My Citation Management System: Read

(this is part 2 about this) The EndNote database called Read is the heart
of my citation management system. Whenever I write a paper, this is the
database that the citations are drawn out of. Conceptually, it's a list of
all the papers I've read. That keeps me honest a little bit, since I can't
cite a paper I haven't read. By read of course I mean "read": at a bare
minimum,have read the abstract, a few paragraphs of the intro, and at
least skimmed the discussion. But I *must* do this much for papers I cite:
I've discovered all too often that you can't rely on how papers are cited
by others, you have to actually make sure it says what they think it says.
It's not as big a hassle to add every paper you read to the database as
you might think - especially compared to how long it takes to read 'em.
Even if you don't have EndNote and its direct connection to ISI Web of
Science, you can find the citation online somehow, with some combination
of google, google scholar, and your university library's homepage or the
publisher's homepage, within a few mouseclicks and keystrokes. Usually a
search by the first 4 or 5 words of the title is fastest. The advantage of
this is not only the higher likelihood (but far from guarantee) that it
will be entered accurately, but also that it will bring with it metadata
such as keywords and abstract, which are then readable and searchable on
your local machine. And its all ready any time you want to write a paper.
Besides being a huge pool of citations (which is sortable and searchable),
my Read database is also a kind of diary of my reading, that tells me
approximately when I read something. The most straightforward way would be
just using the serial numbers that endnote assigns when you add a record
to a database. But I wanted to do a bit better, for those times when I
want to insert something between previously entered records, since the
record ids are not changeable (this might be where I lose you, but it
works for me anyway). I added a new field to the citation record (more
specifically, redefined Custom 1) called Order Read. Then I made my own
serial numbering. I got this together in about january of 05, so
everything read before then is 1-100. January 05 is 101 and on, February
is 201 and on, etc. That lets me slot in ones I've forgotten where they
belong (I have not yet read 100 articles in a single month). I put a
comment in the Notes field of the first one of the month with the month
and year, so I can remember that eg the 1200s are October 2007. I made
Order Read one of the fields displayed in the box, and sorted by it.
Presto, a chronological list of my reading, and a hugely valuable pool of
citations to instantly draw upon for any future papers.

Next:

My Citation Management System: To Read Someday/Maybe