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Citation Managers

Software and apps to help you organize and format citations for your research papers.

Subscription Management Software

What are Citation Managers?

Citation Management software allows you to save, organize, and share all your references in one location. You can choose from several standard citation styles (like APA, MLA, Chicago, Turabian, etc.) or upload and use additional unique styles (e.g., various American Chemical Society styles) and auto-format in-text citations and reference lists in your papers.

This guide provides an overview of Zotero and Mendeley (free), and EndNote and RefWorks (subscription-based). There are many more to choose from. You can find out about them by doing a little online research or by chatting with your fellow students, supervisors, and faculty colleagues.


What are Citation Managers? -- Zotero & Mendeley (a brief overview)

Portland State University Library. (2017, July 24). What are citation managers?. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/JCTizduU54o 

Functions to Look for in Citation Managers:

Collecting

  • Citations
  • Article PDFs
  • Online links to Articles
  • Remote storage

Organizing

  • Folders / Tags
  • De-duplicating 
  • Search box to your collection of resources

Citing

  • In text citations
  • Bibliography Generation
  • Variety of citation formats
  • Integration with word processors 

Creating

  • Desktop and Web access syncing
  • Trusted backup 
  • Annotation of documents