Free Citation Management Programs

Doug Cook

The Library will not be re-subscribing to RefWorks in the fall. We have been able to track its use and far fewer students and faculty are using the product than we imagined. Other PASSHE libraries have similar low statistics, and have also decided not to renew. Our subscription is paid for by student Tech Fees. Canceling will allow the monies to be used more prudently.

Zotero

The good news is that there are two free alternatives which work very well. Those of you who have RefWorks citation databases will be able to move them to the free software we will be supporting.

One very popular citation manager is Zotero. It is a Firefox add on which uses an MS Word add on to allow reference lists to be created from within Word. An article may be attached to its citation in Zotero making it easy to manage your research. Zotero also allows you to access your citations from multiple computers by synching with a web account.

Mendeley

Another popular alternative is Mendeley, which is a downloadable program. Mendeley works with any browser. It has much the same functionality as Zotero, including the ability to synchronize databases between computers. This software is best at organizing a folder of articles in pdf format.

Personally I am finding Zotero easier to use with more flexibility than Mendeley. Mendeley requires that you download all articles in pdf format to a file on your computer before it really is useful. Zotero, on the other hand, allowed me to create my own workflow as I researched. I will be using both products with EBSCOHOST and will post the results.