Citation Management

There will always be more research in your field than you can possibly read…Figure out how to use a citation manager early on.

Citation Management Tools help you keep track of the sources you’ve found and easily cite them using standard formats.

Citation Managers

Citation Managers are personal citation databases and bibliography creators that allow you to import, store, organize, and share your research citations. They save you valuable time and energy by automatically capturing citations, generating bibliographies, and serving as a custom library of sources for you.  Most citation managers will allow you to annotate sources, attach PDFs and other file types, as well as share content with others. They will automatically format your bibliographies into whatever citation style you need (APA, MLA, Chicago, and many more). These can be invaluable tools in tracking your research and resources.

The Research Commons at UW are a great resource for citation management. In addition to information about citation management software, you’ll also find guidance on using quick citation generators found in databases and a few citation-generating websites.

Choosing a Citation Manager: Pros and Cons

UW Libraries provides support for three citation managers: Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote Basic. Most citation managers provide the same basic features including saving citation, organizing citations into folders or libraries, and generating bibliographies and citations as you write.

Choosing a citation manager depends on your own preferences and work style. Typically, it is a good idea to talk to other researchers in your department, discipline, or research team to see if a particular citation management tool is commonly used by people you work with.

Many research groups use citation managers collaboratively, and certain fields tend to gravitate towards a specific tool. Check with colleagues in your field to see what others are using, browse a comparison chart of tools and refer to the Citing Sources Research Guide to help you decide which tool is best for you.

 

Zotero is a desktop and web-based citation management tool that provides a “save to” widget, works with Microsoft Word and Google Docs, allows for group collaboration for shared sources, and gives users unlimited free citations and storage up to 300MB. Additional storage is billed annually. The desktop version of this application also has a free PDF annotation tool, which can read any PDF saved to your computer.

 

Mendeley is a desktop-based citation management tool that also provides a “save to” widget, works with Microsoft Word, allows you to annotate PDFs, lets you create 5 groups with up to 25 members each, and gives users unlimited free citations and storage up to 2GB. Additional storage is billed monthly.

 

EndNote Basic is an online citation management tool with features such as a “save to” widget, provides direct export from the UW catalog and some databases, works with Word, lets you share folders, and is free of cost. This tool is often used in the medical and natural sciences.

 

Which Citation Tool Should I Choose?

Take a look at this process flowchart to help you decide which citation tool is right for you.