Hi, I’m Sanford Braver. I’m a retired Psychology Professor and researcher, but I still write APA papers. I have developed some tools to help me construct APA-style reference sections. Apparently, many younger researchers have never NOT used Reference Managers, such as Endnote, RefMan and Refworks, and so have complete databases of references they've used before that they can easily insert into papers they are writing now. When they encounter a new reference they need, they go on Google Scholar or Psychinfo or whatever and easily add it to their reference database. So constructing the reference list at the end –and customizing it to the desired reference style, like APA, AMA or Chicago-- is easy for them. Here's a tutorial demonstrating, for example, the capabilities and advantages and efficiencies of Write-n-Cite with Refworks and here's another with the older version of that program that I use.

 

But what about us old folks who have written lots of papers BEFORE there were Reference Managers and have lots of references listed in the reference sections of previous papers we've written? That was my situation, and maybe yours. If it is, this set of tools I developed and use can help you rather quickly get up to speed by constructing a Reference Manager database of old references you've or others have cited in past manuscripts as well as largely automate all the other reference-relevant tasks. These tools are freeware and largely suitable for Windows WORD (any version), but not MAC or WP, etc.

 

These tutorials will show you and help you use the tools to:

1. Proceed through a Word ms you have recently written, identify all the distinct references you have cited, list them in a separate document, and sort that list so it's alphabetical and avoids duplication.
2. The above uses a set of Word "Macros" I have programmed. It is a bit tricky to incorporate others’ macros onto your PC. So I walk you through the steps.
3. Do you have reference lists in previous papers for which you have the Word version? Would it be convenient now to add them all to a Reference Manager's data base, so you can use the modern and highly efficient and time-saving Reference Manager methods illustrated in tutorials in the first paragraph above? If you have a lot of references from the reference sections of past papers available, it's a monumental task to manually enter them, so large it prevents many seasoned researchers from going that way. As best as I've been able to discover, there are no good ways to do so previosuly available on the web. But this program (TXTREF2RIS.exe application) I've developed largely automates it by "parsing" existing reference items into the various “fields” Reference Managers need (it produces an RIS format text file, which all Reference Managers can handle). A tutorial to install TXTREF2RIS on your computer is here (which includes instructions for warnings you might get.) A tutorial to use TXTREF2RIS is here. A tutorial considering troubleshooting of the program is here. A relatively simple task is importing the reference list RIS format text file produced by number 3 in into the Reference Manager's data base. This brief tutorial shows you how for RefWorks. Finally, I demonstrate writing a fake ms with Write-n-Cite inserting into the manuscript the references I've imported into Refworks is previous steps.
4. Maybe you have a pdf version of a reference list (probably from someone else’s paper you have downloaded), and you eant to add some or all of its references into your Reference Manager data base. After copying and pasting it into Word, there is the tricky issue of discriminating the end of each text line from the end of the particular reference. This simple Word Macro parses the list into discriminable references for use in number 3.

 

WARNING. These tools are not idiot proof or fool proof. They work well in most situations, but they often require a bit of fine-tuning. Despite that caveat they will almost always save you time over manual methods. But you need to watch the tutorials for the wrinkles. I generally hate tutorials and just want to figure it out myself, but in this instance, that's a mistake. Watch the tutorials!