Useful Citation Management Tools 

Contact us at:
cite-help@mit.edu

The MIT Libraries provide support for 3 citation management products: EndNote, RefWorks, and Zotero.  However, there are many more products and tools that are available for free or purchase.  While we don't offer any support for these tools, they may be useful to you.

If you have experience with any of these tools and would like to share it, feel free to leave a comment in the box at the bottom of the page.  If you know of a tool we've missed that belongs on this list, please contact us and tell us about it.

Papers is a popular Mac-only product that specializes in managing pdfs of scientific articles.  Within Papers, search major scientific article databases, including PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and Web of Science.  Papers will import the relevant metadata (author, journal title, etc.) for you.  Search for keywords in the pdfs, and store your notes with the pdf and citation information. A free 30-day trial is available from the Papers website.  Papers can be downloaded from the web for $42, or for $26 with a student discount.  A Papers application for the iPhone is also available. MIT Papers users have reported having difficulty with off-campus access, but if you'd like to try yourself, add the library's proxy string by going into Papers Preferences, then Sources, and add this text in the Library Proxy box: http://libproxy.mit.edu/login?url=%@.

There is no way to cite articles and create a bibliography from within Papers, but you can export your Papers library to EndNote (via EndNote XML format), to RefWorks or Zotero (via RIS format), or to BibTeX, and use one of those products to insert citations into your paper.  (After importing, make sure to check that the imported info is correct and complete!)

JabRef is a reference manager that acts as an interface to the BibTeX style used by the LaTeX typesetting system.  JabRef is open source and is freely downloadable.  The graphical interface allows the user to easily import, edit, search, and group citations in the BibTeX format.  It also offers automatic key generation.  JabRef does not offer any citation styles of its own; instead the citation is generated from the BibTeX file by LaTeX.  Specifications for each style are given by the chosen style file.  Many style files can be found in the LaTeX Bibliography Styles Database.

JabRef can be used on Windows, Linux, and Max OS X.

Citeline is an MIT-produced open source tool that takes a list of references in a BibTeX file and generates an HTML file that displays the references in an interactive exhibit with searching and faceted browsing capabilities.  This process allows for better and easier sharing of reference and publication lists.  The HTML file can be downloaded and posted on the user's own server.  The style and layout are chosen from preset options.  Users may log in to see their previous lists.  A plugin exists which allows users to import directly to Citeline from Zotero.

Citeline is a web-based tool that works best on the Firefox browser.  The tool, the Zotero plugin, and examples of exhibits created with Citeline can be found at http://citeline.mit.edu.

WebNotes is a research tool which allows users to highlight and annotate PDF documents and web pages, and save these annotations to an online account.  The documents and pages that are highlighted can be organized into folders for easy retrieval, and all annotations are searchable.  Users can generate reports of their annotations, to view what documents they have been viewing, what passages they have been highlighting, and what notes they have been taking.  WebNotes Academic is a subscription service which offers full functionality, while WebNotes Personal is a free service which offers limited functionality (no PDF annotation or report generation).  WebNotes, Inc. is an MIT startup company founded in 2007.