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
- RefWorks guide
- 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
Zotero
- Zotero guide
- Free (up to 300 MB web storage) browser extension or standalone program
- 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
Mendeley
- Mendeley guide
- Free (up to 2 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
EndNote
- EndNote guide
- 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
Papers
- Papers guide
- Software/web hybrid for Mac and Windows
- Format bibliographies in Word and Pages
- Automatically import PDFs together with citation
- Search, highlight and annotate PDFs
