Best Reference Management Software
Reference management software aids students, research-oriented professionals, and anyone else in sourcing others’ material by citing accurately and efficiently. These tools can be for one-time use, where users submit information and receive a full citation, or can act as a secure source repository for long-term projects. The best reference management software can serve more than academic purposes; business presentations or reports can all benefit from being adequately cited. The tool can connect large teams through cloud servers, providing companies access to trusted resources and articles.
Reference management tools can often integrate with file storage and sharing, document creation tools, or web-based browsers. Connecting with a web browser helps users save time and resources as they’re found much more efficiently instead of struggling to locate them later. Common features of reference management software include advanced searching, reference libraries, the ability to import references, and version history.
To qualify for inclusion in the Reference Management category, a product must:
Best Reference Management Software At A Glance
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- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
EasyBib.com provides citation, note-taking and research tools. EasyBib offers free and premium services for individuals and institutions.
- Teacher
- Higher Education
- Education Management
- 49% Small-Business
- 28% Mid-Market
- Reviewers like how EasyBib.com can make a citation out of a website link, but find the advertisements on the site distracting.
- Reviewers appreciate how the tool helps students properly cite their sources in a timely manner.
- Reviewers note that the citations EasyBib makes are always quality and formatted correctly, but that the tool requires an upgrade to use the APA format.
53,827 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Logically.app (formerly Afforai) is an award winning, all-in-one workspace for collaborative researching and writing. Many institutions worldwide have partnered with Logically to provide their student
- CEO
- Consulting
- Marketing and Advertising
- 89% Small-Business
- 8% Mid-Market
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
ReadCube is an all-in-one research management software designed to empower researchers, academics, and professionals in organizing, accessing, and analyzing scientific literature more efficiently. Wit
- Professor
- Assistant Professor
- Research
- Higher Education
- 52% Small-Business
- 34% Enterprise
- Reviewers like that ReadCube Papers allows them to easily search through article references, but dislike that PDF versions of articles aren’t always enhanced.
- Reviewers like the in-line citation feature, but importing and maintaining citation format can be a challenge.
- Reviewers appreciate that ReadCube offers relevant and updated research resources, but sometimes the constant updates can make it slow to respond.
4,445 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
Find, use and share research with EndNote. It's for more than bibliographies. Sync your EndNote library across your desktop, iPad and online. Work on your research from anywhere.
- Graduate Research Assistant
- Postdoctoral Fellow
- Higher Education
- Research
- 63% Enterprise
- 19% Mid-Market
- Reviewers like that EndNote offers guidance and freedom for users to format citations however they want, but sometimes format can be altered when exporting data.
- Reviewers appreciate that the tool keeps records of articles referenced, but sometimes they can be hard to search for and locate.
- Reviewers enjoy that users can add collaborators to libraries, encouraging teamwork. However, it’s unclear who has access to the backed up versions.
19,811 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
A curated abstract and citation database with content from 5,000+ publishers to help you track and enhance your researcher and institutional data and discover global, multidisciplinary research.
- 36% Enterprise
- 36% Mid-Market
117,859 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
Article Galaxy’s document retrieval engine puts 80M+ full-text journal articles at your fingertips, saving you time and money with fast and easy access to peer-reviewed scientific literature.
- Biotechnology
- Pharmaceuticals
- 46% Mid-Market
- 35% Small-Business
- Reviewers like the amount of information and literature the tool gives them access to, but wish they could have the same permissions offline.
- Reviewers say the customer service they receive from Article Galaxy Enterprise is helpful and efficient.
2,274 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
Mendeley is a desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers, discovering research data and collaborating online.
- Graduate Research Assistant
- Graduate Teaching Assistant
- Higher Education
- Research
- 48% Enterprise
- 30% Small-Business
- Reviewers like that Mendeley can easily manage their references for research, but also say that sometimes the tool has a hard time with auto-detection.
- Reviewers enjoy that this tool automatically imports and categorizes your documents, but sometimes creating new categories can be a challenge.
- Reviewers love that Mendeley has options for in-text citations, but would like to be able to use the same functionality offline.
5,492 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.
- Graduate Research Assistant
- Higher Education
- Research
- 39% Small-Business
- 34% Enterprise
- Reviewers like how Zotero keeps them from creating and organizing citations manually, but they can be hard to export one by one.
- Reviewers appreciate how the tool is accessible to all, as it is free and open source. Users can also install plugins that make it more personalized.
- Reviewers enjoy that you can add a bibliography entry while reading an article, but don’t love the format restrictions when doing so.
41,584 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
Clean, simple reference management for the web. Sync your library to all your devices and read and annotate like on paper on your iPad, iPhone, or Android device. Cite your papers in Google Docs and M
- Education Management
- Higher Education
- 54% Small-Business
- 23% Enterprise
- Reviewers like that Paperpile integrates with Google Drive, but the files can be large and take up a lot of space.
- Reviewers enjoy that the tool allows them to collaborate on research projects with others, but access can be limited to certain web browsers.
- Reviewers appreciate the organization of research papers that the tool provides, but sometimes the downloading process can be slow.
17,450 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
The Only All-in-One Writing and Referencing Solution Streamline your research writing process with the only tool designed to organize, track, and format your writing and references. With features des
- 47% Small-Business
- 29% Mid-Market
378 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
CTFM helps researchers find and correctly cite sources.
- Writing and Editing
- 45% Mid-Market
- 36% Small-Business
- Reviewers like how Cite This For Me offers a Google Chrome extension, but say that the website itself has too many distracting advertisements.
- Reviewers appreciate the amount of citation styles the tool offers, but sometimes the automatic references require editing due to inaccurate information.
53,827 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
RefWorks is an online research management, writing and collaboration tool that is designed to help researchers easily gather, manage, store and share all types of information, as well as generate cita
- Higher Education
- Research
- 55% Enterprise
- 24% Mid-Market
- Reviewers like how easily they can connect to their RefWorks database of resources, but sometimes it can be slow to update.
- Reviewers like how the software keeps all of your references in one location, but have experienced errors in citation accuracy.
- Reviewers appreciate the ability to save articles to their RefWorks account from other pages, but found that sharing articles was a challenge.
27,386 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
JabRef is an open-source, cross-platform citation and reference management tool. It uses BibTeX and BibLaTeX as its native file formats and provides therefor a premier bibliography solution for typese
- Higher Education
- 75% Enterprise
- 17% Mid-Market
865 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Reference Manager is the powerful bibliographic solution for workgroups, networks and collaborative projects. Search online databases, organize references easily, and watch your bibliography appear as
- Higher Education
- 58% Enterprise
- 25% Small-Business
152,655 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- What G2 Users Think
- Seller Details
Sciwheel is an award-winning tool providing library patrons with an easy way to discover, read, annotate, write. Part of Techology from SAGE.
- Research
- Higher Education
- 40% Enterprise
- 25% Small-Business
- Reviewers like that Sciwheel enables them to incorporate citations into their papers, but sometimes they struggle with the automatic transfer of information.
- Reviewers enjoy the organization that this reference management tool provides, but experienced problems with speed and upkeep of plug-ins.
- Reviewers love the assistance the tool offers when conducting research, but sometimes find they need to correct references that the software provides.
