The place you are most likely to import references from is an online bibliographic database. There are more and more bibliographic databases becoming freely available on the Web. If you are a university student or faculty member, you will have access to many proprietary bibliographic databases on the Web. The easiest way to import online bibliographic records into Biblioscape is through "Direct Export". It is supported by many online databases. After finishing your search, select the references you want to save. Click the "Direct Export" button or hyperlink. The selected references will be automatically imported into your bibliographic software.
"Direct Export" is a way to transfer bibliography records in a file through your web browser and trigger an import operation automatically. It is widely supported by EndNote, Reference Manager, and ProCite. Biblioscape supports Direct Export as well.
Add Direct Export support in IE
Adding Direct Export support in IE is easy. In Biblioscape, go to "Tools | Options". Click the button "Associate with Biblioscape" under the label "For IE users, ...". If you decide not to use Biblioscape after evaluation, you can associate Direct Export back to EndNote by clicking "Associate with EndNote".
Add Direct Export support in FireFox
Adding Direct Export support in FireFox takes more steps. First, you need to do the same things that are required for IE. That is, to go "Tools | Options" window "Import/Export" tab in Biblioscape. Click the button "Associate with Biblioscape" under both "For IE users, ..." and "For Netscape users, ...". Next, click a Direct Export link to configure and test it. You can go to http://www.bmj.com and do a search. Select a couple of records, check the radio button "download to citation manager" and click the "Go" button on the left.
In the next screen, click the link "Download All Selected Citations to Citation Manager".
You will be prompted to select which program you want to import the records into. Click "EndNote".
You will be prompted with the following window. Click "OK". Your references in BMJ will be automatically imported into Biblioscape. If you don't want to be prompted by this window again next time you do Direct Export, check the box "Do this automatically for files like this from now on".
Use Direct Export
Direct Export is supported by many bibliographic database web sites including EBSCO, ERIC, Elsevier, OVID, OCLC, etc. Northwestern university library has a web site listing detailed steps on how to use Direct Export for many well known sites. The EndNote web page also lists all major citation database web sites supporting Direct Export, as well as a brief instruction for each site.
Tip: Direct Export and Zotero
Zotero is a Web browser FireFox based reference manager. If you have Zotero installed, Direct Export will not work by default, because Zotero will intercept the download file and import the references into Zotero instead. To make Direct Export work, you have to either disable Zotero or turn off this feature in Zotero. To disable Zotero, go to "Tools | Add-ons" in FireFox. Select Zotero and click the button "Disable". If you still want to use Zotero, you can click the "Options" button. On the "General" tab, uncheck the box "Use Zotero for downloaded RIS/Refer files". Click OK button. You need to restart your FireFox browser for this new setting to work.
Import from the Web without Direct Export
There are still many web sites that don't support Direct Export. You have to display the search result in a tag format. Then, go to "File | Save As..." in your web browser and save the page as a plain text file. Next, you can go to "File | Import" in Biblioscape and pick the right import filter for the file. For those sites that don't support "Direct Export", you can also use the Biblioscape integrated web browser to do the search. After displaying the results in the specified format, click on the "Capture References" button. You can then chose the import folder, make sure the correct import filter is selected, and click the Start button to finish the import.
Import files with extension: brf, enw, ris, and ciw
Once you have chosen to add Direct Export support in Biblioscape, you can import Refer files, RIS files, and Ovid export files directly into Biblioscape. All refer files that end with *.brf will be associated with Biblioscape. You can double click this file, and it will be automatically imported into Biblioscape. Your EndNote export file that ends with *.enw, Reference Manager export file that ends with *.ris, and Ovid export file that ends with *.ciw will also be associated with Biblioscape. You can double click those files. Biblioscape will automatically import those files with the correct import filter.