Journal titles obtained from different external databases (via importing or direct export) will be inconsistent. For example, in Ovid MEDLINE the journal title is the full journal title with a period at the end (New England Journal of Medicine.) and PubMed captures only the journal abbreviation (Ann Nutr Metab). These inconsistencies can cause problems in your bibliographies and reference lists.

The Journals Term List and the Journals Abbreviation List can correct this problem. But first a word of caution…examine what is already in the Journals Term List. If there are unique journal titles (in other words, citations that did not come from MEDLINE) you might want to save those journal titles.

The process involves several steps. First you will need to delete all the journal titles in your current Journals Term List. Then, you will import a new list (available on this site). The third step is to correct the MEDLINE (Ovid) import filter so that the period is eliminated during the direct export process. The last step is to make a change to your term list preferences so that it will not automatically update every time you import or directly export journal citations into your library. (Beware…there could be times that you DO want EndNote to automatically update your journals term list)

Remove any journal titles that are already in the Journals Term List and replace them with the Medline-Ovid.txt file.

1. From the Tools menu, choose Open Term Lists and highlight Journals Term List.
2. Highlight one Journal Title. Using ctrl + a, select all the journal titles in the list.
3. Using ctrl + d, delete all the journal titles in the list.
4. Click on the Lists tab.
5. Click on Import List
6. Find the Medical-Ovid.txt file and open it.
7. The Journals Term List will be populated with almost 9.000 journal titles.

Correct the MEDLINE (Ovid) import filter to eliminate the period.

1. From the Edit menu, choose Import Filters and highlight Open Filter Manager.
2. Click on the Information Provider column header to sort by information provider. Scroll down until you come to Ovid. Highlight the MEDLINE (Ovid) filter and click on Edit.
3. From the scan column on the left, click on Field Editing.
4. In the Field Editing for drop-down, select Secondary Title.
5. In the Enter Text to be omitted box, type a period (.).
6. Click on the Add button.
7. Close the window and save.

Change your Term List preferences to eliminate automatic updating.

1. From the Edit menu, choose Preferences.
2. From the scan column on the left, click on Term Lists.
3. Uncheck Update lists when importing or pasting references
4. Uncheck Update lists during data entry.

Remove any holdover periods in your journal title field.

1. From the Edit menu, choose Change Text…
2. Make sure that Journal/Secondary Title is showing in the In: drop-down box.
3. In the Search For box, type a period (.).
4. Leave the Change text to box empty.
5. Click on Change.

If you have questions, please contact Jan Glover (jan.glover@yale.edu )