Temple University Subject Guides - Citation Management

The Old School Way

You can make your citations the old school way with a style guide. Just typing out your citations. Take a look at our "Style Guide" page for quick reference in APA, MLA, and Chicago styles.

We also keep copies of many style guides at the Reference Desk in Paley Library, including MLA, APA, Chicago, and AMA.

But for longer papers and projects, you may want to try a citation manager.

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What is a Citation Manager?

A citation manager is a program used to store, organize, and output citations.

Citation managers make is easy to:

Gather citations from databases and websites
Edit, organize, and search citations
Output citations in many formats (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.)

Citation managers integrate seemlessly with word-processing programs for inputting in-text citations and generating the corresponding bibliographies.

A citation manager is a valuable time-saving tool for researchers and anyone writing a paper with cited references/bibliographies.

Comparison of Citation Managers

Criteria / Program	None.	RefWorks	Zotero	EndNoteWeb	EndNote
Price	Free.	Free (while you are at Temple)	Free (always)	Free (while you are at Temple)	$115 (Aprox. Educ. Price)
Access	Style guides from the Writing Center, or Style manuals at the Reference Desk.	Online anywhere (website and mobile version)	Offline at your own computer (Firefox 3.0 Browser Plugin (PC/Mac/Linux)), Sync across computers	Online anywhere	Desktop Application (integrates with EndNote Web)
Word Processor Integration	Type it in.	MSWord (PC/Mac)	MSWord (PC/Mac), OpenOffice (PC/Mac)	MSWord (PC/Mac)	MSWord (PC/Mac)
Site/Database Compatibility	None.	See list	See list	See list	See list
Citation Styles	All.	Very many.	See list	See List	See List
Learning Curve	Hard.	Medium	Easy	Medium	Hard
Stores files (pdfs, etc.)?	No.	Yes, but it's not automatic.	Yes, automatically, in most cases, when you save a citation	No	Yes, but it's not automatic.
Sharing of Citations?	Copy and paste.	Yes, with many options.	Yes, but limited.	Yes	Yes
Collaboration?	No	No	No	Yes, even across institutions	No