timbp bioscience editor

Thanks to the Editorium update newsletter, I just heard about a really useful macro for Word 2000 and Word 2003.

Reference Checker will check that every citation in your document matches an entry in the reference list, and that everything in the reference list is cited in the text. I expect this to improve my productivity significantly.

This is the kind of task I expect computers to do for me, but the wide variety of reference formats made me think I would never see a program like this. The website claims this macro works with numbered and author-date citations. Even those two categories have many variations. So far, Reference Checker has handled all the styles I’ve tested it on. A few minor problems, but even after sorting them out, I had spent much less time than usual for checking the references.

Reference Checker is available from http://goodcitations.com/index.html. There is a 10 day free trial, and a licence key costs £75. It only works in Windows, and only for Word 2000 and Word 2003.

Anyone involved in academic writing should consider buying this software.