There are only few postings about BIBUS on the Internet. It motivates me to share my valuable experience when playing around with Bibus. What I want to tell you is that I have successfully converted my Endnote collection to BIBUS ( over 800 references). Here is my experience doing a little experiment on importing Endnote format to BIBUS.
I spent quite a lot of my time playing with Bibus, a free bibliography manager. Bibus is a good replacement for Endnote, a proprietary software run on windows machine. ( I was a big fan of Endnote). Bibus appearance is very similar to that of Endnote, so this is a good news for those used to use Endnote. Another good thing is that Bibus interface is user-friendly, and of course, it comes at no cost at all.
I would recommend it to everyone who looking for bibliography manager with limited budget. The following are some other reasons why I recommend it to everyone
- Instalation is as simple as clicking your mouse.
- You can chose database ( Sqlite and MySQL). Sqlite is its default so you might want to chose it as an experiment. You can change the database anytime you want!
- It has the capability of searching articles you needed and import it to its database so that you can easily cite them using your favorite word processor.
- Bibus work with open office, Lyx, Both are free software, and MS Word.
- Bibus run on both Linux and Windows
- And many other reasons you might find when you use it
Now we come to the hard point. For those who convert from Endnote, there are some little problems with importing from other format (including Endnote). However, importing database from other format is not impossible. As I search on the internet, there are a lot of people complaining about importing huge amount of references. I have found a workaround that might help. Here are summary of what I did with bibus
- Importing as many as 831 references in endnote XML format with unsatisfactory result because it dropped the Journal Name for the journal article. This is my interest because the vast majority of my references are journal article.
- Converting endnote XML to MODS and converting MODS to RIS using bibutils software, then importing the RIS format to Bibus was disappointing because it dropped a huge amount of my references
Converting endnote XML to MODS and converting MODS to BIBTEX using bibutils software, then importing the BIBTEX format to Bibus was frustrating because my laptop didn’t even respond. I noticed the process used > 90 % of my CPU.
At this point, people tended to give up Bibus and started looking other alternative such as Zotero. Zotero is also a great one. However, I didn’t give up playing arround with Bibus.
Later I tried these steps
- I went back to Endnote and exported only journal article (instead of importing all references) as many as 650 to Endnote XML file, then converted the file to MODS then to RIS format. these steps were done with bibutils. Why would I do that?. Well, previous experience taught me not to import Endnote XML file directly because it dropped the journal name).
Next Import the RIS file to Bibus. BINGGO... it worked perfectly. Nothing dropped, everything is fine.
I repeat the last step with other types of reference ( book, section in a book, website, Magazine, etc ). At this time, I didn’t convert it to MODS and to RIS because the type of the references don’t have journal name). Just import the files ( Endnote XML) to Bibus and it will be fine. Now I have all of my references imported just like the way I want.
Conclusion.
- Except for importing huge amount of references, BIBUS does its job correctly. So if you don’t need to import anything and wish to do a fresh kick off, then BIBUS is recommended
-If you have a long list of references already, then you might want to export journal article separately, convert it to RIS, and Import RIS to BIBUS, you should be fine. The rest type of reference can be imported directly from Endnote XML to BIBUS without any other problems !
- Type of Article still matter when importing to Bibus, so be advised and be wise.
Note.
I use Linux Ubuntu, Open Office Writer, Sqlite, Bibus 1.5.1. I believe this guide will work on windows machine too. Please let me know !
I spent quite a lot of my time playing with Bibus, a free bibliography manager. Bibus is a good replacement for Endnote, a proprietary software run on windows machine. ( I was a big fan of Endnote). Bibus appearance is very similar to that of Endnote, so this is a good news for those used to use Endnote. Another good thing is that Bibus interface is user-friendly, and of course, it comes at no cost at all.
I would recommend it to everyone who looking for bibliography manager with limited budget. The following are some other reasons why I recommend it to everyone
- Instalation is as simple as clicking your mouse.
- You can chose database ( Sqlite and MySQL). Sqlite is its default so you might want to chose it as an experiment. You can change the database anytime you want!
- It has the capability of searching articles you needed and import it to its database so that you can easily cite them using your favorite word processor.
- Bibus work with open office, Lyx, Both are free software, and MS Word.
- Bibus run on both Linux and Windows
- And many other reasons you might find when you use it
Now we come to the hard point. For those who convert from Endnote, there are some little problems with importing from other format (including Endnote). However, importing database from other format is not impossible. As I search on the internet, there are a lot of people complaining about importing huge amount of references. I have found a workaround that might help. Here are summary of what I did with bibus
- Importing as many as 831 references in endnote XML format with unsatisfactory result because it dropped the Journal Name for the journal article. This is my interest because the vast majority of my references are journal article.
- Converting endnote XML to MODS and converting MODS to RIS using bibutils software, then importing the RIS format to Bibus was disappointing because it dropped a huge amount of my references
Converting endnote XML to MODS and converting MODS to BIBTEX using bibutils software, then importing the BIBTEX format to Bibus was frustrating because my laptop didn’t even respond. I noticed the process used > 90 % of my CPU.
At this point, people tended to give up Bibus and started looking other alternative such as Zotero. Zotero is also a great one. However, I didn’t give up playing arround with Bibus.
Later I tried these steps
- I went back to Endnote and exported only journal article (instead of importing all references) as many as 650 to Endnote XML file, then converted the file to MODS then to RIS format. these steps were done with bibutils. Why would I do that?. Well, previous experience taught me not to import Endnote XML file directly because it dropped the journal name).
Next Import the RIS file to Bibus. BINGGO... it worked perfectly. Nothing dropped, everything is fine.
I repeat the last step with other types of reference ( book, section in a book, website, Magazine, etc ). At this time, I didn’t convert it to MODS and to RIS because the type of the references don’t have journal name). Just import the files ( Endnote XML) to Bibus and it will be fine. Now I have all of my references imported just like the way I want.
Conclusion.
- Except for importing huge amount of references, BIBUS does its job correctly. So if you don’t need to import anything and wish to do a fresh kick off, then BIBUS is recommended
-If you have a long list of references already, then you might want to export journal article separately, convert it to RIS, and Import RIS to BIBUS, you should be fine. The rest type of reference can be imported directly from Endnote XML to BIBUS without any other problems !
- Type of Article still matter when importing to Bibus, so be advised and be wise.
Note.
I use Linux Ubuntu, Open Office Writer, Sqlite, Bibus 1.5.1. I believe this guide will work on windows machine too. Please let me know !
