Find, review, organize and use the academic literature in your field.
Sente 5 is the premier academic reference manager for Mac OS X. Sente's iTunes - like interface makes finding, reviewing, organizing and using the academic literature in your field easier than ever. Sente (pronounced sen - tay) makes literature searches easier by providing a front - end to hundreds of data sources around the world, including: PubMed, many university library catalogs, Web of Science, Ovid, Agricola, the U. S. Library of Congress, and any other literature database that supports Z39. 50 or SRU, and MARC or Dublin Core record syntax. (WoS and Ovid, and some other data sources, require a subscription. ) Sente updates the results of your searches each day so that you can easily stay current with new results. This means that you will learn about important new papers as soon as they appear in any of the databases you search. And the results will remain available until you find the time to review them, even if that happens when you are not connected to the Internet. When it is time to write up your own research, Sente takes care of the details of properly formating citations and bibliographies. Sente includes over 100 pre - defined bibliography styles, including APA, Chicago and Harvard, as well as an easy - to - use bibliography format editor that lets you modify the supplied formats or create your own.
This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I use Sente every day and it is great. I have a fairly large library of references (just over 2500) and it works well with this much data. Beyond the nice search interface (which works very well in my experience, even for large searches), being able to organize my library with deeply-nested smart collections is wonderful. Some time ago, Sente had only limited bibliography support, so I continued to use EndNote in addition to Sente, but that changed with v5. And with the recent addition of Pages support (yes!), I can finally use something other than Word for those documents that require complex formatting. I recently converted a 70 pages document (with Chicago style footnotes and lots of figures) from Word to Pages and scanned it with Sente and the results were beautiful.
My biggest complaint is probably that Sente no longer comes with a PDF user manual. Instead, there is now good on-line help, but I often find it easier to read a traditional manual, so I am hoping they will bring this back.
Sente is King
MacRNF
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Sente is by far the best reference miner on the market. It may not be the best database for storing all of the refs you find, but as a hunt and seek and sort tool, it is unparalelled. Its ability to then modify the punctuation output is also very intuitive and very elegant. It is very simple to make your own output styles and then send the bibliograpghy to your word processor. Sente has a short list of industry standard output styles, but they are very easy to modify and then save as journal specific templates. The only thing I wish Sente could do that it currently cant do is access the Web of Science (WoS). WoS is the biggest baddest most beautiful online database for scientific literature - it has everything PubMed has, only far far more. Sente can import WoS exports, but lack of direct access is a drag and takes way too long and perhaps not 100% accurate. Direct access to WoS would make Sente Emporer. This said - no other app manages direct access to WoS, except the www, and your University or Lab library need to have a subscription (mine does). Sente has already found preview versions of forthcoming papers for me that arent even registered in the mainstream databases. Its live ability to keep you updated is wonderful. A final note - Sente beats Bookends hands down for search and sort projects, Bookends is probably a better database although the Bookends inteface is not impressive.
sente is not just for high schools..
willjwade
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />OK, Ill admit it has some bugs but crikey have you guys actually used endnote or bookends? Bugs.. are you nuts they have more than bugs - they are infested with monsters!
Sente is a breath of fresh air. They are going about the whole bibliography thing in a very mac way. z39.50 support is better than any other app. creating and formats is a breeze (whats the point in having a zillion formats when you to be honest you always need to modify it slightly) and its small, sleek and fast (v.much unlike endnote).
It now works with mellel so you can no longer use that as an argument. You make the formats in a snap so thats no longer a argument neither.. The developers are responsive over email to any problems you have and you know what? it works. enough said.
Just average until . . .
s31
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />As someone wh is writing a PhD, Sente will reamain a high school student's tool until is has the capability to allow users to add more than the standard five reference types. Apsrt from that, I'm stuck with EndNote.
Mucked up my paper
Knattlhuber
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I experienced some serious problems using Sente. Apparently, Sente's not very robust when it comes to editing/deleting the in-text citations or just renaming the Word file. Sente completely mucked up the referencing for my paper twice.
Definitely try it out before purchasing it (not like I did...)!
You got a buyer
bellis1
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I got hooked on RSS for news and now I am hooked on Sente for my work. I gave up endnote a long time ago and now use bookends and reference miner but the interface for this also makes it a nice addition to that suite. I have noticed some small interface nuances that could be improved. I hope they will continue to improve upon the software.
Sente of a reference - Truly Excellent
MacRNF
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Sente is magnificent. For the first time ever, I bought this app before trying it. Then after downloading it, within minutes I had thousands of references that I was paring down in order to review the field of interest. The interface is outstanding and the ability to search, retrieve and organise literature is unparalleled in the market - regardless of platform. Can it be improved - of course - tell me an app that couldnt. Keep the updates coming Third Street Software - as far as Im concerned you are First Street Software. PS the price/functionality is cheap even for academics. Imagine going online for just a few minutes armed with a list of search keywords, then unplug and travel with all of the downloaded references to browse offline at will. No other app comes close to this functionality. More importantly though, everytime you plug in, Sente updates all of your searches without even a "Gieves pass the port". Now how do I get it to work with Web of Science ...
Excellent...
stam66
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />The obvious comparison is with Endnote, which apart from it's monolithic and unproductive interface, now won't work with Mac Word 2004, forcing me to keep a copy of word X on my drive as well...
The query/database side of Sente is the best I've seen for Medline/PubMed for the mac, and deserves 5 stars. I'd like to see proper integration with word processors, and it looks like the app is headed in that direction.
Academic time saver
dfick
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This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Don't know about you but I can't keep up with journal articles...I use this to skim read title and abstracts and very quickly get a feel for broad topics. I still use endnote to create a working library for Word but that will change. For now Sente saves me time in getting an overview...definitely worth supporting! If you try it you'll wonder why others haven't presented information in this way.
1.2 seems to address some of concerns from other...
Alarik
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...reviews<br />This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Looks like they listened to people with this update. One can copy references and there is an import function(have not tried an import yet). I have not done much with it yet but i like it so far. Unfortunately I am currently doing work in a windows based office so for me the $80 price is for the work I do at home so I have not decided whether it is worth it yet. Need to figure out how to work a mac into the next grant.