MGH Guides: Survival Guide for Scholarship, Dissertations, Theses, and Scholarly Projects: Reference and Citation Tools

Introduction

There are quite a number of tools out there for helping you store and organize your articles and also format the citations. Some do all three. You will need to do your own test drives to see which tools fit your needs.

Zotero

Zotero Logo. The Z is in burgundy and the rest of the letters are in black.

Zotero is a free citation management tool whose central feature is that it can easily and accurately import items directly from the web. It has a desktop application as well as a "Browser Connector" to make it work with most major browsers. Zotero also integrates into Microsoft Word and GoogleDocs for easy citation insertion and reference list creation.

New to Zotero? Take the D2L workshop!

Quick Set-Up Instructions

Create your Zotero account
An account isn't required, but in order to sync your account across multiple devices, you'll need to register. You are not restricted to your IHP email and may use whichever email address you prefer.
Zotero Downloads
Select whichever version(s) you want. We highly recommend downloading both the Zotero app and the Zotero Connector plug-in.

Do you need to import your library from RefWorks?

Take a look at our page about Transitioning from RefWorks to Zotero for step-by-step instructions.

More Help

Bellack's Complete Guide to Zotero
Ask a Librarian
For live assistance, please request an appointment with a librarian.
Mobile Apps for Zotero
A list of mobile apps endorsed by Zotero.

More Tools

A free academic social network for organizing, reading, and citing your pdfs. Very popular in the health sciences. Find out more on our Guide to Mendeley.

A fee based tool for organizing, reading, and citing. Can live on your computer or be accessed online. People love the intuitive design and functionality. Free trials are available. (Student rate is about $55)