Writing your thesis

2.1. Zotero

Zotero was developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. It is available both as a standaline program and as a plugin for the Firefox web browser (install that first). Download and install Zotero from http://www.zotero.org/. One click grabs the full biblographic details of any journal, library, or book page that you visit and adds it to your reference list. It recognises the reference data that libraries and publishers embed in their pages, so when you go browsing for your sources, you can add items to your collection at any time.

Figure 2. Using Zotero to save a reference from a catalogue search, and insert the citation into a document

 

It has plugins for OpenOffice and Word so that you can cite any document in your collection just by clicking on it (see Figure 23 above). You can copy your references to a USB stick if you've been working on a shared (lab) computer, and you can also export selected references to other reference managers like JabRef (BIBTEX), EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, etc.

Figure 3. Exporting your Zotero collection for use in another system

There are also facilities for backing-up or storing your reference data in the cloud, so that you can continue working on them even when you're away from your own computer.

2.2. Mendeley

The Mendeley Desktop is a free bibliographic manager which runs on all modern systems (Windows, Macs, and Linux). Their web site describes it as ‘like iTunes™ for research papers’. You can import and export references in different formats, including the three most important import formats, RIS/BIBTEX/EndnoteXML, and all the popular citation formats like Harvard, Chicago, IEEE, MLA, etc. It also lets you share them with your colleagues, so it makes collaborative work (multi-authored papers) much easier because you can all be certain that you are citing the same works the same way.

Figure 4. The Mendeley desktop exporting citations in Chicago style

Like Zotero, it has plugins for Word and OpenOffice (in fact it re-uses the same plugins for efficiency), so you can just click and cite while you write.

It can synchronise with Zotero, so you can use Zotero for gathering your references, and Mendeley for managing them.

⇛ As of April 2013, Mendeley has been taken over by Elsevier, who have been the subject of much criticism for many years over dubious business ethics in respect of scholars, and who are also the target of an academic boycott. Users will need to make their own decision about whether or not they wish to support Elsevier by using Mendeley.

2.3. JabRef

JabRef is an Open Source (free) reference manager designed for use with LATEX, but also able to import references from databases like SilverPlatter, Medline, Ovid, ISI, and file formats like EndNote; and to export references to Zotero, EndNote, and a wide variety of other systems including SQL and MODS databases, Microsoft Office 2007, web pages, and spreadsheets.

Figure 5. Using JabRef to add a citation to a LATEX document

In common with all reference management systems, inserting a reference is a single-click operation (see Figure 5 above).

2.4. EndNote/ProCite/Reference Manager

Three popular, competing bibliographic databases all from the same company (Thomson). All of them powerful, but enormous, complex, and very expensive for personal use. The differences are largely in the range of online features and support for obsolescent file formats.

Figure 6. Using EndNote to add a citation to a Word document

EndNote has become a de facto standard in some academic and research fields, partly driven by the fact that Thomson is the supplier of a valuable citation-measurement service, which is used in many institutions to judge the relative importance of research output.