Software for Marine Mammalogists: Papyrus 8 for Macintosh
by Jan Herrmann

Part 3/3 Citing, Conclusions and Literature

Citing

To cite a reference you can just drag it into your word processor window. Citing is also possible by "copy and paste” or by using unique shortcuts that you gave your references in the ID field. You'll get a placeholder which'll be replaced later by the correct citation when you process your manuscript. By using letters (y, p etc.) it’s quite easy to alter the appearance of the citation to year only, page sections etc. So you can create citations like "EVANS (1990) said,...” and "...are the bigger whales (EVANS 1990) directly and you don’t need to go through your processed document to adapt citations accordingly.

Setting up an export format is quite easy, but many Journal citation styles are included in the Papyrus package, so you might not need to create your own formats.
Papyrus formats your manuscript directly in your MS Word, WordPerfect or Nisus Writer text processor via Apple Events interface. Papyrus can also format any RTF or text file from any other word processor than those mentioned above.
TeX specialists may be happy to hear that Papyrus is able to work with TeX files.

Conclusion

Papyrus for Macintosh is a powerful companion with many intelligent features for the bibliographic work. I haven't mentioned some features like the multi-language support, because I don't use them.
Running big databases with more than 15,000 references on older computers is possible but slow (I tried on a PowerBook 150). Sometimes I miss a shortcut for functions I often use. Because there are no more shortcuts available, a button bar could be a good solution.
Apart from the mentioned limits (one database at a time, missing Z39.50 connection) I didn’t encounter any other restrictions. Papyrus databases can hold up to 16 million references while a reference can contain up to 1000 authors, keywords and so on. If you are interested in those number games, have a look at the feature list on their website to find out if Papyrus matches your personal needs.

Although Papyrus price ranges from only 89 (Internet Download) to 139 US$ (CD-ROM with 2 handbooks) it can more than compete with its much higher priced colleagues ProCite or EndNote (3). Beginning with the year 2004 Papyrus is freeware.

I have experienced an excellent RSD support with my questions regarding import formats. But in general there's no need for direct support because of the various ways of standard help. Personally it's fun to work with Papyrus and I can hearty recommend it.

You can start testing it with the database of Marine Mammal Science publications: Free download at http://www.cetacea.de/mms

References

1 IWC Secretariat (2000): IWC papers on the bibliographic system, PAPYRUS (http://www.iwcoffice.org/Publications.htm)

2 Zaccone (2000): Excalibur Spellchecker 4.0 (http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~excalibr/excalibur.html)

3 Dell'Orso (2000): Bibliography Formatting Software: An Evaluation Template (http://www.burioni.it/forum/ors-bfs.htm)