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Reference Management

Comparison of Free Reference Managers

Zotero

https://www.zotero.org/

Mendeley Desktop

https://www.mendeley.com/

  • Free and open source
  • Compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux
  • Available as a web browser and as a desktop application
  • 300 MB free online and unlimited storage on desktop
  • Compatible with Microsoft Word and LibreOffice/OpenOffice as well as Google Docs but not Pages
  • Captures from PDF documents and webpages and webpage snapshots
  • Many citation styles available
  • Opportunities for collaboration
  • No current AI integration but opportunities to integrate paid AI subscription plugins
  • Free account available, powered by Elsevier
  • Use Mendeley Cite to import references and citations into Microsoft Word and LibreOffice
  • Read, highlight, and annotate PDFs
  • Collaborate with others in private and public groups

EndNote Basic

https://access.clarivate.com/login?app=endnote

Docear

https://docear.org/

  • Free web-based version of EndNote
  • Add and group up to 50,000 references with a free account
  • Opportunities for collaboration by sharing with other EndNote Basic users
  • Compatible with Microsoft Word
  • 21 bibliographic styles available
  • 2GB storage for file attachments
  • Sort documents (and annotations) into categories
  • Draft papers directly in Docear using collected references and annotations
  • Software algorithms recommend new literature for you
  • free Microsoft Word add-on

JabRef

https://www.jabref.org/

 
  • Import options for 15 reference formats
  • Native BibTeX and BibLaTeX support; works well with LaTeX and Markdown
  • Cite-as-you-write functionality for external applications such as Emacs, Kile, LyX, Texmaker, TeXstudio, Vim, and WinEdt
  • Create your own style or format references in one of the many thousand built-in citation styles
  • Support for Microsoft Word and LibreOffice/OpenOffice for inserting and formatting citations