Biology: Manage your citations
What is a citation manager?
When you start finding relevant and interesting research publications, you'll want an easy way to store and access your references. That way you can quickly refer back to them and cite them in your own publications. Citation managers help you save, organize, and share citations. Citation managers also allow you to generate lists of references and inline citations automatically.
How to pick a citation manager
Ask around and see what your classmates, advisor, and colleagues use. If it's varied or they don't know, we recommend Zotero.
Developed by the Corporation for Digital Scholarship, a nonprofit organization, Zotero follows a freemium model. Zotero offers 300 MG of storage space for free and additional storage space for a subscription fee. Zotero allows you to:
- use their web app
and desktop app - store citations and documents
- save references directly from the web with browser plug-ins
- cite as you write with Google Docs plug-in
- tag documents
- share private folders and public folders
Other options
Developed by ProQuest, RefWorks is a web-based citation manager that requires an institutional liscense. Stanford Libraries maintains an institutional license. If you are new to RefWorks, then you will want to start with the new RefWorks and use your Stanford email to create an account. The new RefWorks allows you to:
- use their web app
- store citations and documents
- save references directly from the web with browser plug-ins
- cite as you write with Google Docs plug-in
- tag and annotate documents
- share private folders and public folders
- use unlimited storage due to our site license
Developed by Elsevier, Mendeley also follows a freemium model. Mendeley offers 2GB of storage space for free and additional storage space for a subscription fee. Stanford Libraries maintains an institutional license, which provides students, staff, and faculty with additional storage space and enhanced functionality regarding shared folders. Mendeley allows you to:
- use their web app and desktop app
- store citations and documents
- save references directly from the web with browser plug-ins
- tag documents and annotate documents
- share private and public folders
Developed by Clarivate Analytics, a for-profit company, EndNote offers a free web app (EndNote basic) and a desktop app (EndNote X9) that requires a one-time purchase. EndNote allows you to:
- use their web app and desktop app (desktop app requires EndNote X9)
- store citations and documents (document storage requires EndNote X9)
- save references directly from the web with browser plug-ins
- share private folders
- easily save references from Web of Science
