The Business of Editing: Creating Multiple Journals Datasets Simultaneously

I have written in past essays (see, e.g., The Business of Editing: Journals, References, & Dollars and The Business of Editing: Cite Work Can Be Profitable) about the Journals macro and how useful it is in my editing work. But the usefulness of the macro has always been tempered by the size of the dataset I am using. For example, the sizes of my current datasets are: American Chemical Society (ACS), 30,922; PubMed/American Medical Association (AMA), 98,669; Chicago/American Psychological Association (APA), 1981; and Harvard, 349. Clearly, my PubMed/AMA dataset is the most useful and reflects the type of projects I usually edit.

The other Journals datasets are increasingly being called on, yet at the moment, with the exception of the ACS dataset, they have too few names to be very useful.

The key to many of the macros in EditTools is the dataset; the larger the dataset, the more powerful the macro that uses the dataset. Consequently, how fast a dataset can be built is important.

Over the different versions of EditTools, changes have been introduced to the Journals Manager that were designed to increase the speed and efficiency with which Journals datasets are built. Originally, each entry variation to the dataset had to be made individually. To speed things up the Multiple Entry process was created. It allowed you to enter multiple variations at one time.

But you were still limited to dealing with a single dataset.

Journals version 7 changes that — now you can add entries to as many as five different datasets simultaneously. In addition, you no longer have to manually create each variation; many variations can be created automatically.

Switching to the Multiple Datasets Entry Screen

The first time you open the Journals Manager in EditTools v7, you will see the same Manager you have seen before (shown below) with one exception — the addition of the checkbox (circled in image):

Original Journals Manager Screen

Version 7 offers the Switch to Enhanced Journals Screen checkbox (#1 above). When you check the box, the dialog changes to the enhanced dialog shown here, which becomes the default:

New Enhanced Journals Manager Screen

If you do not need the multiple-dataset capability, you can return to the original single-dataset capability by checking the Switch to Original Journals Screen (#2), which will become the default journals entry screen again.

The enhanced screen allows journal entries to be added concurrently to as many as five different datasets. When you first open the enhanced screen, the available files are labeled Custom #1 through Custom #5 (#A and #B in above image). However, you can rename these to whatever you would like by double-clicking on the current name in the Always Correct Journal column to open the renaming dialog. For example, double-clicking PubMed/AMA (#3) opens the renaming dialog shown here:

Renaming Dialog

Enter the new name in the provided field (#4), and click OK. The name will be changed immediately to the new name, both in the Always Correct Journal column (#3) and at the corresponding name in the File Data to Show fields (#5).

The enhanced screen can be used to enter a single title, just as in the original screen. In the example shown below, the journal name being entered is Physiol Meas (#6). That form is fine for PubMed/AMA (#7), but not for the other datasets. So, in the fields for the other datasets, the correct forms are entered (#8 to #10). When Add (#11) is clicked, all four datasets are updated simultaneously — a significant timesaver.

Example Journal Entry

It is not necessary to make use of all of the dataset fields. You can use one, five, or any number between. Only those in which the Correct to field has an entry will be updated. In other words, if only the PubMed/AMA dataset is to be updated with the information in #6 and #7, then #8 through #10 are left empty. Clicking Add (#11) updates only the PubMed/AMA dataset — even though three other datasets are identified.

It is important to note that the journal names that appear in #7 through #10 are what the entry in #6 (and the multiple entries that will appear in #8 in the “Multiple Journal Name Entry Dialog” image below) will be changed to. In this example, when Add (#11) is clicked, the Chicago/APA dataset will have added to it the instruction to change Physiol Meas to Physiological Measurement in a document when the Journals macro is run and the Chicago/APA dataset is chosen. Similarly, the ACS dataset will gain the instruction to change Physiol Meas to Physiol. Meas. when the Journals macro is run and the ACS dataset is chosen.

The New Multiple Journal Name Entry Dialog

When the Multiple Entries button (#12 in the “Example Journal Entry” image above) is clicked, both the original and enhanced screens give access to the new Multiple Journal Name Entry dialog shown here:

Multiple Journal Name Entry Dialog

This dialog is different from the dialog that appears in in earlier versions of EditTools. The new Multiple Journal Name Entry dialog offers new options, many of which can be preset as default options, that are designed to make entry of multiple items into a single or multiple datasets quick and easy.

Previously, you had to manually enter trailing punctuation; now you can either individually set the trailing punctuation each time or preselect some (or all) (#1) as the default (#2). (If you copy text and paste it in the Text to Add field [#6], and in doing so include ending punctuation, you can tell the macro to ignore that trailing punctuation by checking the Ignore punctuation at the end of entry string box [#5].) Also in earlier versions, if a journal name began with “The” and/or included either “and” or “&”, you had to manually change them. For example, if the journal name was The Journal of Rise & Shine, to enter The Journal of Rise & Shine plus Journal of Rise & Shine, The Journal of Rise and Shine, and Journal of Rise and Shine, you had to enter each variation manually. Now you just need to add checkmarks to the Variations (#3) options.

The same is true for the different capitalization options (#4), except that the Title Case option also has options that are accessed by clicking the Edit button (circled in the above image), which opens this dialog:

Journals Title Case Manager

Here you tell the macro which words, when the Title Case option is checked, should always be lowercase unless they are the first word in the journal name. Consider the example shown below (#10). Note the option choices made (#11, #12, and #13). Clicking Add (#14) automatically adds the title and the variations to the main field (#15).

Journals Manager Multiple Entry Options

More than 50 variations are being added concurrently. You can see all of them at the Journals page at the wordsnSync website; we would need to add four additional images here to display them all.

Once you have generated the variations on a journal name that you want, you can add them to one or more of your journal datasets. The combination of the changes in the generation of variations and the ability to concurrently update up to five datasets makes creation of journals datasets a quick, efficient, and easy process.

The new enhanced Journals screen and the improved Multiple Journal Name Entry screen will enable you to build Journals datasets quickly. One thing to note: If a journal name (or variation) already exists in a dataset, a duplicate will not be added. Only unique names are added. Consequently, it does not matter if one of the Journals datasets already has, for example, The Rise & Shine Journal in it; that particular entry will be ignored for that dataset and the remaining variations that are not duplicates, such as The Rise and Shine Journal and Rise & Shine Journal, will be added.

Building datasets in EditTools is easy; building multiple journals datasets simultaneously in EditTools is also easy.

Richard Adin, An American Editor

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