Bibliography hot links

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wolstan dixie
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Joined: Tue May 05, 2020 1:14 pm

Bibliography hot links

Post by wolstan dixie »

I am writing a paper for an academic journal. They want it in *.doc format.

I have been writing it using 'Footnotes' for the bibliographic references. A superscript number appears in the body of the text, you click on it and it takes you to an expanded entry at the end of the document in number order (with apparently no way of sorting it differently); click on that superscript number and it takes you back to the referring point in the body of the document. Very neat, and it works in *.doc format.

Unfortunately they want the bibliographic references to be in the form (Morgan 1948), with a Bibliography at the end in alpha order.

I have been struggling with OO's Bibliographic function, and finally achieved something near what is required. In the body of the text you get a grey box saying 'Bibliography entry', which if you click on it gives you Author and Title, and can be expanded to show all the fields. At the end of the document is a nice Bibliography in alpha order. The 'Bibliographical entry' doesn't hot link to the Bibliography, nor the reverse - as the 'Footnote' version did.

When you save this in *.doc format, and then re-open it, you find all the 'Bibliographical entry''s have been replaced by the relevant (Author Year), but there is no hotlinking at all, they are dead text. I.e. The 'Footnotes' hot link in *.doc format, but the 'Bibliography entries' don't.

I have tried other methods, such as crosslinking, but they seem to replace the calling text with a superscript number when saved in *.doc format. All I need is a way of making a block of text a 'calling' hotlink to another 'target' block of text in the same document, and vice versa.

Ideally I would want (Morgan 1948) to hotlink to the entry in the alpha sorted Bibliography at the end, and vice versa, in *.doc format. Is this not possible?

Any help appreciated - thanks
Open Office 4.1.7 on Windows 7
jrkrideau
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Re: Bibliography hot links

Post by jrkrideau »

Footnotes/endnotes are not bibliographic entries. I have not tried AOO's bibliographic system in quite a while but I remember it as pretty horrible. You would be much better off using a dedicated bibliographic system which will integrate smoothly with AOO, LO, or Word.

I would suggest having a look at Zotero. It will do everything from downloading a reference from a university library to correctly formatting the citation and bibliographic entry in any of literally a few thousand journal styles with a few clicks.

It also means your reference list is available for other papers.
LibreOffice 7.3.7. 2; Ubuntu 22.04
John_Ha
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Re: Bibliography hot links

Post by John_Ha »

You may find ZoteroBib simpler than the full Zotero as it just does bibliographies.

Be sure to do all your work by saving in .odt format and consider it to be the master.

When completed, create a .doc as a copy and grapple with any conversion problems. If you save as .doc while editing you may find edits don't stick and need to be redone. See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for a description of differences and for why you should always work in, and save Writer files as .odt.

I would set up a simple document with a few bibliographic entries and check it converts to .doc OK. It will be easier to diagnose problems with a simpler document.

You may find LibreOffice does a better job converting your .odt file to a .doc file as its export filter is better. You may also find a file conversion site like zamzar.com does a better job of converting .odt to .doc format.

Ask if they will accept a .docx file and, if so, try using LO to save as a .docx file - it may work better. If it saves properly in .docx, try converting the .docx to a .doc - it may work better.

As a final workaround borrow a PC with MS Word and do the final tweaking in Word. You can buy legitimate copies of older versions of Word for pennies in eBay. You can buy MS Word monthly for £6/mth - one month should give you plenty of time to finalise the document.
Last edited by John_Ha on Mon May 10, 2021 2:13 pm, edited 2 times in total.
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit

See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.

Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
jrkrideau
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Joined: Sun Dec 30, 2007 10:00 pm
Location: Kingston Ontario Canada

Re: Bibliography hot links

Post by jrkrideau »

@ John

I had not seen Zoterobib. Looks interesting but if one is writing many reports/papers I think I'd go for the full Zotero. for a single paper Zoterobib looks like a good bet.

I have a couple thousand refs at least.
LibreOffice 7.3.7. 2; Ubuntu 22.04
John_Ha
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Joined: Fri Sep 18, 2009 5:51 pm
Location: UK

Re: Bibliography hot links

Post by John_Ha »

I deleted part of my post above while editing it to add the bit about MS Word so I hope it is now more or less back to what it was :(
LO 6.4.4.2, Windows 10 Home 64 bit

See the Writer Guide, the Writer FAQ, the Writer Tutorials and Writer for students.

Remember: Always save your Writer files as .odt files. - see here for the many reasons why.
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