Reference managers (also called citation managers or bibliographic management software) offer a way to save, organize and manage references. Many work with word processing software to format in-text citations and bibliographies for papers and theses, allow you to share references, and enable you to attach or link PDFs to a citation record.
Wikipedia comparison of reference management software
RefWorks
- Free to UC Berkeley users
- Web-based: use at any computer with internet access
- Format bibliographies in Word
- Import citations from RSS feeds
- Use UC-eLinks to find the full text of articles from within RefWorks
- Share lists of references or create a group account for co-editing
- From ProQuest
Zotero
- Free (up to 300 MB web storage) browser extension
- Sync Zotero to access your library from any computer with internet access
- Format bibliographies in Word and OpenOffice
- Capture citation data from PDFs and web pages
- Share and collaboratively edit lists of references
- Open source software from the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University
Mendeley
- Free (up to 1 GB web storage) software/web hybrid for PC, Mac, Linux
- Format bibliographies in Word or Open Office
- Sync PDFs to your web account for online access
- Capture citation data from some PDFs
- Search and annotate PDFs
- Share and collaboratively edit lists of references
- From Elsevier
EndNote
- Discounted to UC Berkeley users
- Desktop-based software (plus EndNote Web)
- Format bibliographies in Word or Open Office
- Capture citation data from some PDFs
- Annotate PDFs
- Use UC-eLinks to find the full text of articles from within EndNote
- Share lists of references with other EndNote users
- See our EndNote Support page for tutorials and additional information
- From Thomson Reuters
