If a reference list is in pdf format (probably from someone else’s paper you have downloaded), converting it for Steps 4 & 5 above.

Here is an example of a partial reference list from a pdf copy of a paper by my colleagues, Bill Fabricius and Linda Leucken, Journal of Family Psychology, 2007, Vol. 21, No. 2, 195–205.

1. First, you would copy and paste this selection into a blank Word document.

2. It will look different; the two column layout will have changed to one column, like the below.

nary heart disease: Potential physiologic reaction. Psychosomatic

Medicine, 53, 643–668.

Maunder, R. G., & Hunter, J. J. ( 2001). Attachment and psychosomatic

medicine: Developmental contributions to stress and

disease. Psychosomatic Medicine, 63, 556–567.

McEwen, B. S., & Wingfield, J. C. (2003). The concept of allostasis

in biology and biomedicine. Hormones and Behavior, 42,

2–15.

Mechanic, D., & Hansell, S. (1989). Divorce, family conflict, and

adolescent’s well-being. Journal of Health and Social Behavior,

30, 106–116.

Parker, G. (1989). The Parental Bonding Instrument: Psychometric

properties reviewed. Psychiatric Development, 89, 317–335.

Reidenberg, M. M., & Lowenthal, D. T. (1968). Adverse nondrug

reactions. New England Journal of Medicine, 279, 678–679.

Schappert, S. M. (1992). National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey:

1989 summary. Vital Health Statistics, 13, 1–80.

Spitzer, R. L., Williams, J. B. W., Kroenke, K., Linzer, M.,

deGruy, F. V., Hahn, S. R., et al. (1994). Utility of a new

procedure for diagnosing mental disorders in primary care: The

PRIME–MD 1000 study. Journal of the American Medical Association,

272, 1749–1756.

Troxel, W. M., & Matthews, K. A. (2004). What are the costs of

marital conflict and dissolution to children’s physical health?

Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 7, 29–57.

Wolchik, S. A., Tein, J., Sandler, I. N., & Doyle, K. W. (2002).

Fear of abandonment as a mediator of the relations between

divorce stressors and mother– child relationship quality and children’s

adjustment problems. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology,

30, 401–418.

3. In this case, the first reference is a fragment of one I will assume you don’t want. So, select and delete it.

4. The main impediment to simply subjecting the above to the TXTREF2RIS.exe program is that the latter looks for “hard returns” to recognize the end of a reference. But the copy and paste will in fact result in hard returns at the end of EVERY line, confusing TXTREF2RIS. So this little “convertpdfref” macro will convert the file to one with a space where the hard return is MID-reference, and the hard return only at the true end of the reference. It works by a series of Word Find and Replace All. The resulting material should be saved as a .txt file and the latter file subjected to TXTREF2RIS.

5. I’m assuming you have previously imported the macro onto your computer. The steps to do so were described in Tutorial 3.

6. Next, we’ll invoke the macro as in this screen shot:

7. Navigate to convertpdfref, and hit “run”.

8. Here’s what the resulting document will look like.

Maunder, R. G., & Hunter, J. J. ( 2001). Attachment and psychosomatic medicine: Developmental contributions to stress and disease. Psychosomatic Medicine, 63, 556–567.

McEwen, B. S., & Wingfield, J. C. (2003). The concept of allostasis in biology and biomedicine. Hormones and Behavior, 42, 2–15.

Mechanic, D., & Hansell, S. (1989). Divorce, family conflict, and adolescent’s well-being. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 30, 106–116.

Parker, G. (1989). The Parental Bonding Instrument: Psychometric properties reviewed. Psychiatric Development, 89, 317–335.

Reidenberg, M. M., & Lowenthal, D. T. (1968). Adverse nondrug reactions. New England Journal of Medicine, 279, 678–679.

Schappert, S. M. (1992). National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey: 1989 summary. Vital Health Statistics, 13, 1–80.

Spitzer, R. L., Williams, J. B. W., Kroenke, K., Linzer, M., deGruy, F. V., Hahn, S. R., et al. (1994). Utility of a new procedure for diagnosing mental disorders in primary care: The PRIME–MD 1000 study. Journal of the American Medical Association, 272, 1749–1756.

Troxel, W. M., & Matthews, K. A. (2004). What are the costs of marital conflict and dissolution to children’s physical health? Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 7, 29–57.

Wolchik, S. A., Tein, J., Sandler, I. N., & Doyle, K. W. (2002).

Fear of abandonment as a mediator of the relations between divorce stressors and mother– child relationship quality and children’s adjustment problems. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 30, 401–418.

9. You will note that it is not perfect. (Remember, I warned you that these tools were not idiot- or fool-proof). In the final reference (in this example), there is an incorrect hard return after the year.

10. Navigate to that mistake, manually delete the hard return, and the file should now be perfect. Save it as a .txt file, then the TXTREF2RIS program can be used to convert it into RIS format (see Tutorial 4) for import into a Reference Manager (See Tutorial 5).