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About citation management tools
Citation management tools help you collect and store articles, books, and web pages to use in your research. You can format, create, and export bibliographies using a particular citation style, including APA, MLA, Chicago, and more.
You can also:
- Link to and store source materials
- Insert in-text citations and bibliographies while writing in a word processor
- Create formatted works cited, reference lists, or bibliographies
- Collaborate with others
- Annotate within PDFs
Also see tips for how to cite sources and tools you can use to automatically generate citations.
Zotero
Zotero is a free tool that's easy-to-use. It can help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.
Learn more about how to use Zotero. We also offer workshops each semester.
Contact Anthony Sanchez for help with Zotero.
EndNote
EndNote is free for University of Arizona students, faculty, and staff. Use it to collect citations from databases, create personal reference libraries, and insert citations into Word documents to create in-text citations and reference lists. You can synchronize all the references from one desktop library to your EndNote Online library, and share the entire library with other EndNote users. There is a learning curve to use EndNote.
- Desktop: Download EndNote software
- Online: Sign up for EndNote online with your University of Arizona email address
Learn more about how to use EndNote.
Contact Maribeth Slebodnik (Health Sciences) for help with EndNote.
Mendeley
- Desktop: Download Mendeley Reference Manager software
- Online: Sign up for Mendeley Reference Manager online
By creating your Mendeley account through the University of Arizona Libraries' Elsevier connection, you will receive the benefit of our Mendeley Institutional Edition (MIE) subscription. MIE includes:
- 100 GB personal storage instead of 2 GB with the 'free account'
- 100 GB shared storage instead of 100 MB with the 'free account'
- Unlimited private groups of up to 100 collaborators instead of 5 private groups of up to 25 collaborators
- If you leave UA, this will revert to the free version of Mendeley and you will receive 2GB of online storage space for PDFs and document attachments and 5 private groups with up to 25 members.
Learn more about how to use Mendeley.
Contact Jim Martin for help with Mendeley.
Compare citation management tools
| Cost | Ease of use | Download, sync, and share | Storage space | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Zotero | Free | Easy | The Zotero connector requires using a personal browser to sync with your citation library. You can pay a fee for more cloud storage or back up your data locally on your computer or an external hard drive. | Zotero desktop: Your computer's storage capacity Zotero online: 300 MB free, additional space for a fee |
| EndNote | Free for students, faculty, and staff with your University of Arizona email | Training recommended | Sync the Online version of EndNote with your desktop software and share your citations. Both desktop and online versions work best with the Firefox and Chrome browsers. Neither work well with Safari browser. Always save libraries on your hard drive, not in the cloud, to avoid corrupting your data. | EndNote desktop: Your computer's storage capacity EndNote online: 2 GB free, unlimited with the campus EndNote Desktop subscription |
| Mendeley | Free | Easy | Mendeley has some difficulty downloading citations and PDF files from library databases. Older PDF files that do not have proper metadata will not provide accurate citation information to Mendeley. | Mendeley desktop: Your computer's storage capacity Mendeley online: 100 GB free personal and shared storage with campus Mendeley Institutional Edition subscription |