplicates correctly when importing. (It's the Periodicals
Dictionary that tells it British Journal of Psychiatry and Br J
Psychiatry are the same journal.) It also won't be able to do output
styles correctly that call for abbrev. j. titles.
(Some of us, I gather, prefer to have abbrev j titles in the actual
database, because otherwise the twenty-character sort limit creates a
mishmash after "American Journal of" if you happen to be sorting by
journal name. If your library shelves journals alphabetically, you may
be doing that a lot! I wish there were a global "preferences" tab that
would tell the software to automatically change all database journal
names to their abbreviation sans period, but so far, no dice.)
I have gone into my Periodicals synonyms (actually, I'm still doing it)
and added as my first "user" synonym the official abbreviation without
periods--solves a lot of import problems. And for the second user
synonym, I use "&" instead of "and" in the full journal name. If there
is no ampersand issue, I'll add whatever common error I see in people
hand-entering or on import--the full name ending with a period is a
common problem for us, for some reason. (I wish there were more than
four slots, but so be it.)
That more than you needed to know?
I'm glad the list is back!
Karyn Popham
Reference Wrangler
Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research
School of Public Health
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
713-500-9665
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