EndNote 20: Organizing Your References

EndNote provides the ability to organize your citations into Groups.  Groups may be a collection of citations on a particular topic, or from a particular source such as a database, or citations being used for a particular paper.  You can decide how you want to use Groups.  Citations can be placed in more than one Group, if you wish.

To create a Group, click on "Create Group" from the Group menu at the top of the screen.  Name your Group.  Drag and drop citations into your new group.

In this example, I have also created a Group Set, called "Database Searches". Within this Group Set, I created Groups according to different database searches I did.  This helps me to keep my citations organized in my library.

Smart Groups

"Smart Groups", or groups that are formed automatically when citations in your library match criteria that you determine...such as citations by a certain author, or citations with a particular word in the title. To create a Smart Group, click on Groups in the top menu, then select  Create Smart Group. Give your Smart Group a name, then specify what criteria should be used to create the Smart Group. This could be any word or number in any field such as author, title, publication year, or a particular word that you've inserted into the "Notes" field in citations. You might have added the word "Include" or "Discussion" or some word that will help you sort through your citations as you write your paper.

Create From Groups

Create from Groups is handy when you want to combine 2 or more groups in some way...for example, you'd like to see the citations in Group A that also appear in Group B.  Or perhaps you'd like to see the citations that are in Group A that are not also in Group B.  Create from Groups allows you to combine groups in ways that are useful to you.