Citation Management  Tags: citations endnote refworks zotero  

What is a citation? A citation....

• describes a book, journal article, website, or other published item
• gives credit to the originator of an idea, thus preventing plagiarism
• enables the reader to retrieve the item you refer to
• includes the author, title, source (publisher and place of publication or URL), and date

A citation manager is a tool which helps you to store, organize and output your citations in the format you prefer.

In addition to EndNote, Library and Technology Services now supports the web-based RefWorks and Zotero citation management systems, giving the Brandeis research community a choice among three tools to help manage citations, generate bibliographies, and more...

Like EndNote, RefWorks and Zotero allow you to add, store, and organize citations to information resources such as journal articles, books, and websites. But there are some important differences among the three. If you’re already using EndNote, why would you switch to RefWorks or Zotero? Which citation management tool is right for you? Here is a summary - see also the full comparison chart.

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RefWorks is one of the easiest citation management tools to use. RefWorks is web-based for easy access from anywhere as long as you have an Internet connection. Using RefWorks, you can

• easily add citations to create your RefWorks library
• generate bibliographies from your RefWorks library
• use RefShare to share lists of citations with a project team, with research partners, or with classmates/other students
• use Write-N-Cite to cite references from your RefWorks library in Microsoft Word while you write

• Undergraduates might consider using RefWorks for its general ease-of-use, accessibility, and easy-to-generate bibliographies.
• Graduate students doing concentrated research will find the organization options in RefWorks and the Write-N-Cite tool a great help to the research and writing process.
• Faculty may want to consider RefWorks for the RefShare tool, to easily share bibliographies for courses or projects with students and colleagues. Note: Faculty currently using EndNote to transfer publications to the Faculty Activity Report and/or Faculty Guide can continue to use EndNote for their own list of publications, or can export this list easily from RefWorks back into EndNote.

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Zotero is also an easy-to-use open source tool that is accessible via the web—it actually lives right in your browser! Using Zotero, it is especially easy to capture and save citations found on webpages, and to add notes and other information to saved citations for efficient and creative organization.

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EndNote is a very sophisticated citation manager that offers the largest number of citation formats and options. The files reside on the computer which does not make it dependent on an internet connection; it does offer a basic but less functional Web based option; it is considered more difficult to learn and use.