Citation Software

The new issue of Online Cl@ssroom has a nice little article devoted to citation software (1). Most of us are already familiar with at least one program that collects and organizes citations, namely RefWorks. For those in research, they use Refman, which is a more powerful citation tracker. But there are a number of other venders for these programs. Included among them are:

Zotero: available at www.zotero.com. This is a  free program that works across platforms and links itself to your browser. From its home page, it notes that it will automatically sense the content in your browser and then let you add it to your personal library. All the content is then placed into a single searchable interface, which is organized in a fashion similar to an iTunes library. Youdo not need to look through folders inside folders. And you have the ability to tag your contents, making it easier to locate required content. Finally you can easily place citations tinot your word profcessing papers without having to leave the program you are working in.

CiteThisForMe: available at www.citethisforme.com. This also allows you to automatically grab bibliographic information right form whatever web page you are on. It easily lets you denote the kind of reference you are grabbing, creates a master list of all of your references, but lets you create individual bibliographic lists, download other lists, and share those lists with a defined group. It can format the reference lists in a wide range of styles.

EasyBib: available at www.easybib.com. This program works with Google Drive, which I have to admit I do not use for myself. In its free version, it allows you to only create reference lists in MLA style, which may not work as well in standard scientific writing, which generally requires Vancouver style references. However, it can be upgraded, for a small fee.

ProQuest Flow: available at www.proquest.com/products-services/flow.html. This is a cloud-based product that “helps researchers better manage citations and full-text documents and gain control over the research workflow.” (As stated on its web-site). You can either automatically enter a citation with a one-click process, or you can manually enter information if necessary. This program has a huge database of reference styles.

References

1.       Require your students to use citation software. Online Cl@ssroom 2014;14(9),p4,8