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Citation Managers: Zotero & Mendeley

This guide provides basic information about citation management tools and software.

What are citation management tools?

Invaluable tools for researchers

 

They:
 

  • allow you to store and organize your citations all in one place.

     
  • allow you to import your citations from a wide range of scholarly platforms including all the major databases and web sources including journal sites and Google Scholar.

     
  • allow you to attach the full-text PDF to the relevant citation - both for free/Open Access documents and articles that the College Library subscribes to.

     
  • format your in-text citations and bibliography at the click of a button.

     
  • allow multiple project members to add, edit and share citations.

     
  • work with a range of research data analysis and screening/extracting software including NVivo, Rayyan, SRDR+ etc.

 

Why bother?

Saves time & makes team research easier

 

Most popular, free citation management tools available today are fairly easy to learn and make formatting your in-text citations and bibliographies a breeze.  Typical features include:

 

  • the ability to format your in-text citations at the click of a button.
     
    • supports both narrative and parenthetical citations
       
    • supports multiple works for the same in-text citation

       
  • the ability to create your bibliography in any one of hundreds of citation styles.

     
  • the ability to re-format your citations and bibliography into a new citation style in seconds.

     
  • The ability to create groups so that everyone on your research team can log in and add citations to a particular project.

A note about privacy

Please note that the tools mentioned in this guide store data on US-based servers.  As a result, your personal information may be accessed by US authorities under the US Patriot Act.