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*Biology*

Why use citation management tools?

Citation management tools allow one to:

  • Collect bibliography and automatically create citations formatted in a wide variety of citation styles.
  • Save citations for use in current and/or future assignments and other projects
  • Organize citations into folders in order to customize bibliographies by topic or project
  • Add notes and additional metadata to citations
  • Share citations with others
  • Store citations online and gain access to them from multiple devices or locations

Zotero

Zotero is a free, open-source program that can be downloaded as a browser extension for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari and as a standalone program that works with Windows, Mac, or Linux systems.

  • Gather, organize, analyze, and re-use: Citations, Full-text documents, Web pages, Images, Other objects (e.g., dictionary entries, book chapters)
  • Share these citations and files through the use of "groups" on its website.
  • Offers a "Cite While You Write" add-on which allows you add citations to your paper while you're writing and then automatically formats your bibliography.

Zotero is freely available at www.zotero.org.

The Tri-college How-To Guide to Zotero is here.

Endnote Web

The Tri-Colleges provide free access to EndNote web, a Web-based reference organizer that allows you to:

  • Collect references
  • Organize references
  • Create a formatted bibliography
  • Collaborate with colleagues & students
  • Offers a "Cite While You Write" add-on which allows you add citations to your paper while you're writing and then automatically formats your bibliography.

The Tri-College How-To Guide to EndNote web.

Mendeley

Mendeley is a PDF and citation manager that indexes and organizes your research library into a digital bibliography. The program also allows you to collaborate and share citations with other researchers. Mendeley is both a desktop and a web-based application.

Mendeley is freely available at www.mendeley.com

Downloadable Mendeley User Guide.