Best Reference Management Software
Reference management software aids students, research-oriented professionals, and anyone else in sourcing others’ material by citing accurately and efficiently. These tools can be for one-time use, where users submit information and receive a full citation, or can act as a secure source repository for long-term projects. The best reference management software can serve more than academic purposes; business presentations or reports can all benefit from being adequately cited. The tool can connect large teams through cloud servers, providing companies access to trusted resources and articles.
Reference management tools can often integrate with file storage and sharing, document creation tools, or web-based browsers. Connecting with a web browser helps users save time and resources as they’re found much more efficiently instead of struggling to locate them later. Common features of reference management software include advanced searching, reference libraries, the ability to import references, and version history.
To qualify for inclusion in the Reference Management category, a product must:
Best Reference Management Software At A Glance
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- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
EasyBib.com provides citation, note-taking and research tools. EasyBib offers free and premium services for individuals and institutions.
- Teacher
- Higher Education
- Education Management
- 49% Small-Business
- 28% Mid-Market
53,017 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Paperguide is an AI-powered research workspace offering a powerful AI research assistant, comprehensive Reference Manager and AI Writer to help you understand research papers, manage citations, take n
- CEO
- Higher Education
- Consulting
- 92% Small-Business
- 7% Mid-Market
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Logically.app (formerly Afforai) is an award winning, all-in-one workspace for collaborative researching and writing. Many institutions worldwide have partnered with Logically to provide their student
- CEO
- Consulting
- Marketing and Advertising
- 89% Small-Business
- 8% Mid-Market
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
EndNote is a robust reference management software designed to help students, academic scholars, and professional researchers organize their bibliographic data and streamline the process of citing sour
- Graduate Research Assistant
- Postdoctoral Fellow
- Higher Education
- Research
- 63% Enterprise
- 19% Mid-Market
20,061 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
ReadCube is an all-in-one research management software designed to empower researchers, academics, and professionals in organizing, accessing, and analyzing scientific literature more efficiently. Wit
- Assistant Professor
- Professor
- Research
- Higher Education
- 52% Small-Business
- 34% Enterprise
4,388 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
A curated abstract and citation database with content from 5,000+ publishers to help you track and enhance your researcher and institutional data and discover global, multidisciplinary research.
- 36% Enterprise
- 36% Mid-Market
117,680 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Mendeley is a desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers, discovering research data and collaborating online.
- Graduate Research Assistant
- Graduate Teaching Assistant
- Higher Education
- Research
- 48% Enterprise
- 30% Small-Business
5,436 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Article Galaxy’s document retrieval engine puts 80M+ full-text journal articles at your fingertips, saving you time and money with fast and easy access to peer-reviewed scientific literature.
- Biotechnology
- Pharmaceuticals
- 46% Mid-Market
- 35% Small-Business
2,281 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.
- Graduate Research Assistant
- Higher Education
- Research
- 39% Small-Business
- 34% Enterprise
40,987 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Clean, simple reference management for the web. Sync your library to all your devices and read and annotate like on paper on your iPad, iPhone, or Android device. Cite your papers in Google Docs and M
- Higher Education
- Education Management
- 54% Small-Business
- 23% Enterprise
17,302 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
CTFM helps researchers find and correctly cite sources.
- Writing and Editing
- 45% Mid-Market
- 36% Small-Business
53,017 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The Only All-in-One Writing and Referencing Solution Streamline your research writing process with the only tool designed to organize, track, and format your writing and references. With features des
- 47% Small-Business
- 29% Mid-Market
387 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
RefWorks is an online research management, writing and collaboration tool that is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate cita
- Higher Education
- Research
- 55% Enterprise
- 24% Mid-Market
27,016 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Reference Manager is the powerful bibliographic solution for workgroups, networks and collaborative projects. Search online databases, organize references easily, and watch your bibliography appear as
- Higher Education
- 58% Enterprise
- 25% Small-Business
151,653 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
JabRef is an open-source, cross-platform citation and reference management tool. It uses BibTeX and BibLaTeX as its native file formats and provides therefor a premier bibliography solution for typese
- Higher Education
- 75% Enterprise
- 17% Mid-Market
865 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Sciwheel is an award-winning tool providing library patrons with an easy way to discover, read, annotate, write. Part of Techology from SAGE.
- Research
- Higher Education
- 40% Enterprise
- 25% Small-Business
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Capture Anywhere, Use It Everywhere- Sorc’d provides the most efficient and effective way to save, share and apply snippets of relevant content, creating smarter, more productive teams, flourishing t
- Marketing and Advertising
- 83% Small-Business
- 10% Mid-Market
3,044 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The revolutionary Microsoft Word integration displays your references and notes inside Word. Cite references by drag-and-drop and see the results instantly.
- Education Management
- 60% Small-Business
- 30% Mid-Market
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The Web of Science™ is the world’s most trusted publisher-independent global citation database. Guided by the legacy of Dr Eugene Garfield, inventor of the world’s first citation index, the Web of Sci
- Research
- 60% Mid-Market
- 30% Enterprise
20,061 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Citationsy is a no-nonsense reference collection and bibliography creation tool for people who value simplicity, privacy, and speed. There’s no tracking, and we don’t sell or give your data to anyone
- 67% Small-Business
- 17% Enterprise
528 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Bookends is a full-featured and cost-effective bibliography, reference, and information management system for students and professionals.
- 100% Enterprise
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
citeulike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references
- 100% Enterprise
1,024 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
refbase can import and export references in various formats (including BibTeX, Endnote, RIS, PubMed, ISI Web of Science, CSA Illumina, RefWorks, MODS XML, OpenOffice, and MS Word). It can make formatt
- 33% Mid-Market
- 33% Small-Business
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Sente is a full-featured reference manager for Macs, iPads and iPhones. It helps you build, organize and use very large research libraries so you will always be in control of your research literature.
- 67% Small-Business
- 33% Enterprise
235 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
BibSonomy helps you to manage your publications and bookmarks, to collaborate with your colleagues and to find new interesting material for your research.
- 50% Small-Business
- 50% Mid-Market
362 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Automatically create bibliographies, references, and citations in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, and over 8000 more styles with a totally free and no-ads citation
- 50% Enterprise
- 50% Mid-Market
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Qiqqa's powerful research and knowledge management tools let you search for, record, share, and instantly recall the important information from thousands of your documents with ease.
- 50% Enterprise
- 50% Mid-Market
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
R Discovery is a literature search and reading app for researchers that saves you hours of time by instantly creating personalized reading feeds based on your interests. Stay updated on the latest, m
- 100% Small-Business
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
wizdom.ai utilizes desktop, web and mobile technologies synced in real time, the platform allows managing of all aspects of the individual and collaborative research practices.
- 100% Enterprise
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
BibBase is the easiest way to set up and maintain your online publication list, whether you are an individual scientist or a large research institute with hundreds of researchers.
- 100% Enterprise
73 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Clearbrief saves lawyers and judges hours by automatically going through thousands of pages of factual documents with our patented AI platform. Clearbrief can spot fake cases, hyperlink every source,
- 100% Mid-Market
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The research tool to last you a lifetime. - AI generated summaries for any webpage or PDF - Keywords and themes extracted for a document - Smart search to find related as well as exact matches - A
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
NoodleTools is an online research management platform that promotes critical thinking and authentic research.
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Conference management, abstract submission, and peer-review tool.
- 100% Enterprise
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
RefDB is a reference database and bibliography tool for SGML, XML, and LaTeX/BibTeX documents.
- 100% Small-Business
48,044 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Referencer is a GNOME application to organize documents or references, and ultimately generate a BibTeX bibliography file.
- 100% Small-Business
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
By using SciRef you can automatically download pdf-files from the supported services, link local files to citation record in SciRef, export pdf files from local storage to external drives or folders,
- 100% Enterprise
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
WizFolio is an online research collaboration tool for knowledge discovery. With WizFolio you can easily manage and share all types of information in a citation ready format including research papers,
- 100% Small-Business
44 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
This is a useful tool which provides a nice web interface to a list of publications stored in a BibTeX file.
6 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
BibGuru is a bibliography and citation generator for students.
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Manage your references with ease where you write and cite Citasion (https://citasion.com) is a free reference manager that supports one-click reference importation, bibliography generation, and co
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
CitationGenerator.AI is a powerful, expert-verified tool designed to simplify the process of generating citations across major formats like APA Citation Generator, MLA Citation Generator, Chicago, and
1 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
CramJam enables efficient creation of personalized quizzes, enhancing your study or teaching experience.
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
DeepDyve is a subscription platform for finding, reading, managing, and collaborating on peer-reviewed journal articles. There are plans for individual researchers and for research teams.
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Docear ("dog-ear") is an academic literature suite integrating everything you need to search, organize and create academic literature into a single application.
1,379 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Focal is your AI-powered knowledge workspace that accelerates how you interact with complex information. Understand complex documents. Quickly find the insights you need. Summarize, Cite, Research, wi
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Glossary - Terminology Manager enables users to build a multilingual glossary, check terminology and enforce the consistent use of terms in confluence.
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
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- Overview
- User Satisfaction
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AI Powered Document Analysis Platform for small to medium size businesses. With Petal you can turn your documents into a digital expert you can talk to! Get answers quickly by talking to your perso
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Pybliographer is a tool for managing bibliographic databases.
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
RecFind 6 is a fully featured electronic document and records management system with all the functionality any organization will ever need including workflow, imaging, full text searching, portable ba
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Sourcer revolutionises the process of teaching media literacy at educational institutions. Our AI-based browser extension shows objective and verifiable insight necessary to determine the credibilit
Learn More About Reference Management Software
What is reference management?
Reference management is a standard step in composing research projects. This software ensures the proper sources receive credit. Also known as citation management, it allows users to collect, store, and organize references or in-text citations. This software provides a complete set of tools that allows researchers to focus on delivering a cohesive and fully referenced research paper.
Many reference management tools help users create a personal resource library to organize all the resources they find and use for different projects. Reference management software helps create citations, bibliography pages, and reference lists with features that assist with citation generation in multiple styles. These citations and annotations can come from online articles, books, journals, and other sources. It’s as simple as inputting article or journal information and then copying and pasting the results into the research paper itself. The tools are commonly used for academic advising and are accessible to all ages.
The software can create citations in the desired style, automating the creation of bibliographies, endnotes, footnotes, or reference sections in research papers.
Is a reference manager the same as a citation manager?
The terms reference manager and citation manager are often used interchangeably. Both tools can automate the creation of footnotes, bibliographies, or reference sections in papers. They can create citations in different styles like MLA, APA, Chicago style, etc.
A reference (names and dates, page numbers, etc.) can be found in the body of a research paper. A citation also provides relevant information such as author name, date, title, edition, and, additionally, a digital object identifier (DOI).
The terms functionally perform the same action—acknowledging the work of other researchers and data points.
Who uses reference management software?
- Teachers: Many educators introduce reference management software into lessons so students have the knowledge and resources to execute their properly cited projects.
- Students: Students of all ages, from grade school to grad school, use reference management software to keep track of sources. Students sometimes use this software for multiple projects at a time.
- Academics and researchers: Individuals doing research in specific fields, such as medicine or academia, will often need good software to collect and monitor sources used in professional research projects.
- Librarians: Librarians use reference management software to organize and manage bibliographic information for their institutions' collections. This helps in maintaining accurate records of available resources.
- Corporate professionals: Corporate professionals, especially those involved in research and development, strategic planning, and market analysis, may use tools to organize and cite industry reports, market analyses, and relevant business literature.
- Healthcare professionals: Healthcare professionals, including doctors and researchers, use these tools to organize, annotate, and cite medical literature, research papers, and clinical studies in their work.
Why use reference management software?
Reference management software is the most straightforward and efficient way to track sources when working on a research project. It lets users create their own open-source libraries. As a result, users can save valuable time in the research process.
- Generating citations: Often, generating citations is as easy as inputting a link or ISBN and copying and pasting the results into a works cited page. It lets users choose the citation style and includes specific pages for quoting sources. As a result, this software can seamlessly generate citations for users.
- Collecting sources: Depending on how long a research project is, the user can utilize a couple of dozen sources. Reference management tools have features that let users organize sources in one place. This helps researchers keep track of when sources were found, an important feature as some projects might span over months or years.
- Increased accuracy and consistency: The software minimizes the risk of citation errors by automating the citation process and ensuring that references are formatted correctly according to the chosen citation style.
- Integration with word processors: Seamless integration with word processing software (such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or LaTeX) allows users to insert citations and generate bibliographies directly within their documents. This ensures proper formatting and reduces the chances of citation errors. It can be used on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android operating systems.
Benefits of reference management software
Some of the key benefits of reference management software are:
- Efficient organization: Reference management provides a centralized location to store and organize citations, references, and other data. This helps users keep research materials in an accessible location.
- Document integration: Several reference management software are compatible with word processing tools such as Microsoft Word, thus facilitating easy integration within documents.
- Cross-platform accessibility: With availability of cloud storage options, reference data is available across multiple devices and locations. This also helps improve collaboration across teams.
- Time saving: Using tools helps quickly search, retrieve, and insert references into their work, thus helping with time management when compared to manual methods.
- Version history: Some reference management tools help track changes over time, thus providing a version history feature, enhancing accountability in collaborative research projects.
- Reduced errors: Automation tools help reduce the likelihood of citation errors, ensuring accuracy and adherence.
- Annotation and notes: Some tools offer features for note-taking and annotations, allowing users to write additional insights and information.
Reference management software features
Reference management software comes with various features; most features are standard across the board, though a couple of features are only found in certain tools.
- Citation generation: These tools can generate citations from multiple sources, including websites, books, academic journals, and more. This includes the generation of citations in multiple different styles, including MLA, APA, Chicago style, and more.
- Bibliography generation: Reference management tools can create a bibliography with a collection of sources, saving researchers time.
- Personal source library: Features in reference management software enable users to compile their collection of sources and references relevant to their specific needs. This allows easy access to sources viewed in the past. This quick reference tool saves time for researchers as many may use the same sources for multiple projects.
- Resource database: Many reference management tools connect to online databases full of resource materials, including journals, blogs, books, online publications, and more. Users can even search for reliable sources in the reference management tool.
- Synchronization: Since many reference management tools are websites or web applications such as Chrome and Firefox, their dynamic features and plugins allow users to access references from any device that can access web pages. This lets users access their research sources from their iPads, laptops, or other devices. A browser extension can be added to search engines to create a seamless workflow.
- Essay checker: This feature in some reference management software lets users submit their essays to a grammar and spell check. Some programs even scan for plagiarism by comparing submitted material to databases of source materials.
Reference management software trends
- User-friendly interface: The ability to make the user experience easy and straightforward is a trend currently affecting the education technology world. In academia, there is a wide range of users—some have years of experience with various technologies, some have little to no experience.
- The common goal of education software is to allow users of all experience levels to successfully use these tools for their use case—creating catalogs, archiving, end notes, improving functionality, and more.
- Integration with collaborative platforms: Reference management software is increasingly being integrated with document collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Word. This trend enhances real-time collaboration among researchers, students, and professionals by allowing them to seamlessly share and discuss references within their collaboration environment.
- Cloud-based solutions: Cloud storage continues to gain popularity in the reference management space due to easy access, seamless collaboration, and automatic synchronization across devices. This trend aligns with the broader shift toward cloud computing in the software industry.
Written and researched by JaKayla Lathon
Reviewed and edited by Jigmee Bhutia
