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Med2RM

Important note

This utility has been superseded by the Perl script med2ris.pl contained in the RefDB package. The information below is badly outdated and talks about Reference Manager as of approx version 6. You don't want to use Med2RM.

Med2RM is a little tool to simplify the import of reference data into refrerence tools that support the RIS format.

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Overview

Reference Manager by RIS is one of the leading citation manager packages for the Windows platform. Although the latest version 8 offers a great deal of support for the import of MEDLINE data from the web, there are still some obstacles which prevent you from creating quickly a consistent private database of your reprints and interesting papers. The free Med2RM utility jumps in to simplify this process.

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The problems with Reference Manager

After a generous search of an online MEDLINE you will most likely end up with a handful of tiny files which must be imported into Reference Manager one after the other.

Different MEDLINE providers use different formats for the MeSH headings and -subheadings. They would be very handy as keywords - if they were formatted properly.

Older versions of Reference Manager use the notes field to import the abstracts - although an explicit abstracts field is available.

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Med2RM offers a simple solution

Med2RM is a very simple utility with a drag&drop interface. The basic idea of operation is the following (see the handbooks for in-depth information):

  • Download your MEDLINE data from one of the online providers. When saving the files, precede the filenames with a two-letter code denoting the online source, e.g. "PM" for PubMed files.
  • When finished with downloading, drag&drop all downloaded files on the Med2RM window.
  • Import the one and only output file into Reference Manager. You will never have to change the Capture informations in Reference Manager.

Med2RM does some transformation in the background, ensuring a consistent citation format (the output actually is in the RIS format defined by the Reference Manager's creators). Most important is the handling of MeSH subheadings. Depending on the MEDLINE provider, the same MeSH keyword may show up as Aorta/ME/DE, Aorta/METABOLISM/DRUG EFFECTS, or as Aorta [METABOLISM][DRUG EFFECTS], making the keywords virtually useless in your private database. Med2RM converts all these versions into two keywords Aorta[METABOLISM] and Aorta[DRUG EFFECTS] independent of the data source.

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Supported MEDLINE providers

Currently the following data sources are supported:

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Download information

The latest version of the binary is 2.2.