Sente

EndNote has driven me slightly crazy for the last few years, so I don't really use it any more, but it's cite-while-you-write feature is still more powerful than anything else. Bookends and Sente... Both are excellent programs for managing your pdfs, maintaining a reference library, and generating bibliographies on demand. I've used both very extensively, including current versions and previous versions of Bookends and Sente. Details below... Stability: - Both are very stable programs, and don't crash (unlike EndNote, unless X3 has dramatically improved). They play very nicely with loads of word processors and are very reliable. Searching: - Sente: it's built-in browser uses webkit, i.e. it's basically Safari. You can do standard web searches from within Sente. I like the 'targeted browsing' feature, which quickly shows you what you and don't have in your library already when you do pubmed search. - Bookends has a straightforward PubMed/other site searching window that works very well. It doesn't look like a standard browser page, but obviously does the same thing. Refs already in your library are highlighted in yellow in PubMed windows. It is very good at finding and loading pdfs. Updating incomplete refs: Bookends has a really nice host of tools to update refs. If you have a ref that got loaded in when it was online only, it's quick and easy to use a Bookends menu command to update the reference. There are a couple of ways of doing this, and it works well. Sente is supposed to do some auto-updating, but it doesn't seem to work nearly as well. I really like this handy feature. Speed: On a very large library (7,500 refs), Bookends is noticeably quicker at start-up (about 10 seconds quicker). Searches within the library are faster, and happen live as you type in the Spotlight window in the library. This is more responsive. Pdfs: Both allow you to quickly see your attached pdfs within the main window, open them into a standalone reader, etc. Sente supports pdf comments etc. Custom fields: Both allow you make and view notes etc very easily. Sending to colleagues: Bookends 'email ref' works reliably and attaches any pdfs to your email. Helpful for finding and sending stuff to colleagues. Technical support: Both Sente and Bookends offer good technical support, but Bookends is the best. Jon provides tech support, and is incredibly helpful. It's not that Sente is bad in any way, just that Jon and Bookends is superb. Working with Apple Pages: Both scan open Pages documents. Sente has a re-scan option that they are cautious about recommending. Haven't tried it myself - I use Pages all the time, but don't rescan a formatted doc, I always go back to the unformatted doc to edit. Working with Word: Both support scanning and rescanning with Word. I don't currently use them with Word, but have successfully used Bookends with Word in the past. You don't get the live formatting you see with EndNote cite-while-you-write, but this is no bad thing given the number of times it's caused hangs and crashes in my previous experience. Import/Export: I have a large Sente library which doesn't export the attachments absolutely reliably and puts them in the URL field rather than the attachments field. Bookends gets this right, and therefore it's easier to move a library out to EndNote from Bookends. Both import an EndNote library without problems. User help/ configuration of export filters etc. Online for Sente, a very thorough manual for Bookends. Formatting controls work fine on both. OVERALL: (If anyone cares) I used Bookends extensively, then switched to Sente when it was the first to be able to scan open Pages files. Bookends has now been doing this for a while. It's a bit quicker, and plays more nicely with EndNote (at least as things stand now). Reference updating is a bit easier. I slightly prefer the Sente online search (linking to the PubMed webpage), and Sente is very very slightly prettier, but the speed and other features of Bookends win out. Both are excellent, but I'm going to stick with Bookends.

Sente no longer recognises references on Google Scholar. No response to my email to support. I really regret Sente's demise, and the app having become abandonware. Once again, if only the developers would communicate to their (loyal) customers what is going on.

I migrated to Bookends from Sente, with considerable regret. Sente is far superior to Bookends and Papers 3 for doing online research. Indeed I continue to use it for this purpose and then import the references to Bookends. Sente puts online search results into Sente's own internal database. This allows one to interrogate large found data sets in far more detail than other apps allow. It also allows for automatic updates to search results based on any number of variables. Bookends and Papers merely display the results found in PubMed, etc. They are not downloaded into a database. So one cannot even do further searches, to narrow down the found data set, without re-running the entire search again. Sente can. This makes further ad hoc analyses of the found data set extremely quick and easy. I do hope Sente can come to life with a successful business model ...

Beware before investing time, energy and money in Sente.

It’s a great piece of software but seems on track to become abandonware. The last update to both the Mac and iOS apps has been at least a year ago. A coming update will only ensure that the app keeps functioning with El Capitan. In the past months the support site has been all but ignored by the TSS team. User requests are ignored as a matter of policy. Several threads have been launched in recent months by worried users inquiring what the future of Sente looks like. These questions have been ignored and met with deafening silence, as have personal emails.

Meanwhile Sente’s main competitor Bookends has released an update recently with vastly improved import from Sente, a clear sign. To be clear: I own Sente as well as Bookends and actually switched to Sente over a year ago because of its Quicktags system, ability to nest smart groups into smart groups, and overall better GUI. I have invested a lot of time in transitioning from Bookends to Sente and my academic workflow is very much built around it. I also rely heavily on the iPad app which is also great. I can understand temporary silences and I am willing to give a lot of credit to developers if the app is worth it. But the company's current disdain for its customers suggests the end of the app might be in sight.

I purchased a Sente 6 license and installed it under Mavericks, following directions. All attempts to add the registration number failed with an odd error ('signature failed'). Part of this was my fault (I used the wrong email address), but I followed directions to fix this. Still no success. The support person then made a series of suggestions, all of which failed. I supplied the logs he requested and detailed reports on what I had tried. After two days of trying to sort this out, he simply stopped responding to my inquiries. After four days, when I was still unable to register and got no response despite multiple politely worded requests for help, I wrote a more firmly worded message saying basically that I required some kind of reply, and if I didn't get one, I would be compelled to file a complaint. I got an answer back almost immediately saying: No need to file a complaint, I have issued a refund you should see within a day or two. They would have saved me a lot of trouble if they had just admitted that they didn't know how to fix the problem. It's great software, but I was very unhappy with this unprofessional and rude treatment by support. And I still haven't seen the refund.