Citation Managers

Citation Managers are applications or websites that store and organize citation information. This means that a researcher using a citation manager can quickly find the sources that they are using, and can easily create bibliographies in a variety of citation styles and even create accurate internal citations while writing research papers. 

Citation Managers can help you: 

• Cite in all major citation styles, with some specialized or custom styles
• Directly import from databases and the web
• Build bibliographies with a single click
• Cite using “cite while you write” Word integration
• May allow PDF attaching and annotating
• Allow you to share libraries or folders of citations with their researchers

Zotero: Easy to use, free, open-source program available for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers. Works well with websites and databases. You can download a plugin to use your library in Word. Cloud version syncs to desktop version. Additional file storage available for purchase (300 MG for free). Quick Start Guide is available. 

Mendeley: Social networking options combined with a citation manager. Share papers with other researchers and organizes your citations in a desktop or web-based program. Can import citations from library databases, and import papers to your library that were placed in Mendeley by other researchers. Provides tools to mark-up PDF files.

Program demo videos:

• Zotero Tutorial (from Cal Poly Pomona)
• Getting Started with Mendeley (from Mendeley)

Comparison charts:

• Zotero vs. Mendeley (University of Idaho)
• Comparison including RefWords, JabRef, Paperpile, Citavi, and Colwiz (Munich Entrepreneurial University)
• Comparison including other programs (Wikipedia)