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EndNote

Customise and manage your EndNote library

EndNote offers various features that allow you to customise your library for specific needs. These includes:

  • organising references into groups
  • tagging references
  • attaching files to references
  • using EndNote Click to locate PDFs of journal articles
  • removing duplicate references.

Group references

You can organise references in your EndNote library by creating groups. There are three different types of groups you can create: custom groups, smart groups and group sets.

Custom groups

A custom group allows you to manually add references. This can be useful for organising references by key topics, methods, thesis chapters, etc.  

For further information check out EndNote: Adding References to a Custom Group.

Smart groups

A smart group is populated with references automatically based on a search you specify when creating the smart group. References cannot be manually added or removed from a smart group, so it is important to ensure that your search terms are comprehensive and specific.  

Check the video, In action: EndNote 20 (Windows) smart groups (1:30) for a walkthrough on how to create a new smart group.

Group sets

A group set allows you to organise your groups by creating sub-groups.  

Check the video, In action: EndNote 20 (Windows) group sets (0:32) for a walkthrough on how to create a new group.


Tags 

Organise your references using descriptive tags. Use the Tags menu option, or ‘My Tags’ to colour code your tags.


Attach files

Files such as PDFs, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and images can be attached to references in an EndNote library. It is possible to attach multiple files to a single reference.

For further information check out EndNote: Attaching PDF files in EndNote desktop library.


EndNote Click

EndNote Click is a browser plug-in which attempts to locate PDFs of journal articles. 

For more information and instructions on EndNote Click check out EndNote Click: What is EndNote Click and how do I use it?


Remove duplicates (deduplication)

There can be many reasons for why duplicate references can appear in your EndNote library. To help ensure that your EndNote library is manageable, you should regularly search for and delete duplicate references.

Deduplication is essential during the screening stage of a systematic review, it's the process of identifying and removing duplicate references from your search results. 

EndNote offers a deduplication function to find and remove duplicate references. However, the deduplication function may not remove all duplicate references and manual checks of search results should still be carried out.

Check out this video, In action: EndNote 20 (Windows) Find Duplicates (1:30) for a walkthrough on how the Find Duplicates process in EndNote 20 works.