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Citation Guides and Management Tools Guide — Citation Management Tools

A guide to some commonly used citation styles.

Managing Citations & Digital Files

Having an effective strategy to manage your research is essential. You can use a citation management tool to organize citations to sources, collect digital files such as full text PDFs, and cite sources automatically when writing papers.

The library provides support for two citation managers: RefWorks, a subscription tool paid for by the university, and Zotero, a free open source tool. Which one you use is a matter of personal preference. You can export your library from one citation management tool to another.

Questions about managing your citations?

Contact the UConn Library's citation management specialist for assistance!

Why Choose Zotero?

Zotero advantages

  • Free and open source, so you'll be able to use it forever
  • Highly customizable with community-developed plug-ins
  • Extremely simple process for adding references and automatically importing PDFs
  • Saves your digital files to your computer and backs them up in the cloud
  • Integrates with Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and LibreOffice, and offers plug-ins for other tools, like LaTeX
  • Excellent options for annotating documents and for organizing references using tags and folders

Zotero disadvantages

  • Requires software installation and works best in that interface
  • Offers limited free cloud storage
  • Requires some tech savvy from you as a user
  • Tech support only available via community forums (but monitored and responded to by experts)

Why Choose RefWorks?

RefWorks advantages

  • Paid for by the university, and accessible to you (even if you leave UConn) unless the university cancels our subscription
  • Offers free, unlimited cloud storage for your digital files, such as full text PDFs
  • Web-based, requiring no software installation, and accessible from any computer
  • Integrates with Microsoft Word and Google Docs
  • Excellent company tech support if we can't diagnose and the fix the problem

RefWorks disadvantages:

  • Automatic import of PDFs is inconsistent, requiring more user intervention
  • Annotation options are limited
  • Does not integrate with additional word processing tools

 

What About Legacy RefWorks?

Legacy RefWorks is the original RefWorks product. It is no longer in development, so new features are not being added, and it has become increasingly less stable in its integration with Microsoft Word. Unless you have a current Legacy RefWorks account, or your research team or lab currently uses Legacy RefWorks, we recommend you create one in the current RefWorks interface instead. If you do need to create a Legacy RefWorks account, please visit the link below.

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