Every scientist has to cope with the problem of managing references (or citations, or notes, or literature, or whatever you call it.)  When writing his second paper he discovers that he has to type a number of references that he already typed in when preparing his first paper. This repetitive action calls for a repository of references. In an ideal world many group members submit their references to this repository and after some time a very efficient storage medium has been created.

Pitfalls
Alas. The real world is never like this. And for many reasons. Typos in entries will live for ever, or will give rise to duplicate entries. Incomplete entries will downgrade the usefulness of the database. Inconsistent use of case (uppercase, lowercase, title case) is causing a mess. Different spelling of names will lead to duplicate entries, or to angry readers when they see their name misspelled in a list of references in an article in a high-impact journal. Many programs (or ‘wizards’) that import references cannot deal with extended characters (leave alone Unicode).  Names with diacritics (like umlauts) are dealt with either inconsistently or wrongly.  Partitioning of names into initials, first names and last names is full of traps and many import filters fall in those traps. In this respect the following error in the book Latex by Leslies Lamport (an excellent book and excellent macro package, of course) is typical: on page 141 (Chapter on “The Bibliography Database”) Lamport discusses “von Beethoven, Ludwig”. The name of course is Ludwig van Beethoven, as the name is of Flemish origin. And indeed “Van” is not his middle name.

Having been a member of so many committees in which the quality of various applicant-scientists were compared, I think, I know how to read a curriculum vitae and a publication list.

Please, do not try to magnify your publication list with trash as unrefereed papers and conference abstracts. It is pollution that will irritate the committee.

A serious applicant will lists the following items separately, when applying for a job or applying for promotion:

1. List of refereed papers. With *all* the authors and also in the order in which they appear in the journal. In case of an extreme long list (more than ten), say at least how many co-authors there are . In addition report the number of published pages each article entails.
2. List of conference proceedings, if  they cannot be classified as peer-reviewed. Again with all the authors. And again state the number of published pages for each item.
3. List of popular papers. With all the authors and with the number of published pages.
4. List of invited talks at international conferences, with the names of co-authors if applicable.