Citation managers: how to stop losing sources and fixing bibliographies
Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote and Paperpile all format references for you. Here is how they differ, and how to choose the one that fits your field.
By Academic Writing Club Newsroom · Updated
Every research paper ends with the same chore: a reference list in exactly the right style, with every source you cited and none you did not. A citation manager, sometimes called a reference manager, does most of that work for you. Here is what these tools do, how the widely used ones differ, and how to decide which to learn.
What a citation manager does
Binghamton University Libraries sums up the job in a list. A citation manager imports citations straight from library databases as you search. It saves and organizes them, and holds the PDFs of articles and chapters alongside. It inserts citations and footnotes into your document as you write, and builds the bibliography in whichever style your course asks for. Most also let you share folders of sources with classmates or co-authors.
The payoff grows with the project. For a short essay with six sources, typing the references by hand is manageable. For a senior thesis or a dissertation with a hundred sources, keeping track by hand is where references go missing.
Zotero
Zotero is free and open source, developed by an independent nonprofit organization. It is built around collecting: as you browse, it recognizes research on the page, whether a journal article, a preprint, a news story or a library book, and saves it with a click. You can sort items into collections, tag them and create saved searches. It inserts citations directly inside Word, LibreOffice and Google Docs, and supports more than 9,000 citation styles.
Zotero stores your library on your own computer and does not require an account. Syncing to the web is optional, and you can share a library with as many people as you like at no cost. Binghamton’s librarians note that it has a strong user community and tends to be more popular in the humanities and social sciences. Its free cloud storage is smaller than Mendeley’s, at 300MB. For a one-off reference list, its makers also offer ZoteroBib, a quick bibliography tool that needs no setup.
Mendeley
Mendeley is free and, in Binghamton’s comparison, tends to be more popular in the sciences. It is strong on PDFs: you can drag in single papers or whole folders, and a Watched Folders option imports anything you save into a chosen folder automatically. A browser importer saves references as you research online. You can highlight and annotate papers inside the app, and Groups let course-mates or co-authors build a shared library. The free account comes with 2GB of storage, and AI features help you find what you need across your library.
EndNote
EndNote, made by Clarivate, is a commercial product. It offers more than 7,000 citation styles, including APA, MLA and Chicago, with instant switching between them, and syncs your library across devices.
There is also EndNote Basic, a free, simplified version that works only online. Binghamton’s guide lists it at 2GB of cloud storage and up to 50,000 records. Because it has no desktop program, it is not the choice if you often work without an internet connection.
RefWorks, now EndNote Fusion
Some university libraries, the University of Pennsylvania’s among them, provide RefWorks to their students, so you may find it waiting on your library’s website rather than having to choose it. It is a cloud-based reference manager built for institutions: you capture sources from almost anywhere, organize them, share projects with others and reach your library from any device, while the library sets up accounts and can supply its own house styles. Clarivate, which also owns EndNote, has moved RefWorks under the EndNote name: the RefWorks sign-in address now opens EndNote Fusion, which is sold to universities as a site license.
Library guides differ on it. The University of Pennsylvania’s librarians call RefWorks a well-established platform with limits when working with PDF files, and Penn State’s libraries do not recommend their limited version of it for graduate students who need advanced features. If your library offers it, ask your librarians what your license includes.
Paperpile
Paperpile is a subscription service built around the browser and Google’s tools. You sign in with a Google account, and it has plugins for both Google Docs and Word, plus support for BibTeX and LaTeX. It comes with a 30-day free trial and an academic discount, after which it needs a paid subscription. It suits students who already write in Google Docs and want their references there too.
How to choose
Penn State University Libraries makes a useful point: the popular citation managers all provide the same basic features, and much of the rest is personal preference. So the deciding questions are practical ones.
Ask what your advisor, lab or classmates use, and whether one tool dominates your field. Sharing a library is far easier when everyone uses the same software. Check which tools your library supports, because its librarians can help you with those. Think about where you work: if you need your sources offline, choose a tool with a desktop program. And if you want something you can keep using free after you graduate, the free tools are worth that consideration.
Whichever you pick, start early. A citation manager set up in your first semester pays off in every paper after it. If you do switch later, the main tools can transfer data between each other.
