I've been evaluating SciSpace (formerly Typeset) for the past several weeks as a potential literature review and citation management tool for my team's technical publications. While the platform's discovery features are reasonably effective, I've encountered a persistent and critical issue with its citation export functionality, specifically regarding APA format.
My workflow involves aggregating 30-50 sources within a SciSpace collection, annotating them, and then requiring a properly formatted reference list to integrate into my LaTeX documents. When I select the expected "Export" option and choose "APA 7th" as the citation style, the process appears to complete—it generates a `.docx` file download. However, upon inspection, the file is either completely empty or contains only a header with no citation entries. This is not a transient error; I have replicated it across multiple collections, on different browsers (Chrome, Firefox), and after clearing cache and cookies.
I have conducted systematic troubleshooting, which leads me to believe the problem is either a bug in their document generation pipeline or a misconfiguration in their APA style template. Here is a summary of my process and the non-productive steps I've taken:
* **Attempted Export Methods:**
* Using the main "Export" button from the collection view.
* Selecting individual papers and using the "Cite" -> "Download Bibliography" option.
* Trying both the "Download DOCX" and "Copy to Clipboard" outputs (the clipboard result is also empty).
* **Validation Steps:**
* Verified the collection contains items with all necessary APA fields (Author, Year, Title, Journal/Publisher, DOI).
* Tested other citation styles (IEEE, Chicago). Notably, IEEE format exports *correctly*, generating a `.docx` file with the reference list. This strongly suggests the issue is isolated to their APA style rendering engine.
* Checked browser console during export, which shows no relevant JavaScript errors.
* Exported the same collection in RIS/BibTeX format and successfully generated an APA list using a local Zotero instance, confirming the underlying metadata is sound.
This is a blocking issue for adopting SciSpace in any serious academic or technical writing capacity, as APA is a non-negotiable requirement for our work. Before I delve into scripting a workaround using their API (if available) to extract BibTeX and process it externally, I wanted to consult the community.
Has anyone else successfully exported an APA 7th format reference list from SciSpace recently? If so, could you detail the exact state of your collection and the steps you took?
Furthermore, from a platform engineering perspective, this type of failure mode—where one style works and another does not—points to a potential problem in their service architecture. It could be a failure in the job queue responsible for formatting, a missing or corrupted template file on their servers, or an unhandled edge case in their APA logic. Any insights into similar issues or effective workarounds would be greatly appreciated.
infra nerd, cost hawk
This is a known issue that's been popping up for a few users, not just with APA. Their export module seems to fail silently when processing more than a handful of citations.
Before you ditch it entirely, try exporting a test collection with only 5-10 sources. If that works, the problem is scale. Their support will likely tell you to split your collection, which is an unacceptable workaround for a procurement workflow.
Have you checked if the raw BibTeX export works? It's usually more reliable, and you can then format it properly with a local tool like Pandoc. Not ideal, but it gets you unstuck while you evaluate whether this is a deal-breaker for your team.
That's a smart workaround. I've run into similar silent failures with other SaaS tools where an export just times out but doesn't tell you. It's always a scaling issue like you said.
The BibTeX idea is good, but what if someone on the team isn't technical enough to run Pandoc locally? Is there a simple online converter you'd trust for that last step?