EndNote uses Term Lists for author/editor names, journal titles and keywords. Term Lists are created automatically as you enter new terms into these fields in an EndNote library. One benefit of this is that the Term Lists help with data entry. If you begin to enter a name, journal or keyword that you have previously used in that library, EndNote will complete the term for you to speed up data entry. However EndNote does also have files of term lists which can be attached to your library. These can be of use when you want to change your bibliography so that it shows an abbreviated form of a journal title rather than the full title.
In order to do this, go to >Tools >Open Term List >Journals Term List
It is good practice to delete anything already in the Journals Term List at the outset, otherwise your bibliography will remain unchanged. Do this first.
Now click on the Lists tab.
With Journals highlighted, click on Import List.
From C:/Program Files/Endnote X/Terms Lists select whichever file suits your subject, e.g. medical.txt, and click on Open.
This will import several thousand terms into your terms list.
Go back to the Terms tab and you will see these in there.
If you highlight a term and click on edit, you will see that as well as the full title, you have two abbreviated versions of the title, one with punctuation, one without. You can now edit your EndNote style to use one of these abbreviations. To do this click on Edit, Output Styles, if using EndNote on campus the style you want to edit must be saved in your h: drive and your EndNote preferences must be changed. (See http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/endnote_tips_style.php). Open Style Manager and select the style you wish to edit. Click on Journal Names and select the abbreviation you wish to use. Close and save changes, now apply this style to your word document and your journal titles should be replaced with abbreviations.
If this does not happen it is likely to be because:
a) you didn’t delete what was in the journals term list at the outset, or
b) the particular titles for which it has not worked do not appear in the journals term list, where that is the case you can add them manually and re-format the bibliography, this will now pick up the abbreviated version of the title.