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Select a Citation Manager: EndNote, Mendeley, or Zotero?

Welcome!

Welcome to the Select a Citation Manager guide! We hope this guide will help you answer the following questions:

What are citation managers? 

Citation managers are tools that can help you organize your references, PDFs, and other files as you conduct research. They can also help you format citations when writing and some can be used to collaborate and share references with a group. 

Why should use a citation management tool?

  • to stay organized, especially if you have a substantial number of references or a long-term research project
  • for help with citing and creating bibliographies
  • to collaborate with others by sharing groups of references

What tools are available? 

There are many citation management tools available. The Belmont University Medical Library offers support for 3 tools: EndNote, Mendeley, and Zotero. Those three tools will be presented on this guide. 

Choosing a Citation Manager

All Three Tools can do the following (and more!):

  • Keep references in one place
  • Export citations from databases
  • Automatically format citations and reference lists in a variety of citation styles
  • Integrate with Word for building a bibliography or in-text citations
  • Attach files to references (like PDFs)
  • Work from different computers and devices 
  • Work with a group to share citations with others 
  • Work offline (without internet)

 

Reasons to Choose EndNote:

  • EndNote is one of the oldest and most established tools. There is a lot of help and training available from the vendor but also on the Web.
  • Includes the most comprehensive array of output styles including styles for individual journals (more than 6,000!)
  • Belmont has a license for EndNote 21 for all faculty and graduate students
  • Has a nice Find Full Text feature that works when you set up your Preferences to integrate with Belmont library holdings
  • May be best to use for large evidence synthesis projects where you are exporting and deduplicating large numbers of references

 

Reasons to Choose Mendeley:

  • Great choice if your research content is primarily PDF files
  • Can easily drag or import PDF files into Mendeley
  • Free version provides a lot of capability (just limited to sharing 5 groups at at time)
  • Easy to share both references and PDF files with a group
  • Great annotation features

 

Reasons to Choose Zotero:

  • Open source product - unlikely to be bought/sold 
  • Easily share PDFs with others in a group
  • Archive web pages and collect a variety of non-article sources
  • Easy to drag a PDF into your library and automatically collect metadata for citations
  • Free to use, both now and after graduation 

Comparison Chart

Citation Manager Comparison Table
  Zotero Mendeley EndNote EndNote Basic
Cost Free (but can purchase additional cloud-based storage) Free. Paid Premium plans available for additional storage and sharing capabilities. Free through Belmont for grad students and faculty Free
Access Anyone Anyone Faculty, graduate students Undergraduate students
Where is my database stored? Cloud (300 MB for free, paid upgrades available), on computer  Options to store on cloud with online account or to download Mendeley Reference Manager for local computer storage with web-based syncing between computers

Cloud (online)

Desktop (software)

 Cloud
Offline access Yes Yes, with Mendeley Reference Manager Yes No
Word-processor compatibility Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, Google Docs Microsoft Word 2016 and above, Microsoft Office 365, and the Microsoft Word app for iPad Cite While You Write (CWYW) tool available  for Microsoft  Word app, Microsoft 365, or Google Docs. Word app/desktop version is recommended.  
Export citation from library databases Yes Yes Yes Yes
Import citation information from web pages Yes Yes with Mendeley plug-in    
Manage large libraries Unlimited Yes, no known issue. May need to purchase extra space. Unlimited storage 50,000 references
Storage capacity 300MB cloud-based storage is free, paid upgrades available + any other limit is based on device storage capacity 

Free version - 2 GB personal storage for personal documents.

Permission to create 5 groups of up to 25 collaborators for sharing common documents. 100MB shared storage across all groups.

 Unlimited storage 50,000 references
Attach associated files (PDFs, etc.) Yes Yes Yes, unlimited storage Yes, up to 2 GB
PDF Annotations and Notes Yes Yes Yes  
Sharing capabilities Yes, via Zotero Groups. Groups are synced and require use of the group owner's storage.

Free version - 2 GB personal storage for personal documents.

Permission to create 5 groups of up to 25 collaborators for sharing common documents. 100MB shared storage across all groups.

 Can share entire libraries and groups Can only share groups, not entire libraries
Built-in citation formats 10,460+ styles available  Comes with 10 most common styles, but you can install additional styles Yes, 7000+ predefined citation styles Yes, 21 most popular citation styles
Mobile app Yes (Apple app is from the developer, Android apps are third-party) Official apps discontinued - third-party solution Yes  
Learning curve Intuitive to learn. No official customer service but the official Zotero forums are fairly active.  Fairly easy to learn. Good Support Center, including Email and Chat available.  Higher learning curve with some more complex features. Good Support, including Chat and Email.  
Strengths  Easy to learn, browser integration, free, PDF annotations, sharing - learn more Great for those working primarily with PDFs, especially if you want to share PDF files. Great annotation features. Great for storing large quantities of references, annotating PDFs, and functionality with Microsoft Word.  
Weaknesses  Limited free storage, apps are limited, accessibility, customer service, interface - learn more Limited number of groups for sharing for free version Can only share PDFs when sharing an entire library and organization is limited to Group Sets and Groups.  
Developer A nonprofit (Corporation for Digital Scholarship - grant funded through the Institute of Museum and Library Services) Clarivate (owns library databases including Web of Science, ProQuest) Elsevier (owns ScienceDirect - a library databases and publishes many scholarly journals) Elsevier (owns ScienceDirect - a library databases and publishes many scholarly journals)