Citation Management Tools

This guide will present tools to help with managing your sources as you research.

Tools for Citation Management

There are numerous tools available to aid with creating citations. Many are freely available on the web and are handy for formatting a specific item. Check out our links under the tab for Other Citation Tools.

However, if you plan to do in-depth research and collect many citations, it is recommended that you use a more robust program such as the ones described below.

The University Libraries supports these software programs used for citation management:

Each has features which make them unique. However, all of them help you collect and organize bibliographic citations for journal articles, books, websites, and other types of research material. Each also has a tool for aiding in embedding citations and creating reference lists in your word processing document as you write.

How To Decide
We know it is difficult to know which of these products to use. We offer training on each of the products to help you learn more about them. Check for classes here.

But you may also want to check with your colleagues and/or faculty in your department to see if there is a preference for one product over the other. We also have a wonderful comparison tool here:  Comparison Chart

What is a Citation Manager?

Citation Managers are programs that allow you to:

  • import citations as you research from databases and catalogs
  • save and organize citations
  • attach pdfs of articles, when available
  • create bibliographies in a variety of formats
  • imbed citations (footnotes or in-text) into your word processing documents

Academic Integrity

The Library has produced several guides useful for learning about Academic Integrity, the University's policies on such, and related topics. See them here: