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Outdated: Northwestern Elements

Northwestern Elements is web-based warehouse of information about scholarly products.

Import in Bulk

If the user has a well-curated library in a reference manager like EndNote or Google Scholar, the bibliography can be imported in bulk. Since this is considered manual entry it should only be used as a last resort, since the metadata for manually entered items is not always complete.


Manually adding a bulk import from a BibTex or RIS File:

  1. Click on + add symbol in the “My Summary” section on your Elements homepage
  2. Click on perform a bulk import below the list of item type options.
  3. Click on Choose File and find the reference file on your computer
  4. Click on Open to import the file
  5. Choose BibTeX (.bib) or Reference Manager/Endnote (.ris), depending on the file type being imported.
  6. Click on Upload

Exporting Files from Google Scholar to Elements:

  1. Log in to your Google Scholar author page.
  2. Check the box next to the article(s) you wish to export.
  3. Click on Export and select “BibTeX”.
  4. The next page should look like the one below.   
  5. Depending on your browser, save the page to a directory you can easily find e.g. Desktop.
  6. Log in to your Elements account.
  7. Navigate to Menu, then Import.
  8. Select BibTex for the File Type.
  9. Select Choose File and navigate to the file you just saved from your Google Scholar profile.
  10. Click “Open” once you have selected the file
  11. In the example below, Elements recognized that this article already existed in the Elements profile and provided the option to Import as new, Overwrite existing, or Do no import.
  12. Select the appropriate box and click on Import.