EndNote ships with import filters and connection files for most commonly used bibliographic databases. If you remember from my previous tutorials, an import filter is used to parse exported records from the databases, and a connection file is used to connect to the database directly from within EndNote. So, for example, when I import a data file from PubMed, I must choose the NLM PubMed import filter. When I search PubMed directly from within EndNote, I am using the NLM PubMed connection file for EndNote. In most cases, you wouldn't need to change an import filter, or a connection file that ships with EndNote, even when things change. For example, the database you use changes its data output format. Usually EndNote will release an update to the import filter, or the connection file. You can find all filter and connection files maintained by EndNote on its website, the URL of which shows up at the bottom of the screen. So, here are the filters... And, here are the connection files. But there are times where you do need to customize an import filter, or a connection file. Here is a scenario— For some reason, the import filter and connection file for PubMed put the full journal title in the alternate journal field, and the abbreviated journal title in the journal field— which is exactly the opposite of its behavior with other databases. So let's say I'm going to import these records into EndNote. I'm going to select them... Send to... Citation managers... Create file... Launch EndNote... Select a filter... NLM PubMed... And import. Now, if I take a look at the records, you will see that, in the journal field, we have the abbreviated title. And, in the alternate journal field, you have the full journal title. Let's look at another record. Same here! The same thing also happens when you search PubMed directly from within EndNote using a connection file. So, 'Online Search'... PubMed NLM... I'll just do a simple search here. I'm going to grab the first five records... Alright, here they are. Let's take a look at the records. In the journal field, there is the abbreviated journal title. And, in the alternate journal field there is the full journal title. Look at another record... Same thing. Now this many not seem to be a big problem, but if you use the journal term list feature to manage full and abbreviated journal titles your journal term list will be messed up, because EndNote automatically generates full journal titles from the journal field, and the abbreviated journal titles from the alternate journal field. This is a very peculiar behavior of the import filter and connection file for PubMed. I don't know why it's doing this, but we can fix that by creating a custom import filter and a connection file, based on the existing ones. In the final end, all the import filters, and the connection files do is parsing data from the database in the specific tagged format, based on the handful of rules. Here's a sample data, exported out of PubMed. And you can see, there are field tags on the left... and values for those fields on the right. Now let's take a look at our import filter for PubMed. Go to 'Edit'... 'Import Filters'... 'Edit "PubMed (NLM)"'... If you don't see NLM PubMed here, choose 'Open Filter Manager...', and choose "PubMed (NLM)" from there. So this .enf file, which is short for "EndNote Filter", is the import filter for PubMed that ships with EndNote. There are many different parts of this filter, but we're only going to be worrying about the template section. So, this says for the reference type, 'Journal Articles'. These are the rules for parsing the data. In the column on the left, are the field tags from PubMed, and, in the column on the right, are the field names for the EndNote record. So, basically this says— anything that is in the 'AB' tag in the PubMed data file, will be imported into the 'Abstract' field in the EndNote record. Anything in the 'AD' field from PubMed, will go to the 'Author Address' field. And anything in the 'AU' field, will go to the 'Author' field, and so forth. Now let's scroll down to the 'JT' field, which, in the PubMed data format, contains the 'Full Journal' title, and it is being imported into the 'Alternate Journal' field. That's our problem! Let's go further down... Take a look at the 'TA' field, which, in the PubMed data file, carries the 'Abbreviated Journal' title. And we can see that it is being imported into the 'Journal' field. So basically what we need to do is to switch them so that the 'JT' field is linked to the 'Journal' field, and the 'TA' is linked to the 'Alternate Journal' field. So, we can highlight the right column cell, for the 'JT' field, and use this drop-down menu to insert the correct field name, which is 'Journal'. And we can go down to the 'TA' field... Highlight the right column cell... Use the drop-down menu to insert the 'Alternate Journal' field. That's it! That's all you need to do to fix this. Of course, there's a lot more in customizing import filters than fixing templates. You can play with each one of these sections on the left, but, like I said, there is rarely a problem with these filters. Now that we've modified our filter, the best practice is to save the filter as a new one, so that the original is alway there, and kept clean. In fact, EndNote wouldn't even allow you to override the original. So 'File', 'Save As'... I'm just going to call this "PubMed (NLM) Switched". Obviously you can call this anything you want. Okay. Now when we import data from PubMed... And this time, choose our new filter... You will see that the journal titles are imported into the correct fields. Now, this only fixes the import filters. When you connect directly to PubMed from within EndNote, things are still wrong. We need to do the same thing for the connection file. So go to 'Edit'... 'Connection File'... 'Edit "PubMed (NLM)". Again, if you don't see "PubMed (NLM)", open 'Connection Manager', and find "PubMed (NLM)" there. Again, we're going to go to 'Templates' and make the same changes to the template for journal articles. Find 'JT'... ...and change the right column cell to be 'Journal'. And then go down to find 'TA'... ...change the right column cell to 'Alternate Journal'. Again, I'm going to save it with a different name. I'm going to call it "PubMed (NLM) Switched". Now let's add this new connection file to our connection short list, on the left under 'Online Search'. Click 'more...' Find our new connection... ...and click 'Choose'. Okay. Now let's do a search with this new connection. Highlight it. In the lower-right pane, I'm going to do a simple search... Grab the first five records... ...and you can see that the titles are now in the correct fields. That's it for today, see you next time.