RIS file format templates

Panorama X
1

I have a bibliography database in Pan10 and I would like to export txt files to and import txt files from EndNote20. Those files are required to have a certain format known as RIS (Research Information Systems). Are there any existing templates for such file transfers? If not can someone help me know how to set up such templates? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

2

I had never heard of this format before. A google search for RIS format turned up this informative Wikipedia page.

This free-form format will take more than a “template”. Certainly Panorama programs could be custom written to transfer data to/from this format. This would have to be custom written for your database, some programming knowledge would definitely be required, you might want to hire a professional for this (there are several on this forum).

3

I hate to be discouraging, but I have wrangled with bib formats in the past, and they are painful to work with, mostly because of the many options available for each reference type, multiplied by the many types. I am sure it’s possible, but may be a longer process than you can tolerate.
I did have one potentially useful thought, which is that often a ref program can find references by the DOI. I haven’t used Endnote for years (Zotero, now), but I would expect it can use DOI’s to import reference info. Asking Panorama to import an Endnote export, which can be many things other than RIS might be the easier side. There are a bunch of tag reading functions that should be useful.
Hope that helps.

4

In Pan6 I had separate forms which I could save as text in order to facilitate the transfer of information. However, as I understand things in PaxX, that is no longer possible. So, Jim, I realise that there is a degree of customisation which will need to be done and I am willing to do some programming. I just thought that someone might have developed templates for RIS format, since it is the standard bibliographic file transfer format used by major educational institutions. If there are no templates, how can I save specially formatted forms as text in order to make the file transfer possible?

5

You could do it with an export command in a procedure. It would be something like this.

(Modified in accordance with Gary’s reference)

export "Bib File.txt",crlf()+"TY  -  "+Type+crlf()
+"AU  - "+Author+crlf()
+"PY   - "+Year+crlf()
+"DA  - "+Month+crlf()
+"TI  - "+Title+crlf()
+sandwich("T2  - ",Subtitle,crlf())
+sandwich("SP  - ",«Start Page»,crlf())
+sandwich("EP  - ",«End Page»,crlf())
+sandwich("VL  - ",Volume,crlf())+
"ER  - "+crlf()

I’m making assumptions out the wazoo about the fields in your database, but that’s a rough idea about how the export could be done.

6

Dave,
Just what I needed. Thanks! I can adjust to the field names in my db and what is needed for EndNote. This helps greatly. Thanks again.

7

Just an aside, this site has a breakdown of the RIS format:

http://refdb.sourceforge.net/manual-0.9.6/sect1-ris-format.html

According to this each record should start with a single blank line and each tag should be followed by two spaces, a dash and a single space. Don’t know if this is important to this particular export.

8

I’ve modified my formula accordingly.