Incorporating someone else’s ideas in your research paper, article or thesis without citing them is not advisable for students, research professionals and writers. Doing this makes your writing lose its originality.
In order not to be accused of stealing ideas, some apps, software and tools have been designed for researchers and writers to help them stop plagiarism. These apps are known as citation and reference tools.
Citation and reference tools help to organize references, share citations, and read and annotate the full text. Listed in this article are some of the best citation and reference tools for writing your next papers and research works.
1. Zotero
You can also call Zotero your personal research assistant. Zotero is a free and open-source citation and reference tool used to manage bibliographic data and related research materials.
Zotero has some notable features such as web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies, an integrated PDF reader and note editor, as well as integration with the word processors Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, and Google Docs.
2. EndNote
EndNote is a citation and reference tool designed to help you organize citations and create a bibliography. EndNote as a citation and reference tool also helps you search for citations in databases (e.g., PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science), retrieve relevant citations and import them into EndNote.
You can organize citations and use an EndNote plugin for Microsoft Word to easily format references and bibliographies in your papers to conform to styles used by thousands of different journals.
With the EndNote citation and reference tool, you can download the full text of articles as PDFs, annotate PDFs and share a library with up to 100 persons.
3. Mendeley
Mendeley is a free citation and reference management software that can help you organize, store, share and cite references and research data.
Mendeley automatically generates bibliographies, makes it easy to collaborate with other researchers online, easily imports papers from other research software, and gets relevant papers based on what you are reading. Mendeley makes it easy to access your papers from anywhere online.
4. Citavi
Whether you are collaborating on an informal group paper or whether you have strict data requirements and need to keep all your information in-house, Citavi has a solution. Citavi organizes and reviews articles, takes notes, manages your sources, reads, extracts information, as well as for creating a final publication.
5. JabRef
The name JabRef, a free reference manager, stands for Java, Alver, Batada, Reference. JabRef is an open-sourced free citation and reference tool for reference management.
As its native formats, it uses BibTeX and BibLaTeX and is therefore typically used for LaTeX. The key technical features of JabRef are to import various formats, automatically download full texts, search the web, grouping of entries, search the bibliography, integrate into your environment, generate keys automatically, and support XMP metadata in PDFs.
6. RefWorks
As a web-based citation and reference tool, RefWorks allows you to import and save references from online academic databases and other various sources.
RefWorks helps with formatting the references in the correct style and creating a bibliography or reference list for any piece of written work thus, making it useful to write essays and dissertations with the use of add-ons.
7. Papers
If you are in need of a citation and reference tool that can search multiple engines at the same time for keywords and view one set of results, Papers is the best.
Papers discover, organize, annotate and share research. It is available for both Windows and Mac. Papers also come with all the basic functionality offered by other citation and reference tools.
8. PaperPile
PaperPile is a very useful citation and reference tool if you are using GoogleDocs for writing instead of MS Word.
One of the important features of PaperPile is that it works well with other citation tools such as Zotero and EndNote, allowing you to import it into GoogleDocs. There is a free version and for more features, you can upgrade to the premium version of PaperPile.
9. Google Scholar
This is the academic version of Google. Google Scholar is a citation and reference tool that can help you search for articles from a variety of sources. With Google Scholar you can save articles to a library only if you have a Google account.
10. Quillbot
Quillbot citation generator is an efficient citation and reference tool that helps users research, draft and polish their work quickly.
Even as a citation and a reference tool, Quillbot also helps to review and compare sources of articles using the summarizer to give a completely new form of ideas with the aid of the paraphraser. With Quillbot you can create a list of full citations in APA, MLA, or Chicago style.
11. Grammarly
Grammarly is a tool that helps to proofread and detects plagiarism in Microsoft Word and Google Docs.
Grammarly helps with spelling, punctuation, and stylistic suggestions. This brings out the beauty of your work as there are no spelling errors, grammatical mistakes or inappropriate use of punctuation.
12. Turnitin
Turnitin is a citation and reference tool that allows you to submit a text and then compare the text with other texts in the database. Turnitin empowers writers, students and researchers to do their best and original work.
Turnitin helps to check the plagiarism rate of your submitted text and gives a result of the plagiarism and non-plagiarism percentage. Turnitin helps you to check for the originality of an article or text.
13. Cite This For Me
Cite This For Me collaboration features make it a unique citation and reference tool for writers. Cite This For Me has a browser extension known as the Web Citer that offers you the ability to click once for citation sources.
Cite This For Me has a timer that helps you know when you are about to lose your work. To save your work and enjoy other features, sign up for a Cite This For Me account.
14. BibTex
BibTex is one of the standard format citation and reference tools to store and share bibliographic data.
Combined with typesetting LaTex, BibTex helps you format reference lists and in-text citations. BibTex also helps you manage large documents such as research papers and PhD thesis.
15. SciWheel
SciWheel is a management tool that inserts citations into Google Docs. BibTexSciWheel is a citation and reference tool that also helps to organize references, share citations, and read and annotate the full text.
If you are in need of a reference management tool with these features, SciWheel is the best to use.
16. CiteULike
This is a free online web-based bibliography manager. CiteULike helps you organize your research sources, generate bibliographies, post, and view and organize scientific papers. CiteULike also helps to share and save citations to academic papers online.
17. My Bib
My Bib is a free bibliography and APA citation generator that has no ads. My Bib gives you an accurate citation to use for your academic assignment and papers.
It also helps to organize, store and format citations. My Bib has thousands of citation styles for writers.
18. Research Rabbit AI
Research Rabbit AI is a powerful citation and reference tool that helps to discover research papers.
Research Rabbit AI helps users with intuitive exploration, personalized recommendations, powerful visualizations, sharing and collaboration and discovering authors. Research Rabbit AI saves a lot of time by identifying the most influential papers in a field.
What is the best citation tool?
The best citation and reference tools to use for your writing projects are:
- EndNote.
- Zotero.
- MyBib.
- PaperPile.
- Google Scholar
- Papers
- RefWorks.
- Mendeley
- Citavi
- Quillbot
- Grammarly
- JabRef
- SciWheel
- CiteULike
- CiteThisForMe
- Research Rabbbit AI
- Turnitin
- BibTex
What is the easiest citation manager to use?
Zotero is the easiest citation manager to use online because of notable features such as web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies, and an integrated PDF reader and note editor.
Which is better: Zotero or EndNote?
Zotero is easier to work with and has some notable features which are not available in EndNote such as the integration with the word processors Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, and Google Docs.
Is Mendeley or EndNote better for research?
Mendeley allows users to collaborate easily with other researchers online, easily import papers from other research software, get relevant papers based on what they are reading and access their papers from anywhere online.
What do citation tools do?
Citation tools are also known as Bibliographic Management tools or citation managers which are a set of devices, tools and software designed to smooth run the process of citing sources to save you time and energy in your research.
What are the benefits of using citation and reference tools?
Citation and reference tools help you keep track of the sources you use in your work. Citation and reference tools help to show your ideas and that of others in a presentable and acceptable way.
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Hellen Adigun is a Writer, Graphics Designer, Mobigrapher, and Drama Minister who loves nature. She is passionate about teens and youths inspiring them to reflect God’s image.