Citation Managers

What is a Citation Manager?

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

Which ones are supported by SMC?

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. 

EndNote Basic: The free, web-based version of EndNote. Allows you to store 50,000 references in the cloud and provides 2 GB of PDF attachment storage. Many citation styles are available, and you can download a plugin that works within Microsoft Word ("Cite While You Write"). Training materials are available. 

EndNote Desktop: Provides complete access to EndNote's features and will sync across multiple computers and to your EndNote Web account. "Cite While You Write" is included. Storage space is unlimited and there are over 6,000 available citation styles. The desktop version allows you to annotate PDFs directly within the program. There is a student discount.

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.

Which one should I choose?

Program demo videos:

Comparison charts:

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