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Reference Management Software

Compare the Top Reference Management Software of 2021

Reference Management Software Guide

What is Reference Management Software?

Reference management software, also known as citation management software, enables students, researchers, and professionals to create reference lists and bibliographies citing other work and researchers. Compare the best Reference Management software currently available using the table below.

  • 1
    figshare

    figshare

    figshare

    We accept any file format and aim to preview all of them in the browser. Academics are busy enough. figshare features aim to help you organize your research and get as much impact for it as possible, without adding time or effort to your day. The Figshare API allows you to programmatically move content to and from Figshare. Documentation is available using Open API Swagger. For examples on what you can do with the API, check out this article on how to use our API. If you are uploading large files or many files, the FTP uploader might be a better option than the broswer. This method allows you to easily and securely upload files in your account directly from your computer by using a secure FTP connection. figshare enables you to host large amounts of data in your online articles with no impact on your infrastructure.
  • 2
    EasyBib

    EasyBib

    EasyBib

    EasyBib is an intuitive information literacy platform that provides citation, note taking, and research tools that are easy-to-use and educational. EasyBib is not only accurate, fast, and comprehensive, but helps educators teach and students learn how to become effective and organized researchers. We cite according to the 8th and 7th ed. of MLA, 7th ed. of APA, and 16th and 17th ed. of Chicago (9th ed. Turabian). Many of our styles are powered by CSL, the Citation Styles Language from CitationStyles.org, which are licensed under a CC-BY-SA license. We check your paper against billions of sources using technology similar to Turnitin. Our institutional business, consisting of EasyBib School Edition and ResearchReady, provide solutions to build the foundation or writing skills and help students practice those skills.
    Starting Price: $9.95 per month
  • 3
    Bookends

    Bookends

    Sonny Software

    Bookends is a 64-bit full-featured and cost-effective bibliography, reference, and information management system for students and professionals. Bookends requires Mac macOS 10.13 or later (including Catalina, macOS 10.15). Bookends is unicode-savvy, so you can mix Roman (English, French, German, etc.) and non-Roman (Japanese, Greek, Hebrew, etc.) characters. A highly configurable, interactive, and editable interface lets you work with reference information the way you want. View Groups or Term Lists (Authors, Keywords, etc.) on the left. In the concise reference view on the right, arrange fields in any order, show just the ones that you find useful, and label them as you like. Editing or entering information is a single click away. Show attachments (pdfs, text files, images, etc.), or use the reference’s URL to show live web pages of its contents. Notecards let you enter, edit, and rearrange your thoughts, and make citing pages in footnotes a snap.
    Starting Price: $39.99 one-time payment
  • 4
    NoodleTools

    NoodleTools

    NoodleTools

    NoodleTools is an online research management platform that promotes critical thinking and authentic research. Students stay organized as they evaluate information, build accurate citations, archive source material, take notes, outline topics, and prepare to write. Three differentiated levels support individual students across grades and abilities. The classroom environment allows librarians and teachers to provide feedback, monitor individual contributions to group work, and view statistics about source use. In contrast to an auto-cite, auto-evaluate product, we support students to engage deeply in research and produce original work. NoodleTools is also designed with online student privacy in mind. Recognize and evaluate relevant, credible sources. Generate accurate MLA, APA, and Chicago references with personal help from experts. Make connections, develop original ideas and articulate arguments.
    Starting Price: $15 per year
  • 5
    ReadCube Papers
    Search across your favorite scholarly search engines (in app and via our handy browser extensions) and enjoy 1-click downloads to quickly add references & full-text PDFs to your library. Check out our personalized recommendation engine and related article feeds to ensure you never miss an important paper again. Papers helps you focus on the task at hand with our full-screen Enhanced PDF reader. Highlight, underline, strike through, make inline notes, draw and add sticky notes. Switch between different documents with tabs, view supplemental files or jump to referenced articles - conveniently linked inline. Papers automatically identifies and matches imported articles with not only the complete metadata, but also available supplemental data, citations and full-text (if available). Papers users can create private shared collections to collaborate with up to 30 other Papers users at a given time. Simply add your collaborator by email and they will be added to your shared folder.
    Starting Price: $3 per month
  • 6
    genei

    genei

    genei

    World-leading document summarization and editing in an easy-to-use AI powered app. Extract keywords and arguments from a document. 94% of users say genei helps them save time by enabling them to find crucial information faster. AI-powered summarization for any PDF or webpage. Improve reading speeds by up to 70% and complete assignments faster. Our AI automatically generates a summary of any uploaded resource in a hyperlinked bullet point format. Write notes twice as fast as you do now. Highlight text and our AI-powered note generation will provide a concise breakdown of the passage in a note-like form. Improve the quality & efficiency of your research now. Summarize any webpage or PDF as you browse, and save documents for later reading with the click of a button. Import, view, summarise & analyse PDFs and webpages. Document management and file storage system. Full notepad & annotation capabilities.
    Starting Price: $5.50 per month
  • 7
    Paperpile

    Paperpile

    Paperpile

    Paperpile offers clean and simple and reference management for the web. Sync your library to all your devices and read and annotate like on paper on your iPad, iPhone, or Android device. Cite your papers in Google Docs and Microsoft Word. Organize your papers with folders, labels and stars. Search your library in real-time. Automatically fix references with incomplete data and clean up duplicates. Download PDFs with one click and sync them directly to your Google Drive. Your files are available immediately on all your devices. Google Drive provides enough storage for even the largest libraries. Highlight the important parts of your papers in different colors. Add comments right where they belong. Use private sharing links to share with everyone, not just Paperpile users. With Paperpile you now can also manage your references collaboratively, and Google Docs makes it easy to collaborate with your colleagues on a paper.
    Starting Price: $2.99 per month
  • 8
    Cite4me

    Cite4me

    Cite4me

    Cite4me is created by students to help other students generate reference pages and title pages for their academic papers. You can also check the content for plagiarism, get your writing proofread and rewritten. No matter what citation style is required, you’ll never need a credit card. Generate as many reference pages as you need, there is no limit. Create an account to keep all references in one place and access them anytime. Our generator works with one of the largest databases of sources. When writing a research project, you will have to conduct intensive research from various resources to gather information, data, and any relevant material that will help you to put excellent paper. In fact, conducting thorough research entails gathering different form of resources, analyzing the information contained in them and disseminating it according to your understanding. Use our cite machine guide to understand the importance of including the sources used for your research.
    Starting Price: $7.89 per paper
  • 9
    scite.ai

    scite.ai

    scite

    scite is a Brooklyn-based startup that helps researchers better discover and evaluate scientific articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by researchers from dozens of countries and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health. Improve the discoverability of your articles and raise the profile of your publications by indexing them with scite. scite reports attract thousands of users a week and generate significant traffic for publisher partners. Support current authors and attract new ones by providing them with data on how their research is being received, whether its been supported, or contrasted and the overall context of citations to their work.
    Starting Price: $7.99 per month
  • 10
    EndNote

    EndNote

    Clarivate

    Did you know that researchers waste nearly 200,000 hours per year formatting citations? Imagine if you could have that time back to spend on your research. EndNote 20 accelerates your research process so you can focus on what truly matters – conducting and sharing groundbreaking research. Easily collaborate across geographic boundaries. Share some or all of your library and set permissions for access. Use tools that find PDFs for you throughout your search process. Then, easily read, review, annotate and search PDFs in your library. Match your paper with relevant, reputable journals using Manuscript Matcher. Create rules to automatically organize references as you work. And, use the new Tabs feature for easier multitasking.
    Starting Price: $110.53 one-time payment
  • 11
    Docear

    Docear

    Docear

    Docear is a unique solution to academic literature management, i.e. it helps you organizing, creating, and discovering academic literature. Among others, Docear offers a single-section user-interface that allows the most comprehensive organization of your literature. With Docear, you can sort documents into categories; you can sort annotations (comments, bookmarks, and highlighted text from PDFs) into categories; you can sort annotations within PDFs; and you can view multiple annotations of multiple documents, in multiple categories, at once. A ‘literature suite concept‘ that combines several tools in a single application (pdf management, reference management, mind mapping, etc.). This allows you to draft your own papers, assignments, thesis, etc. directly in Docear and copy annotations and references from your collection directly into your draft. A recommender system that helps you to discover new literature.
  • 12
    Sciwheel

    Sciwheel

    Sciwheel

    Save references directly from the web, including Google Scholar and PubMed. Whenever you come across an interesting article we’ll save the web link, full citation data and the PDF (when available). You can see your notes and co-author comments without leaving your document. Once you make a note, you can easily search to find them. Notes are accessible wherever you view the article or PDF on the web. Our algorithm suggests articles to ensure you never miss an important paper. You can also search for related articles while writing your paper. Find your references and search multiple databases, all within Microsoft Word and Google Docs. Automatically generate your bibliography in one of 7,000+ styles. Never miss an important article with Smart citation suggestions*. Read, annotate and save articles from any computer, mobile or tablet (Android and iOS). Have all your references, notes and suggested articles available across your devices.
    Starting Price: $9.95 per month
  • 13
    Biblioscape

    Biblioscape

    Biblioscape

    With Biblioscape, you will never need to enter a reference by typing. Just click the "Internet" button while in a reference folder. There are 40 plus popular bibliographic database sites listed each with a short instruction. You can just search the database, select the records you want to download and make a few clicks to capture those records directly into your database. There are many sites supporting direct export of bibliographic records and you can use any web browser to send download records directly into Biblioscape database. Search against university and public libraries catalog inside Biblioscape. Search results will be automatically downloaded into the "Online Search" folder of your Biblioscape database. There are 2,500 plus library connection files pre-made. You can add more easily in Biblioscape.
    Starting Price: $39 one-time payment
  • 14
    Citationsy

    Citationsy

    Citationsy

    Let’s say you’re writing an essay or thesis. You have a bunch of different references in your bibliography, but you don’t know exactly how to format them. Does the title go in Italics? What is et al. and when do you use it? What is APA 5th Edition and how is it different from the 6th Edition? Why are there different editions? This is where Citationsy comes in. What if you never had to think about any of this again? Citationsy lives in the cloud and is accessible from anywhere. Use our iPhone and Android apps to cite books on the go with our barcode scanner and add the Chrome or Firefox extensions to cite websites in 2 clicks. Your citation data is saved in the cloud and backed up every 10 minutes. Never worry about file formats, data loss, or updates ever again. Citationsy is a clean, annoyance-free environment to get your work done in. Say goodbye to flashing ads, notification, cookie banners, and downloads.
    Starting Price: $4.99 per month
  • 15
    wizdom.ai

    wizdom.ai

    wizdom.ai

    With comprehensive and current insights, wizdom.ai helps you explore the rapidly evolving research landscape to assist with your next ground breaking idea. Have all the critical insights about research at your institution and globally, to monitor, evaluate and boost your performance. wizdom.ai provides publishers invaluable intelligence about global research publishing to help them distinguish the most promising research. Track powerful, in-depth analytics about your complete publications portfolio including authors, impact, subject areas and competition. Discover emerging research areas through analysis of global publications, citations and grant trends to launch new journal. Integrate the world’s largest research knowledge graph right on your website to enrich your content and empower readers. Lead your industry using comprehensive analytics to determine and shape the future of your breakthrough research.
  • 16
    BibBase

    BibBase

    BibBase

    BibBase.org is the easiest way to set up and maintain a scientific publications page. Users simply maintain a list of publications and BibBase does the rest. The list can be either a BibTeX-file or come from DBLP, Zotero, or Mendeley. Whenever the user's page is visited, BibBase dynamically renders an always-up-to-date publication list. In addition, BibBase adds all publications to a database where they are indexed by keyword and can be searched. There are a number of ways for you to generate your BibBase page. These options are sorted from most to least recommended. Once you have selected your source and your publication list has been generated, you will be given instructions on how to embed it on your page. Sign up for one of our premium plans to get a personal website hosted by BibBase. This makes it even easier to maintain your web presence and publications list. You can create your website for free using our easy-to-use yet powerful website editor.
    Starting Price: $4 per month
  • 17
    CiteRight

    CiteRight

    CiteRight

    Knowledge tools for careful litigators in a hurry. Draft Faster. Move from a precedent to a finished draft by cutting out the repetitive, mindless work. Automate Citations. Produce perfectly formatted citations and books of authority with CiteRight’s Microsoft Word plugin. Recover Lost Knowledge. Get time-consuming work done so that you can focus on what really matters. Explore. Citation Tools Research and writing. Together at last. CiteRight helps you save cases from online legal databases and makes them available right where you are — inside Microsoft Word. Click on a case to cite it automatically. No Blue Book or McGill Guide required! One-button books of authorities. Done writing your factum? Generate a perfect book of authorities in seconds. Want to make a last-minute change? Click the button again. CiteRight manages your document assembly so you don’t have to. No more searching for that case you remember using that one time.
    Starting Price: $35 per user, per month
  • 18
    MyBib

    MyBib

    MyBib

    Generate formatted bibliographies, citations, and works cited automatically. Cite websites, books, journals, and videos automatically, just search with the title or an identifier. Create bibliographies and citations quickly and accurately. APA, MLA, Chicago & Harvard styles supported (plus others!). 100% free. No ads, privacy trackers, time limits, or restrictions. Super fast! Be done with citing in minutes, not hours. MyBib is a free bibliography and citation generator that makes accurate citations for you to copy straight into your academic assignments and papers. If you're a student, academic, or teacher, and you're tired of the other bibliography and citation tools out there, then you're going to love MyBib. MyBib creates accurate citations automatically for books, journals, websites, and videos just by searching for a title or identifier (such as a URL or ISBN).
  • 19
    Referencer

    Referencer

    Launchpad

    Referencer is a GNOME application to organize documents or references, and ultimately generate a BibTeX bibliography file. It is designed with the scientist/researcher in mind, and "document" may be taken to mean "paper" in general, although Referencer can deal with any kind of document that BibTeX can. Chief among Referencer's capabilities is the automatic acquisition of bibliographic information (metadata) for some kinds of documents. Upon adding a PDF file to a Referencer library file, it will automatically be searched for key identifiers such as a DOI code or arXiv identifier. If either of these is found, Referencer will attempt to retrieve the metadata for the document via the internet. However, metadata fetching for newer additions to arXiv is broken because of the change of format. Import from BibTeX, Reference Manager and EndNote. Referencer will automatically retrieve arXiv, PubMed and CrossRef metadata for PDF documents which have arXiv ID or DOI code.
  • 20
    Bebop

    Bebop

    ALaRI

    Bebop provides a nice web interface to a list of publications stored in a BibTeX file. Bebop is based on a single BibTeX file as database. Listing by year, author, document type, keywords, research area. Search in document titles, generation of keyword cloud, displaying abstract, BibTeX and links to DOI, full text, slides, poster files, exporting to BibTeX. RSS feed of the publication list, unAPI support, zotero compatibility, adding new publications online (either by BibTeX code or by filling in specific fields), better user experience with AJAX. Permanent links to publications and categories, easily embedable into personal websites and CMS-based websites. Bebop uses j4bib to convert the BibTeX file into XML format. The web interface is built on top of the XML data to provide an easy navigation of publications. It is usable by anyone who keeps the list of their publications in BibTeX form. Installation takes 1 minute.
  • 21
    BibGuru

    BibGuru

    BibGuru

    BibGuru is the fast, ad-free way to make citations for your essay, project, or presentation. With BibGuru, you can quickly add all the sources for your paper and make citations in APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, and thousands of other citation styles. A better way to do your bibliography or works cited. Citing a website? Drop the URL in and BibGuru cites it in seconds. Citing a book? Search the title and then click the citation that matches what you need. Citing an article? Just search the title or author and we’ll pull it right up for you. You won’t believe how quick and easy it is. Whether you need a bibliography for APA or a works cited page for MLA, BibGuru has got you covered. Our team has double-checked every rule of those referencing guidelines to make sure BibGuru provides the most accurate computer generated citations to date.
  • 22
    Zotero

    Zotero

    Zotero

    Zotero is the only software that automatically senses research on the web. Need an article from JSTOR or a preprint from arXiv.org? A news story from the New York Times or a book from a library? Zotero has you covered, everywhere. Zotero helps you organize your research any way you want. You can sort items into collections and tag them with keywords. Or create saved searches that automatically fill with relevant materials as you work. Zotero can optionally synchronize your data across devices, keeping your notes, files, and bibliographic records seamlessly up to date. If you decide to sync, you can also always access your research from any web browser. Zotero lets you co-write a paper with a colleague, distribute course materials to students, or build a collaborative bibliography. You can share a Zotero library with as many people you like, at no cost.
  • 23
    Cite This for Me

    Cite This for Me

    Cite This for Me

    Cite This For Me is one of the most popular citation tools today. Launched in October 2010, we began with the mission of helping students create perfect citations in a fraction of the time. Since then, Cite This For Me has assisted millions of users across the world including in the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, and beyond. Odds are, you’ve been given a specific citation style to use by your teacher, publication, editor, or colleague. (If not, try MLA format, APA citation, or Harvard referencing as they are the most popular.) Did you know there are literally thousands of citations styles in the world? Fortunately, Cite This For Me has a lot of them! In the navigation bar, click “2. Choose style� to open our citation style search widget and select the right style for you!
  • 24
    JabRef

    JabRef

    JabRef

    JabRef was founded 2003 and has since been used by many students and researchers. Our mission is to advance knowledge and improve scientific research. We value open access to information and believe modern science can built on an open institutional structure. This is why we develop JabRef as free open-source software and save your data in a simple text-based file format with no vendor lock-in. Fetch complete bibliographic information based on ISBN, DOI, PubMed-ID and arXiv-ID. Complete and improve bibliographic data by comparing with curated online catalogues such as Google Scholar, Springer or MathSciNet. Automatically rename and move associated files according to customizable rules. Customize and add new metadata fields or reference types. Organize articles based on keywords, tags, search terms or your manual assignments. Native BibTeX and BibLaTeX support, perfect for text-based typesetting systems such as LaTeX and Markdown.
  • 25
    BibSonomy

    BibSonomy

    BibSonomy

    Using BibSonomy you can easily create collections of bookmark and publication posts. Just insert bookmarks and publications. You can do this even faster with our BibSonomy browser add-ons or bookmarklets. In addition, you can also use ISBN, ISSN, DOI, or barcodes to have the insert publication form filled up automatically for you. Use tags to organize the posts in your collection. If you choose them carefully, tags are a very powerful instrument. Learn more about tagging in BibSonomy. BibSonomy helps you create bibligraphies for scientific papers. If you use a specific tag for each bibliography and assign it to all your paper posts accordingly, you can use the tag to find all papers of the bibliography. Afterwards, you can export your publication list in the desired format. BibSonomy supports a lot of formats, e. g. Microsoft Word Reference Manager, EndNote, and BibTeX.
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