Nazarbayev University LibGuides: An Introduction to Citing & Referencing: Citation & Reference Management

Managing & organising your references

It's essential to record any sources you might want to reference later. Make sure to have a record of all the details:

details of your sources:
- author,
- year
- title of a book or article
- publisher or the journal title,
a link to the article or a copy saved on your PC or laptop.
always remember to note down the page numbers of any text you quote in your work. This will help you to accurately reference the source and avoid potential errors.

Managing and organising references can be challenging, especially when writing a longer piece of work involving multiple sources. Reference management software is recommended; it will help you save time, keep track of your references, and store and annotate full-text documents. It is also a useful tool to collaborate with a study group, your professor, or other researchers.

Reference management software

Although knowledge of creating your own citations is very much encouraged, reference management software can be used to help you generate your citations, depending on your citation style.

Standard features of reference management software:

Store references in a searchable database in a web account and/or on your desktop
Attach PDFs, notes and other files
Store link to full text and web pages
Auto-generate citations and bibliographies/ reference lists in your document
Share collections of references with others

The three most common programs are Endnote, Mendeley and Zotero.

EndNote is a reference organizer that allows you to create a personal database of the references that you retrieve from searches of library catalogues, databases and the Internet. It has both online and desktop versions. EndNote Online is complimentary. To request the desktop installation, please contact the IT helpdesk.
Mendeley is a free online reference manager.
Zotero is a free online reference manager with unlimited storage in the desktop account. There are limits in the cloud storage.

How can you determine which program is suitable for you? Here are some factors to take into consideration:

What programs are your colleagues and professors using? For example, if fellow researchers are all using Zotero to share citations, you might consider Zotero so that you can share your research, too.
Use what you like! No perfect program exists, so use what you're comfortable with.
You can use more than one software. Records can be transferred from one program to another.
To compare the features of Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote, see this table from the University of Melbourne.

Citation tools

Many databases, journals, articles, etc. have citation tools for easy copying and exporting to your preferred reference manager. However, treat the generated references and citations as a rough draft – you may need to edit them to make them useful.

In the library's Primo Discovery, you can get ready citations for each document found on library online databases:

Search Primo
Click on a title and a "Cite" icon
Select citation style and you can then export or copy citation

With a simple click of the cite button (below an article entry), Google Scholar will give you a ready-to-use citation for the article in five styles, including APA, MLA and Chicago. You can select and copy the one you prefer.

Many academic databases, journals, articles, etc., have citation tools for easy copying and exporting to your preferred reference manager. However, treat the generated references and citations as a rough draft – you may need to edit them to make them useful.

See an example from Taylor & Francis database:

There are also online reference generators if you do not want to use reference management software, for example, ZoteroBib. However, treat the generated references and citations as a rough draft – you may need to edit them to make them useful.

ZoteroBib is a user-friendly tool that automatically generates references from URLs, ISBNs, DOIs or journal article titles. You can also manually enter information. Creating reference lists/bibliographies is easy, and many referencing styles are available.