These are considered the most-used citation managers and the U-M Library provides support and offers workshops on most of them. Workshops take place in ScholarSpace on Central Campus, on the second floor of the Hatcher Graduate Library.

Sometimes your faculty advisor or colleagues in a lab will already have a preferred citation manager. If that is not the case, these are the most popular citation managers to choose from.

Presented in alphabetical order:

BibTeX

BibTeX is reference management format typically used with the LaTeX typesetting program. For more information visit bibtex.org.

BibTeX is not officially supported by ScholarSpace because it doesn't integrate well with very many of our databases. However, we do encourage BibTeX users reach out to an engineering librarian if they need help.

U-M Library BibTeX Research Guide

EndNote

EndNote is the most complex citation manager with the most features. It is full-blown commercial software, and can be purchased at the UM Computer Showcase. The feature set is the same between Mac and PC. The software does not expire and you are not required to update. LS&A will buy their students a license.

EndNote Web is the free version of the software and has similar but limited features.

U-M Library EndNote Essentials Guide: guides.lib.umich.edu/endnote

Mendeley

Mendeley’s biggest strength is that it allows researchers to easily collaborate and share documents. Researchers can create private “groups” of up to 25 people, which permit the sharing of documents and notes.

Mendeley has an extension for internet browsers which automatically imports PDFs and bibliographic information into the stand-alone program. It also has a Microsoft Word citation tool which allows users to seamlessly add references to their documents.

Mendeley may be best suited to the researcher who is already entrenched in a lab that uses the program (as this will aid in collaborations).

U-M Library Mendeley Research Guide: guides.lib.umich.edu/mendeley

Zotero

The open-source software Zotero is free and highly recommended. It has a stand-alone desktop application for use with internet browsers such as Google Chrome and Safari. When reading an article online, users simply click a small button in the address bar of their internet browser and Zotero automatically downloads and saves the PDF of the article and extracts all bibliographic information.

When writing a paper in Microsoft Word, Open Office or Google Docs, users can easily search for and add in-text citations, which automatically appear on the Works Cited Page.

U-M Library Zotero Research Guide: guides.lib.umich.edu/zotero