This stack reads in text files, searches them for occurences of references in scientific style - that is, author & date [e.g., Goodman (1987)] - and produces a listing of all the references it finds. It provides a quick and easy way for a scientific author to get a list of all the literature cited in his or her paper so that he/she can put together an accurate Literature Cited section.
There are three steps:
1. Clicking the "Continue" button starts the process. The document you want checked must be saved as a "Text Only" file, and it MUST HAVE CARRIAGE RETURNS PLACED AT THE END OF EACH LINE. Once you have selected the file, the program will search the entire file for possible citations (i.e. places in the the text where four consecutive characters are numbers) and write the line containing each one to the field in the upper right corner of the screen.
2. After the master list of possible citations has been compiled, the program will present you with each line - one at a time - so you can delete any extraneous words. This can be done by hand or by using the button "Delete First Word". Once you have finished editing the line, you must save it by clicking the
"Save Citation" button. If the line does not contain a citation, simply click the "Ignore" button.
3. Once the finalized citation list has been compiled it is sorted, and then you have the option of having any duplicate entries removed. When this is completed the citation list is saved as a text file.
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DISCLAIMER!!
This program finds citations in documents only if it finds what it considers to be a date. The following criteria are used in searching for dates:
1. the word (= group of consecutive non-space characters) must be at least 4 characters long;
2. the first character in the group must be a "1"; and
3. the third character in the group must also be a number.
If you have citations in your text having dates which are less than four characters long, or that start with numbers other than "1", they will not be found by this program. For example, dates such as 1878, 1956, and 1986a would be found by this program, while 197, 796, and 1XT7 would be ignored.
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This stack is being distributed as a freebie. I hope you find it useful!
