Vote here if you want a Citavi add-on for Scrivener!

Hello Sebastian,

is there a way of migrating from Citavi 6 back to Citavi 5? For me, using Scrivener is definitely more important than the cloud functions of Citavi, which btw are regularly causing errors and I´m already working on a local project.

Best regards,

Markus

Hi, Markus

yes, there is: https://www1.citavi.com/sub/manual6/de/index.html?add_on_converting_a_citavi_6_project.html

Best regards

Sebastian

Thanks a lot, it worked! Only the knowledge items, such as snapshots from pdf attachments, cannot be shown in the preview pane anymore. It shows the message "Exception from HRESULT: 0x80040104", and for every knowledge item I would have to click at the link symbol to jump to the respective reference and open its pdf attachment. Is the knowledge item preview a function that citavi 5 did not have?

Hi Sebastian,

As you see 54 votes are for an add-on. Why are you still not interested in it?

Best regards,

Max

PLEEEEEEEASE, I want to purchase a Citavit license but I need the Scrivener Add-in. Excitedly waiting!

Thank you

Hallo,

nein, die in Citavi 6 neu hinzugekommenen Felder (Übersetzer, Affiliation, ...) werden nicht übernommen.

Viele Grüße

Sebastian

Thanks for the comment!

I don't think a plugin API on the Scrivener side is necessary at all, such APIs change frequently, so constant adaptation would be necessary.

The simplest, most stable and most universal way would be the clipboard. This would make Citavi compatible with all write programs. Even people with Word would prefer this, because a paste via clipboard would be much faster (again) and would avoid the annoyance with stubborn Word fields.

I think sooner or later the placeholder solution with {} will be back. Just have a look at how much less support requests the placeholder solution has produced and how many more questions there are about the Word plugin.

I totally agree with you. I would also love a placeholder comeback, but as the Citavi team seems to prefer AddIn based solutions I don't hope for Citavi/Scrivener compatibility, at least not in the medium run ...

It's by far the most voted idea here: 123 likes! Reason enough to come up with a plugin.... however scriviner is about to roll out version 3 for windows we would hope of course that Citavi 6 would marry Scrivener 3 and not make the mistake and fall for Scrivener 1...

Is there any update on this request? Seems like there is a reasonable number of requests for this bit of functionality...

Dear Peter, thank you for your answer.

Sad to hear that. Let us hope that the Scrivener developers add API to their soft in future.

Kind regards.

Peter, thank you SO much for taking the time to let us know. Thank you also for the effort you guys put in to try and make it happen. At least now we know, and we can all move on with our lives.

Kind Regards

Mandi

Dear Peter,

I am afraid your answer sounds perfectly formal and mostly senseless. Yes, I know for sure now that there is no chance to integrate Citavi with Scrivener. Is it what took more than a year for you to reply your customers?

In the meantime, what about integrating Citavi with LibreOffce as the most popular free and open-source alternative to Microsoft Word? I can remember, I used to integrate LO with Citavi 5, but cannot with the newest version. You are just considering which product to support? Seriously, it takes years? Well, are you going to make a decision in some near future—I am sure it is not only me who would be interested to learn more about it.

And, by the way, what about that patent claim case—haven't developers of Zotero settled it? Is it final? Have tried any alternatives? Or is it OK for Citavi team that it effectively dictates me to use MS Word for writing if I want to use full set of Citavi 6 options?

Sincerely yours,

Andrei

Having discussed many many issues with Peter during my time on the Citavi User Council, I know that this was not an easy answer to write. But this doesn't make it easier to accept. In particular, I don't think it is fair to try and put the blame on the lack of a Scrivener API. While a formal API certainly would make things easier for Citavi, I don't believe there is a need for it. The core of the problem is that the Citavi team removed support for placeholders in Citavi 6. With placeholders, it would be quite simple to use Citavi 6 in Scrivener.

I don't buy the technical reasons for removing the placeholders and I have provided detailed suggestions for how the problem of securing a unique identifier in the webversion can be solved here).

When it comes to the patent claim, I can see that it is definitely easier to give in to the big competitors ludicrous claims of having invented reference management with placeholders years after the emergence of bibtex. But another way of avoiding legal conflict in the US would be to offer a different product for that market (just like US software companies used to provide different encryptions strength for non US users due to export restrictions of strong encryption. But, of course, doing so costs time and money.

So, IMHO, a more accurate description of the reason for not wanting to integrate with Scrivener is: money. In order to survive as a commercial product, Citavi needs to prioritize those market segments where money can be made and reduce the risk of expensive law suits.

Dear Christoph,

I could not agree more with most of your points on dropping the placeholders support in Citavi 6 and lack of efforts to settle the patent problem—if such efforts were ever made. (And, by the way, thank you very much for your research, and questions, and proposals on this topic.)

I would only add that the decision to select the only one text-processor for full support may not be so commercially (not to say strategically) effective as it seemed to the developers when they made it (and I hope it does not seem so to them now). There is a lot of Scrivener users out there, and as the brilliant Scrivener 3 for Windows is about to be released (after a couple of years of intensive beta testing) the number is expected to grow considerably. There is an army of people who prefer LibreOffice Writer not only because it is free, but because it just suits them better that MS Word. There are other text-processors and programs for creative writing on the market. Last but not the least, the people who use Word, they not all seem totally happy with the Citavi add-on, and at least a part of them would prefer old good placeholders system. So I would say it is rather commercially wrong way for the Citavi team to try to ignore this part of their customers. They are making really nice product I have used for long, and I would not be happy to hear they become bankrupt due to this wrong strategy.

Let's demand a Citavi citation API!

For me, the old placeholder system would also be the gold standard.

If this is really not possible, I would like to suggest a standardized and well documented citation interface. The Citavi developers would then only have to develop and maintain a single API in addition to the Word plugin.

I'm very sure for every important word processor and operating system there will be developers who would develop plugins/adddins for their word processor, so that they can communicate with this Citavi API.

For programs with a large number of users, such as Scrivener, users would probably very quickly develop additional programs themselves. If none of the users has the necessary skills, a self-organized crowdfounding would be another promising possibility (for me personally an add-on program for macOS-Word would be worth at least 50 Euro).

In short: If there will be enough demand, the respective programs would receive the corresponding compatibility.

The Citavi team would have no responsibility at all for patents or support. It would only have to guarantee the functionality of the API.

Much less effort than developing and maintaining alternatives for even the 2-3 most important Word competitors. A clear commercial advantage! (not to mention that Citavi will appear even more aewsome and friendly if you support the open-source scene and show yourself openly).

Once the web version is released, this becomes even more important. What use is a web version outside of Windows if there is only the necessary plugin for Windows-Word?

With an API, Citavi could cover all popular platforms and operating systems.

There are already many great user addons for Citavi, so the willingness to contribute is obviously very large.