After converting from Ubuntu linux about a year ago, I found that there were only two tasks that required me to boot into my Windows installation: syncing my iPod touch with iTunes, and writing documents that required heavy scientific referencing with EndNote. The first task may very soon have a viable linux alternative with the imminent release of PwnPlayer. When I recently set to work on a lengthy literature review, I decided to go and find a viable alternative for referencing too. After testing a few options, I came across Bibus. It’s not perfect, but it does competently replace all the functions of EndNote – and, of course, it’s totally free and open source.

Bibus performs all the basic referencing functions: it imports citations from files or manual input, stores and organises them in a simple database, inserts in-text citations into OpenOffice documents (MS Word is apparently also supported), and updates a formatted reference list at the end of the document. It was exceptionally stable, with not a single crash, and installation, database creation and integration into OpenOffice was streamlined and easy. There were a number of little usability hitches, however, which still require some polishing:

• Importing from Google Scholar, where I get the majority of my references, is not very streamlined. I found the best way was to open an ‘Import text window’ in Bibus, and set my Scholar preferences to offer a text-only BibTeX citation for each reference in the search results. I then had to copy and paste the citation into the inport window and hit ‘import’ and drag it from the import buffer into the reference list proper. The need for this buffer was not obvious and it felt like a totally unnessecarilay extra step.
• Inserting the reference into OpenOffice was also a little awkward. EndNote adds a toolbar which lets you insert an in-text citation from inside a MS Word window. Bibus makes you mark the spot in the OpenOffice document, change windows into Bibus and insert, then go back to OpenOffice to make sure it inserted correctly. This is a minor niggle, but can get tedious when you are inserting multiple citations for the same reference.
• The way Bibus imported the BibTeX data was a little haphazard, with it occasionally keeping curly brackets “{“, the BibTeX field delimiters, in the text of the reference itself. I couldn’t tell if this was an error on Bibus or Google Scholar’s side, but either way it meant I had to manually go though at the end and remove a number of stray curly braces from my references section.
• Formatting of the references was inconsistant, even when I repetedly applied a single ruleset to the entire list. Again, this could have been a problem on Scholar’s side.