Citation Managers: Free Citation Management Software

Citation management tools allow a user to:

• Collect, organize, and retrieve citation information from books, articles and websites.
• Interface with the library databases and with websites.
• Work with word-processing software (Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, and others) to insert properly formatted footnotes or citations and bibliographies into a research paper

Zotero is free open source software, available for download on your computer or used online via the web. You can download on multiple devices and Zotero automatically synchronizes your data.

• Access:  Zotero has both a cloud based version or a standalone software version that you can download to your computer (PC or Mac). Download Zotero . Users can sync between desktop software and an online account.
• Storage:  Zotero provides 300MB of free online storage and desktop storage is dependent of your computers capacity.
• Direct Export & PDFs:  Send PDFs and citations to Zotero using a Zotero Connector browser extension. Store PDFs, files, images, links, and whole web pages for easy retrieval.
• Citation Styles: Many popular citation styles with the ability to easily download additional styles here .
• Cite while you write   Using the Zotero citation plugin you can create in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies in Microsoft Word and LibreOffice. Users can also generate a quick bibliography of selected citations directly from Zotero.
• Help:  Find more information at Zotero Documentation.

EndNote Basic, also known as EndNote Web, is a free web-based application offered by Clarivate Analytics and Web of Science. EndNote Basic is a stripped down version of the EndNote product that is available for purchase.

• Access:  The free version is only available as a cloud based citation manager at  EndNote Basic.
• Storage:  EndNote Basic provides 2GB of free online storage and 50,000 maximum records.
• Direct Export & PDFs:  Users can send citations from EBSCO databases to EndNote Web using the Direct Export feature in EBSCO. PDFs can also be uploaded and attached to the EndNote record.
• Citation Styles: EndNote supports many journal citation styles.
• Cite while you write:  Download the Cite while you write EndNote Plugin from the top banner by clicking on download. Users can create in-text citations, footnotes and bibliographies in their word processor.
• Transfer Citation Records from Mendeley to EndNote: If you previously used Mendeley to manage your citations, learn how to transfer Mendeley records to EndNote.
• Help:  Find more information at EndNote Basic Details and at EndNote Online Training

Mendeley is a free citation manager tool offered by Elsevier, providers of the Science Direct platform. You can download Mendeley on multiple devices and sync your citations across the devices using your online Mendeley account.

• Access:  Mendeley has both a cloud based version and a standalone software version that you download on your computer (PC or Mac). Users can sync between desktop software and an online account. Sign up for a free account and Download Mendeley.
• Storage : Mendeley provides 2GB of free online storage and desktop storage is dependent of your computers capacity.
• Direct Export & PDFs : Drop and drag PDFs over to Mendeley application. Extracts metadata from PDFs to create citations. Easy to highlight, annotate and organize PDFs.
• Citation Styles: Many popular citation styles with the ability to easily download additional styles.
• Cite while you write: Using the Mendeley citation plugin you can create in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies in Microsoft Word and LibreOffice.
• Help:   Find more information at Mendeley Tutorials.