Citation management tools allow you to download citations from databases and websites, and to store, organize, and format those citations.
These are good choices for large research projects with many sources, for ongoing research into an area of interest, and for any research where you want to save sources that you might wish to refer to at some point in the future
The Olin Library does not endorse or support any particular one of these, but we will assist you in configuring your chosen citation tool to work with our resources.
Zotero: A plug-in for Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Edge; also available as a stand-alone Windows application. Free, with additional storage available for purchase.
Mendeley: A desktop and web program that stores document PDFs. Free, with additional storage and premium features available for purchase. Mendeley is particularly strong working with articles in the sciences.
Other citation formatting tools merely help you word your citations in the appropriate format (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.). These tools are useful when you won’t need to return to your list of sources after completing an immediate project.
Son of Citation Machine: Free web tool for MLA and APA style citations.
EasyBib: Free MLA citation formatting, with APA and Chicago/Turabian formatting for a paid subscription.