Citation Management Software

Abstract

When I was an undergraduate student, I used a portable word processor to type all my research papers. (Does this date me too much?) In other words, formatting and typing a paper was a lot of work and had to be properly thought out ahead of time. I would write each reference on an index card, consult my dog-eared copy of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 3rd edition, and carefully write out each element of the citation, double-checking my work along the way. An errant finger could mean using White-Out on the mistake, or worse, retyping the entire page. Today' s students have it easy. They can import references into their own personal database, choose any citation style, and format a bibliography in seconds.When will we admit to ourselves that twenty-first-century students do not identify with the importance of citation style? It is an afterthought, a requirement added on to an assignment from which a professor can reliably deduct points. It is an aggravation to be dealt with right up until the paper submission date. When I was in college, we chose a citation style, usually according to our discipline, and got to know it intimately. This is simply no longer the case. As librarians, how have we adjusted to the emergence of the citation manager? With new products being released every semester and old ones being updated, should we stand behind a single product? Is it our responsibility to buy access for our students and faculty? The answer is, it depends.As librarians, we fuss over citation style details more than anyone else in the academy. As reference librarians, we endlessly answer questions about nuances of citation style management. As teaching librarians, we attest the value of academic integrity by illustrating the differences between intentional and unintentional plagiarism. As technology experts, we demonstrate and explain functions of the tool. And as discerning collection managers, we purchase citation management tools. But with so many choices available, how

Bibliographic Management Software: A Focus Group Study of the Preferences and Practices of Undergraduate Students

“…More than 25 different bibliographic management programs exist; some are free and web-based while others have high registration fees and/or may be difficult to download or install (Mead & Berryman, 2010). Other authors have provided thorough overviews of citation or bibliographic management tools for academic libraries (Childress, 2011;Kern & Hensley, 2011); for this study, we were only concerned with two products in the bibliographic management game, RefWorks and EasyBib.…”

Kuwait University Faculty Usage and Perspectives of Reference Management Software

“…Some researchers com-Open Access Library Journal pared features between two software programs [3] [8] Other researchers compared more software. Hensley [9], for example, examined the features, benefits, and drawbacks of four popular RMSs-RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley-from the perspectives of both librarians and patrons. Likewise, Gilmour and Cobus-Kuo [10] compared four RMSs-CiteULike, RefWorks, Mendeley, and Zotero-in terms of their features and accuracy of generated bibliographies.…”

Reference Management Software: A Comparative Analysis of JabRef and RefWorks

“…According to [22], the RefWorks reference management software is the web-based and compatible with the entire platform. However, [22] also indicated that user easily can adopt interface to export the references into RefWorks.…”

“…According to [22], the RefWorks reference management software is the web-based and compatible with the entire platform. However, [22] also indicated that user easily can adopt interface to export the references into RefWorks. Furthermore, [22] stated that RefWorks reference management software can attach feature, researchers can upload up to 100 MB of different types of files, and administrator can increase limit up to 5GB.…”

“…However, [22] also indicated that user easily can adopt interface to export the references into RefWorks. Furthermore, [22] stated that RefWorks reference management software can attach feature, researchers can upload up to 100 MB of different types of files, and administrator can increase limit up to 5GB. According to [23], the RefWorks reference management software is very helpful for the researchers since it is easy to use for the data import, collaboration, and formatting.…”