Subject Guides
Reference management: a practical guide
Reference management applications allow you collect, organise, and cite material in your work, providing a useful way to keep track of your reading. This practical guide looks at the key processes and features of the reference managers available at the University of York.
This guide has been designed so you can work through it like an online workbook. Wherever you see a box with the pencil icon, you'll find suggested exercises to complete once you've read over the content on the page. Use the menu at the top of the page to navigate between the different pages.
Each page covers general information as well as specific guides for each of the four main applications supported at York.
This home page is here to provide an introduction to reference management and help you decide which reference manager to use.
Reference management software helps you to keep track of your reading and references and makes it easier to find referencing information to cite material in your work.
Using reference management software can save you time compiling and locating your references, and improves consistency and accuracy. However, it isn't a replacement for checking the accuracy of the references you use or for knowing how your references need to be written to comply with guidelines.
Reference management software allows you to:
In short, reference management software collects bibliographic information from other sources and stores it as part of a library shown in the software. You can then use the program to manage these references, including organising them into folders and attaching/viewing PDFs. These references can then be cited in written work, whether through a plugin that works directly from the reference management program to a text processing application or through a copy and pasting method. References and libraries can also be shared with others for collaborative working.
This guide focuses on four stages of the reference management process: collect, manage, cite, and share.
Reference management is best to get on top of at the start of reading, so you can ensure you keep track of material you read or discover. However, this guide can help at any stage of the process, and you don't have to use reference managers for every part of this process. For example, you may want to use the software to store and manage your references, but manually write your references in your work.
Under Collect you'll find how to gather references in a reference manager from databases, library catalogues, and elsewhere.
The Organise page gives information on sorting your references within the application, putting them into groups and checking for duplicates.
In Cite there is guidance on how to use reference management software with text processors to cite your references when writing.
And finally, Share explains how to collaborate on libraries of references or share certain references with others.
The University of York supports four different reference management applications: EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero, and Paperpile. All of these can be used on University managed PCs and also installed on your own device (though some are limited to whilst you are at the University).
Each section below goes over the key points about the reference manager and has linked for how to install it on your own device.
EndNote is a reference manager owned by Clarivate that has two different versions: EndNote Desktop and EndNote Online.
EndNote has a full range of features for collecting and organising references, and a plugin that allows you to cite EndNote references in MS Word.
The desktop application allows for sophisticated searches and is useful for systematic reviews as you can customise fields and store a large number of references.
You can obtain it whilst a member of the University to use on unmanaged and personal devices, as well as install it on managed PCs and access it on classroom PCs. The IT Services web pages have information on obtaining EndNote.
The online version of EndNote is a more limited version and isn't typically recommended to use on its own if you are able to use the desktop version or one of the other options. However, it is a very useful way of creating a back up of your EndNote desktop library as you can 'sync' your desktop library with an EndNote online account and therefore have it backed up on EndNote's servers. It also means you can access your desktop library remotely from other devices.
Key points:
Mendeley is a general reference manager developed by academic publisher Elsevier, which you can sign up for and download free for your own devices. It has a desktop application and web version which should be used together.
Mendeley has a built-in PDF annotator so is useful if you want to keep notes with any PDFs you store within your reference manager. It has citation plugins for MS Word and Libre Office, and is also useful if you use a footnoted style like Chicago as it automatically inserts your footnotes when you insert citations in a text processor.
Mendeley is included on classroom PCs and can be installed from Software Centre on managed PCs. For any other device, you can register with Mendeley and download the software - we recommend you follow the steps outlined on the IT Services Mendeley page to ensure this is done correctly.
Key points:
Paperpile is an online reference manager that works in the Chrome web browser and cites with Google Docs.
If you're trying to easily collect citations and full text PDFs from web pages or cite web pages themselves, then Paperpile is very useful. It stores all PDFs in Google Drive too, which makes them easy to find and access.
However, it currently only cites references in Google Docs so if you're looking for a tool that can cite in Word, you might want to use another option (or export your Paperpile into another application for the citing process).
The University of York pays for a licence for Paperpile so you can use it whilst at the University. To sign up for Paperpile, follow the steps on the IT Services Paperpile page.
Key points:
Zotero is a free, open source reference manager that offers flexibility due to the fact it can cite in MS Word, Libre Office, and Google Docs.
Zotero is a good general reference manager that offers a range of features for collecting, organsing, and citing. If you're looking for something you can use when you leave the University and which is a free open source tool rather than being owned by a major publisher, then Zotero is a good option. It also works well with the OSCOLA referencing style, so if you use that it can often be the best reference manager to use.
Zotero is installed on University classroom PCs and can be installed from Software Centre on managed devices. To sign up for and get Zotero for your own device, go to zotero.org and follow the links there.
Key points:
We regularly run a Reference Management training session, which covers the key principles of all of the four areas of reference management and discusses the different applications supported at the University of York.
Below are the slides for the session, and a recording of a virtual run of the session. To support these materials, we recommend working through this practical guide and doing the suggested exercises on each page.
This guide covers all of the key areas of reference management and we recommend you work through it first, but you may also want to check out other resources, including our PDF guides, the reference management applications' own help pages, and our Skills Guides on finding and working with resources.
Below are links to other material we think you might find useful.
