Referencing and Information Management

Paperpile is a full-featured web-app that makes it easy to download, read, organize and cite research papers and no-fuss reference management for the web. Sync your PDFs to Google Drive and cite your papers in Google Docs.

When you use Creative Commons licenced images, text, music or video in your research, you must attribute them. This builder will help you comply with the attribution requirement of a Creative Commons licence.

Zotero is a powerful, easy-to-use research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources and then share the results of your research. Zotero automatically senses content in your web browser, allowing you to add it to your personal library with a single click.

Mendeley is a free reference manager and an academic social network. Manage your research, showcase your work, connect and collaborate with over six million researchers worldwide.

Automatic works cited and bibliography formatting for MLA, APA and Chicago/Turabian citation styles. Now supports 7th edition of MLA.

KnightCite is a web based citation generator hosted by the Calvin University Hekman Library that formats bibliographic information per academic standards for use in research papers and scholarly works.

Papers helps you collect and curate the research material that you're passionate about. Our award-winning reference manager will dramatically improve the way you discover, organize, read, annotate, share and cite.

Use BibDesk to edit and manage your bibliography on your Mac. It will keep track of both the bibliographic information and the associated files or web links for you. BibDesk’s services will simplify using your bibliography in other applications and are particularly well suited for LATEX users.

A powerful Markdown editor for researchers and journalists, Zettlr has been developed with academic writing in mind. Therefore, it offers a lot of powerful tools to help you write academic texts right out of the box.

Flowcite is a free, integrated academic research, writing, editing, and publishing platform that brings together all the information, resources, and technical formatting tools needed to prepare an academic paper.

Reference and citation management software that provides an easy and intuitive way to discover, read, annotate, write and share scientific research.

A no-nonsense reference collection and bibliography creation tool for people who value simplicity, privacy, and speed.

Qiqqa is a Windows-based award-winning research management software, designed for commercial and academic researchers. If you deal with lots of PDFs and ideas during your research, you'll love what Qiqqa can do for you but only if you work on Windows or use a virtual PC program as it is not available for Mac.

Docear describes itself as "The Academic Literature Suite," and works by combining the Freeplane mind-mapping software and the JabRef reference manager into a single cohesive tool. By leveraging the power of these two open source applications, Docear creates something that is greater than the sum of its parts. Researchers can keep track of their citations and notes, and easily include them when mapping the structure of their paper. Docear provides a single platform that can support almost every aspect of the research process.

JabRef is an open source bibliography reference manager. The native file format used by JabRef is BibTeX, the standard LaTeX bibliography format. JabRef is a desktop application and runs on the Java VM (version 8), and works equally well on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

EndNote is the industry standard software tool for publishing and managing bibliographies, citations and references on the Windows and Macintosh desktop. Endnote Basic is a free, limited online version of EndNote.

The following Wikipedia tables compare notable reference management software. The comparison includes older applications that may no longer be supported, as well as actively-maintained software.