Converting SmartCite Citations into EndNote Friendly Format

If you are working on a document and need to share it with a colleague who uses EndNote, while you can have your collaborator use a trial license to SmartCite (allows 30-days of access), you can also convert your SmartCite-formatted to a format that can be imported into EndNote.

While SmartCite has a conversion tool for EndNote, EndNote does not offer the same cross-compatibility (with Papers or any other tool). While this workflow is more manual than we would like, it provides a relatively simple way to allow an Endnote user to work with a document created in SmartCite.

Getting Started:

IMPORTANT: It is essential for any references that have been added to the document via SmartCite also exist within the EndNote library for the connection to be made. If you are not sure if this is the case, you should export a list of all references in the existing document as a BIB file and import it to EndNote prior to doing the conversion. BIB is a file format that can be used to import Papers references into EndNote. If you don’t want to transfer your entire Papers library, there’s an easy way you can export just the references used in a given Word document created in SmartCite. 

Exporting Reference List from Papers to EndNote:

1. Use the “List of active references” tool in SmartCite under the REFERENCES tab. 
2. Click on that and give your new list a name and using Save To dropdown, choose what library you would like to save the list to (personal/shared).
   
3. Next, find the library in app.papersapp.com and select all items in that list (use CTRL + A on Windows or Command + A on Mac to select all items in the list. )
4. Right-click the selected items to reveal the secondary menu. Choose EXPORT > BIB. 
   
5. That will download the BIB file to your desktop to it can be shared and added to Endnote to ensure all references exist in both tools. Your collaborator will be able to add the BIB file to their EndNote library easily.

SmartCite Steps:

With your document with SmartCite open, go to OPTIONS panel. Use this link to download the Papers to Endnote style to your desktop. Download the file using the button in the top right of the screen. 

Go to “Manage Custom Bibliography Styles” and upload the CSL file you just downloaded. You only need to do this step once. 

Before you update the document, we always recommend saving a copy, so you have the original to compare the new formatting with. 

Once uploaded, you can go to the BIBLIOGRAPHY tab and see the new style at the top. Click on it and go to “Update Bibliography” at the bottom.

Save your newly formatted document. 

EndNote Steps: 

Go to the Endnote toolbar in Word and select the “Update Citations and Bibliography” feature.  It looks like this:   

Endnote will now iterate through every inline citation in your document and attempt to match each one with a reference in your Endnote library.  You will see a prompt appear for each reference, where Endnote will show you the matched record.  Review each match and click “Insert” to confirm.  Once yo