Research Guides: Biology: Citation Management

I need help formatting my citations!

For assistance with any of your writing, please visit Center for Excellence in Writing and Communication at the Science Library.

Why are citations important?

Citations are for transparency and access. Academic papers are conversations between multiple authors and responsible scholarship dictates that we properly credit scholars with their work when it is mentioned.

In addition to proving that you've done your due diligence as an academic, citations let readers know what you've read and where they can access a source you've used.

Science-related citation tools

Lean Library Workspace (formerly Sciwheel)
Papers by ReadCude

Lean Library Workspace
Store, organize, and format online references to create in-text citations and bibliographies in Microsoft Word. Lean Library Workspace is a licensed product available to UCI affiliates which allows you to create a free account with your active UCI email address.
Getting Started with Lean Library Workspace
Lean Library Workspace Help Guide

Papers
Papers supports individual researchers and small teams be more efficient with tools to help discover, organize, collaborate on and cite research literature.
Papers Tutorials

What is citation management software?

Citation management software (also known as bibliographic management software or BMS) allows users to build, organize, and manage citations.

What does citation management software do?

Import records from article databases and create bibliographies almost instantaneously
Add abstracts, keywords, and other functions that enhance and improve the efficiency of projects
Allows users to collaborate on shared projects
Allows users to embed footnotes and endnotes within documents

Users should still:

Review citations that you import/export, manually, to ensure accuracy

Citation management software comparison chart

	EndNote https://endnote.com	Zotero https://www.zotero.org/	Mendeley https://www.mendeley.com/
Mobile Access	EndNote Web has a mobile version. Login with your email and EndNote Web password.	Third Party Mobile Apps	iPhone & iPad Apps Android Apps
Type	Desktop client and browser extension for Edge, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera	Desktop client and browser extension for Edge, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari	Desktop client and browser extension for Firefox, Chrome and Safari
Cost* This may change, for the most up to date pricing, please check the website.	Free: 2GB storage (EndNote Basic) One time purchase of $149.95 through the ThinkEDU online store	Free: 300 MB storage $20/year: 2 GB storage $60/year: 6 GB storage $120/year: Unlimited storage Other storage plans	Free: 2GB storage $4.99/month: 5GB storage $9.99/month: 10GB storage $14.99/month: unlimited
Strengths	Numerous output styles Highly customizable Can handle a large amount of references Good for major research projects because it has the most options for customization and formatting Excellent for organizing citation	Download of records is easy Good for managing a variety of formats, including webpages Downloads records for some databases that don’t work with Endnote and RefWorks such as Factiva	Manage PDFs Share citations and documents Social aspect, see what others are reading or citing Pulls metadata from PDFs
Learning Curve	Higher Learning curve	Quick to learn, simple design	Quick to learn, simple design