ProCite 5: Quick Tips

ProCite is a personal bibliographic management or bibliographic formatting software program. This type of software is used to:

• Create and easily maintain your own searchable database of bibliographic references
• Centralize and organize your research information
• Automatically insert citations into word processed documents or manuscripts
• Generate formatted references and bibliographies in a variety of output styles

Some Things to Know about ProCite:

Producer: ISI ResearchSoft
800 Jones Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
(800) 554-3049
Email: info@researchsoft.com
Technical Support (Macintosh products): mac-procite@isiresearchsoft.com or
Technical Support (Windows products) pc-procite@isiresearchsoft.com
Web site: http://www.procite.com/

• Number of databases/libraries: unlimited
• Number of records in a library: unlimited
• Number of data fields in a record: 45
• Number of workforms: 39 predefined
• Number of output styles: 600+
• Word processor support: Microsoft Word for Windows 7, 97, 2000, and Corel WordPerfect for Windows 7, 8, 9; Microsoft Word 6 and 98 for the Macintosh
• Compatible operating systems: Windows 95/98/2000 and Windows NT4; A PowerPC/Macintosh, Apple MacOS System 7.5 or later

Key Terms and Concepts

Workforms – templates for the resources described in a ProCite database (e.g. journals, books, newspapers, conference proceedings). If necessary, default workforms can be modified or new workforms can be created

Z39.50 – a national standard which defines a protocol for connecting to remote information resources directly from ProCite. Once the connection is made, ProCite offers its own retrieval feature to search these resources. Some of the external files, such as PubMed, are freely available. Others require accounts with information providers (e.g. OVID)

Configuration files – files that describe the structure of data in online databases. These files allow for a successful match between the information format of downloaded references from various service providers (such as OCLC) and the data fields in a ProCite record.

Output styles – files used to control the appearance of references in a bibliography. The style names are based on particular journal publications (e.g. Nature) or a format defined by a publisher (e.g. American Psychological Association)

Field content lists - lists of words or phrases that act as field indexes for your ProCite database. These lists are used for searching, data entry and creating bibliographies. There are four default field content lists (Authors, Journals, Titles and Keywords) which are automatically created and updated based on the content of your database.

Journal title lists -- pre-configured lists of journal names with their corresponding abbreviations. These lists are included with the ProCite program and they are not database specific. Journal title lists are used to standardize data entry. They also provide abbreviations in the journal title field which are required for some output styles.

Cite While You Write -- commands automatically added to your word processor to allow for quick additions of cited references and the generation of formatted bibliographies

Creating a New ProCIte Database

Choose New from the File menu. Choose a meaningful file name for your ProCite database. The file will have an extension of .pdt (e.g arthritis.pdt)

Navigating a ProCite Database

The ProCite display screen shows each reference on a single line. Quick sorting of the references is available by clicking on a column header.

Double click on a specific reference to view the detailed data record.

Customizing ProCite

To add fields to the default record display (Author, Title and Date), choose Configure Record List from the View menu. You can also change the default display font and set preferences for the preview pane.

Columns on the display screen can be resized by clicking on the vertical lines separating the columns and dragging your cursor to the left or right.

Building a ProCite Database

There are a number of ways to add references to your ProCite database. The most important choices are:

Searching a remote electronic file, downloading the citations in the proper format, and importing them into ProCite.

Searching web-based resources directly from the ProCite program, and copying the results into your database. Some examples of resources freely accessible from ProCite are PubMed and library catalogs From the Tools menu choose PubMed Search or Internet Search. If you choose Internet Search, click on the word Hosts to select a specific destination.

Manually entering new references. Select Database/New Record. It is important to choose the appropriate Workform for proper formatting of citations and bibliographies.

Copying references from another ProCite database (use the Database/Copy Marked Records command) or from an EndNote library or Reference Manager database (use the Tools/Convert File command).

Retrieving References from a ProCite Database

To locate specific references or groups of references, use ProCite's internal searching feature (click on the Search tab at the bottom of the display screen).

ProCite's searching screen provides a variety of options:

General searching of all records in the database or selected marked records

Searching with field identifiers (click on Insert Field)

Using boolean and relational operators such as AND, OR, NOT, GREATER THAN, LESS THAN and special values (=EMPTY; =NOT EMPTY). Click on Operators to see the list of choices

Saving a search strategy for future use (Click on Expressions)

Using a wildcard -- the asterisk (*) can be used for one of more characters at the beginning or end of a word. It can be used for full-text searching or with the equal (=) operator

Working with Citations and Bibliographies in your Word Processed Document

Once you have created a ProCite database, you can automatically insert citations into the main text of your document or create endnotes or footnotes using the Cite While You Write feature. A ProCite toolbar is added to your word processor's menu when the program is installed.

Insert Citation—Allows you to enter identifying text to locate, match, and cite one or more references in your database.

Insert Marked References—Inserts the references marked in the active Reference List tab in ProCIte as unformatted citations.

Recall Last Search—Brings up your search criteria from the last several searches performed.

Scan Document—Scans the document for identifying text you entered (surrounded by delimiters). Converts the text to unformatted citations.

Generate Bibliography—Converts the unformatted citations to formatted citations. Generates a bibliography at the bottom of your manuscript according to the output style you selected.

Find Previous Unlinked Citation—Allows you to locate unlinked citations scanning backward through the manuscript.

Find Next Unlinked Citation— Lets you locate unlinked citations scanning forward through the manuscript.

Unformat Citations—Converts formatted citations back to unformatted citations.

Revert to Original Text—Converts formatted or unformatted citations back to the original identifying text you entered.

Recover Citations--Scans and re-links citations when converting Word 6 or 7 documents to Word 97.

Help—Displays online help for Cite While You Write and ProCite.