Documents

Creating manuscripts with GetARef

It's a simple process to use GetARef to create a submission-ready manuscript with properly formatted citations in the running text and a correct reference list:

Insert place-holders for the references to be cited at the appropriate places in the body text.
Insert a place-holder for the reference list.
Inform GetARef about which output format to use (e.g., one suitable for Experimental Brain Research)
Let GetARef create the submission-ready manuscript by replacing the place-holders with correct citations and a proper reference list.

Place-holders for citations

The place-holders for the citations are called pseudo-citations in GetARef. They are simple to create manually but it's even easier to let GetARef generate them.

When pasted into a manuscript a pseudo-citation may look like {{Smith, 1998}}. Because the pseudo-citation is replaced by the proper citation form (e.g., a number from the reference list or 'Smith 1998'), it's possible to insert comments in the pseudo-citations that are useful during manuscript production.

GetARef supports all common special citations forms, e.g., (see Smith 1998), (cf Table I in Smith 1998), (Smith 1998, Figure 8), replacing the citations by the year only (... as reported by Smith (1998).), etc. Moreover, GetARef can be told to automatically contract lists of multi-author citations (e.g., (Gray, Andersson, Green et al , 1995); first occurence in manuscript might be (Smith, Brown and Jones, 1992) and the second (Smith et al, 1992)

Groups of citations

Pseudo-citations that appear together are treated as a group by GetARef. They will, for instance, be enclosed by parentheses if the output style so requires. GetARef may sort citations within a group alphabetically by author names or chronologically, i.e. (Gray 1998; Stevenson 1992) vs. (Stevenson 1992; Gray 1998).

GetARef automically handles multiple citations by the same author(s), e.g., Smith 1997a, b.

GetARef can currently handle groups of pseudo-citations containing as many as 250 references (i.e., 250 references are cited at a particular place in manuscript). Note that there are practically no limit on the number of references that can be included in reference list of a manuscript.

Reference files

GetARef allows a user to use references from different reference files, i.e., it's not necessary to have a particular reference file connected to GetARef in order to create a manuscript with the correct references.

Moreover, it is possible to define 'file name aliases' which makes it possible to work with two computers with different directory structures and still produce and complete a manuscript.