About reference management software

Reference management software is a useful aid in academic writing, both for students and researchers. It helps you to list, arrange and save the references you want to use in your work.

Whether you are doing an assignment or writing an academic article, you will need to refer to other research using a particular referencing style. Without the use of reference management software, this can be a complicated and time-consuming process. 

Reference management software helps you to:

  • list references for articles, books, reports 
  • save and organise references
  • import references into documents in Word (or other word-processing program)
  • create entries in a reference list in accordance with a given referencing style

There are several programs and tools, some of which are licence-based, other of which are free. The free software programs include:

  • Zotero
  • Mendeley
  • BibTex
  • Endnote online

If you are a university employee, you have access to the licensed version of Endnote, which can be installed on your computer.