Citation Management Software
Citation management software, a.k.a. reference management software or personal bibliographic management software, can help you with:
- organizing references, PDFs, images, data sets, webpages etc.
- taking notes on references and annotating PDFs and searching notes later
- formatting bibliographies and in-text citations in hundreds of citations styles
- sharing references and collaborating on projects with colleagues
This guide will overview a few pieces of citation management software, including Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote (Web and Standalone), and Papers, to help you choose and use them. Remember, if you need to use more than one throughout your academic career, there are methods to transfer your data from one to another.
Access to Citation Management Software
- Zotero
Free to access software and first 300MB online storage. Unlimited storage with Mines email account! - EndNote Basic (Web only)
Free for Mines affiliates. Get an account by going to Web of Science database through the library link (Connect VPN if off-campus) and click on the “EndNote” tab on the top to Register. Access through www.myendnoteweb.com with your individual account - EndNote Desktop - discounted purchase for edu
$112.99 Students; $214.99 Faculty and staff. - Mendeley
Free access to software and first 2GB online storage. - Papers
Available for both Windows and Mac as of October 2016. $79; Student license $49. - JabRef
Designed for LaTex. Open source. Free to access.
Factors to consider for choosing a citation management software
- Cost: free, one-time purchase, or subscription.
- Types of reference you use the most: research articles v.s. images\media
- Functions you need the most: organization, annotating, write-n-cite etc.
- Collaboration needs: share with other within or outside research groups or not.
For example,
| If you... | Consider to use ... |
|
… archive web pages and import citations from government sites, blogs, social media etc. |
Zotero or Mendeley |
|
… annotate and index PDF often |
EndNote Desktop or Mendeley |
|
… extract citation data from PDFs often |
Mendeley, Zotero, or EndNote Desktop |
|
… use mobile capabilities |
Mendeley, EndNote Web, Zotero (3rd party app) |
|
… manage and caption many images |
EndNote |
|
…customize bibliographic style often and need stable Write-N-Cite |
EndNote |
|
… use LaTex editing exclusively or intensively |
JabRef or BibTex |
|
… share with others (including external collaborators) a lot |
Mendeley, Zotero |
Please see the table below for comparison of features across several citation management software. They may help you choose one.
Example Workflows for Using a Citation Management Software
To consider which citation management software to choose, you need to consider which one would work the best for your research workflow involving literature. Here are some example workflows.
Caution with using citation management software
- Garbage in, Garbage out - Your citations will be only as good as the data fed to the tool. If a database misspelled an author's last name, the citation will have the misspelling, unless you correct it.
- Be careful with using Find Fulltext function - Some citation management tools specialize in downloading files from databases. Remember to connect to VPN or setup proxy to use the function properly if you are off-campus. Our licensing agreements with database vendors prohibit excessive downloading. Please be aware of any automated file import features that may be activated in your citation management programs! The following links may be needed to setup your Find Fulltext .
- Open URL: https://mines.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/openurl?institution=01COLSCHL_INST&vid=01COLSCHL_INST:MINES
- Mines Proxy prefix: http://mines.idm.oclc.org/login
Comparison of Popular Citation Management Software
| EndNote Basic (Web only) | EndNote Desktop | Zotero | Mendeley | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Origin |
Commercial product started early from Thomson Reuter. Now with Clarivate Analytics |
Open source; grant funded startup. |
Open source tool originated in biomedical community; now with Elsevier. |
|
| Cost - Access/software | Free for Mines affiliates |
$112.99 Students |
Free | Free |
| Cost - Cloud storage |
Unlimited with Mines Web of Science subscription / In general, 2 GB (50,000 references) |
Unlimited |
First 300MB free; $20/year for next 2 GB and higher for more |
First 2GB Free; various charges for storage and group capacity |
| Linking to PDF and other files | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Compatibility with word processing programs | MS Word |
MS Word, OpenOffice, Mathematica, Pages, LaTex through BibTex |
MS Word, OpenOffice, Google Docs |
MS Word, OpenOffice, BibTex |
| Citation style modification |
Most popular styles available. No modification. |
Most popular styles available. Can modify /add new styles. |
Most popular styles available, difficult to modify |
Most popular styles available, difficult to modify |
| Mobile capabilities |
Mobile site |
Mobile site. iPad App |
Mobile site, Firefox extension |
Mobile site, iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android App. |
| Searching across external database | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Importing citations from other databases | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
|
One click to Find Fulltext |
No | Yes | No | No |
| Extracting citation data from PDF | No | Yes, quality varies, needs embedded metadata | Yes, quality varies, can extract citation without embedded metadata | Yes, quality varies, can extract citation without embedded metadata |
| Browser plugin to extract citation from web pages | Yes, quality varies | Yes, quality varies | Yes, can save snapshots of web pages | Yes, can save snapshots of web pages |
| PDF Annotation and highlighting | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Searching PDFs and annotations | No | Yes | Yes for PDFs and notes; not for annotations in PDFs | Yes |
| Collaboration | Private groups | Private groups | Private and public groups | Private and public groups; Free version with up to 25 people in a group and 5 private groups max. |
| Open Web API | No | No | Yes | Yes |