Citation Management for a Happier (Research) Life

The days of having to maintain your references on index cards and painstakingly craft bibliographies manually have been over for decades. But not everyone, including many of our students, have gotten the memo about that. And, those of us who have been enjoying citation management software for years may not be aware of the options currently available, and the additional features that have been added over time.  They offer the promise of less work organizing and managing your references, and more time to spend on your research and writing.  If you don’t currently use citation management software, why not give it a try in 2018?

All the major citation management software options (RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley) allow you to:

• Collect references from databases, library catalogs, Google Scholar and other sources.  There is more than one way to do this, depending on the system you choose; export directly from databases, download citations and upload into the citation management software, or download a plugin to pull citations off any web page.  You can also drag and drop PDFs directly from your computer into the citation management software, and it will harvest the citation information automatically.
• Store your PDFs in the software. There may be a space limits in free versions.
• Organize your citations with folders, subfolders and with tags
• Cite in Word (and in most cases Google Docs), and create references cited lists automatically (with an additional plugin download), as well as creating standalone bibliographies
• Share your citations with individuals and groups within BC and beyond, with varying degrees of ease. There will be limitations on sharing full text of articles due to copyright concerns; there may also be limitations on the number of groups you can share with in free versions

So how do you choose? The “feel” of each system is different, and there are some unique features available to each system.  The University has a subscription to RefWorks, so we are able to access their generally excellent technical support. RefWorks is also a good choice if you want a citation management software that does not have a large desktop component. Even better, when students graduate they can keep their accounts.  EndNote, long the gold standard for faculty, is still popular in some departments, and you may want it for sharing with other researchers.  Contact your department to see if they have licenses for it. Papers has great organization features and is low cost. Mendeley fosters discovery and sharing by opening up other users’ libraries. It also has features to read and annotate PDFs within the program. In addition, they provide tools for finding funding and job opportunities. Zotero provides excellent functionality in a free software not owned by large, for profit vendor (EndNote is owned by Clarivate, formerly Thomson Reuter; RefWorks is owned by ProQuest; Mendeley is owned by Elsevier.)  The Zotero user community is dedicated, helpful, and knowledgeable.  And if you are a dedicated LaTeX user, rather than Word user, you will probably want to use BibTeX/BibDesk.

If you teach undergraduates, your students may be expert users of one or more of the systems, or be familiar with EasyBib or NoodleBib, or they may have had no exposure at all. We would be happy to provide instruction, in your class or at the library.

For more information and assistance with citation management software, please check out our guide, or contact your subject librarian.