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Scholarly Communication

Creating, Sharing, Promoting and Evaluating Research and Scholarship

Citation Format Guidance

Citation Software

Citation management software (also known as bibliographic software) serves two purposes:

  • Provides a platform to keep track of, organize, and share citations of interest
  • Creates in text citations and automatically generates bibliographies of citations for manuscripts

Options for citations management software, a summary of key differences between them, and the links to download the software are below. If you have questions about choosing citation software, Ask Us!

  EndNote Zotero Mendeley
Cost $115 from RISC Free (open source) Free and premium options. Free option has limits on file storage and sharing citations.
Cloud/Desktop Both Both Both
Technical Support Direct technical support from Clarivate Analytics User community & software developer technical support via online forum User community support; limited direct technical support from Elsevier
Word Processing Compatibility Plug ins for MS Word, PowerPoint (Windows only), OpenOffice, LibreOffice, Apple Pages. Plug ins for MS Word, Google Docs, OpenOffice, LibreOffice Plug ins for MS Word. 
Other Considerations Steeper learning curve; has the most customization features; has "Find Full Text" PDF finder feature. Good browser plugin. Available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari. Harvard/Countway has a getting started guide for Zotero here. Good browser plugin, good at importing data from PDFs. Some problems with citation plugin incompatibility with Macs.