The article compares five reference management tools. Each tool is analyzed in terms of the accessing, collecting, organizing and citing, formatting.

1. Comparison of selected
Reference Management Tools: A
view
By
N.HariLakshmi

2.  The article compares five reference management
tools. They are Mendeley, CiteULike, Zotero, EndNote
Basic, Google Scholar Library. These tools were
chosen based on their functionality ease of use,
availability to library users, and popularity. Each tool
is analyzed in terms of the following features:
accessing, collecting, organizing and citing,
formatting. A comparison table is included to
summarize the key features of these tools.
Abstract

3.  Literature search is continuous process in a
researcher's life. The major task for a researcher is to
systematically arrange and keep all these gathered
literatures in a single place. All these papers were
made available in computer folders or possibility of
getting lost full text contents of some important
papers in paper based filing system. Hence a number
of web-based solutions related to online reference
management have become available to the
communities of researchers.
Introduction

4. 1 Aigaion 12 Endnote 23 refbase
2 Bebop 13 F1000Workspa
ce
24 RefDB
3 Bib Base 14 JabRef 25 Reference
manager
4 Bibdesk 15 BibTex 26 Refworks
5 Biblioscape 16 Mendeley 27 Ref ME
6 Bibsonomy 17 Paperpile 28 SciRef
7 Bibus 18 Papers 29 Sente
8 Bookends 19 Pbliographer 30 Wikindx
9 Citavi 20 Qiqqa 31 WizFolio
10 Cite U like 21 ReadCube
11 Colwiz 22 Endnote
Various types of reference management
software's

5.  Among the above tools we select some the tools
which were most used and freely available tools.
They are Mendeley, CiteULike, Zotero, EndNote
Basic and Google Scholar are most used online
reference mangers. These web-based platforms
help researchers collect, save, retrieve and share
references for future works as well as enrichment
with social bookmarking of bibliographic
information.
Selected reference manager
software’s

6.  The Mendeley is one of the most preferred online reference managers freely
available to researchers across the world. Launched in 2007, it was later
acquired by Elsevier B.V – the owner company of online products – Scopus and
Science direct.
 Mendeley became leading online reference manager and PDF organizer, in
terms of its popularity amongst researchers and academics. Any researcher can
create a free online account in Mendeley platform, store bibliographic records as
well as full-text documents in PDF or other formats and later retrieve those
saved documents as per their research requirements.
 Mendeley offers 2GB personal storage space,
 value added services with a monthly or an annual price plan namely, Mendeley
Premium Packages and Mendeley Institutional Edition.
Mendeley

7.  Quick and simple Installation
 Citation styles for thousands of journals
 Create bibliographies instantly
 Flexible formatting
 Collaborate on bibliographies
Features of mendeley web reference
manager

8.  Launched in 2004, Cite U Like became pioneer
in offering services of online reference
manager and PDF organizer. My Cite U Like,
the personalized profile of a registered user in
Cite U Like website, provides the following
information. It has much functionality similar
to Mendeley web.
Cite U Like

10.  A Cite u Like book market is also available to Cite U Like users to
import a citation from a publishers article page and save it to a user
account in Cite ULike web.
 This is online group that facilitates social sharing or social book
marking of scholarly papers in a subject area related to that group.
 A user can create new e-group , search and join in existing e-group
based on his/her research interests.
 A user can also create a new e-group and send invitations to
registered CiteULike members with similar research interest for
collaborative creation of online bibliographies.

CiteULike accepts online advertisements for its sustainability offers
free services to its registered users.
Features

11.  launched in 2006 as a project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center
for History and New Media in George Mason University in the
United States, with its web-based solution as well as desktop
open source application for reference management and PDF
organizer. Similar to Mendeley, Zotero desktop also imports
references saved in its online collection at my library of zotero
web platform
 Features of Zotero:
 A personal research assistant
 Store anything
 Organize our collections
 Tag it
 Cite perfectly
 A personal library of a user in Zotero web platform can store
all downloaded or collected literatures
Zotero

12.  Launched on 19th Nov, 2013, Google Scholar library
is a web based reference management service
linked to Google Scholar library and Google Scholar
Citations web services freely available to
researchers and academics across the world.
 A registered user of Google or Gmail account can
maintain a Google Scholar Library.
 It is freely available service with functionalities of
online reference manger. However, GSL does not
have functionalities of a PDF Organizer, as available
with Mendely, CitULike or Zotero.
Google Scholar

13.  While search for documents through Google Scholar search
engine, the user will get many documents matching your search
criteria . Click “save” below a retrieved document in a search
result to save in library named as “My library”.
 If users are registered user having a profile in Google Scholar
Citations, they will have some more personalized collection of
bibliographic references. There three labels namely:
 My library
 My citations
 Cited by me
Functions

14.  In April, 2013 Thomson Reuters launched a free version of
EndNote web, Basic – available to researchers across the
world without any annual or monthly subscription charges.
End note Basic has some limited functionalities as
compared to this full version. Similar to Mendeley and
Zotero, EndNote Basic has less storage space to store full-
text contents of references in a user’s library collection
 Features of End note basic
 Collect
 Organize
 Format
EndNote Basic

15. Memdeley CiteULike Zotero EndNote
Basic
Google Scholar
Library
Beneficiary
group
Academics:
researchers,
students
Academics:
researchers,
students
Academics:
researchers,
students
Academics:
Researchers,
students
Academics:
researchers,
students
Founded/Launc
hed2007
2007 2004 2006 2013 2013
Owner/develop
er
Elsevier Oversity
limited
Center for
History and
New media at
GMU
Thomson
Reuters
Google Inc.
Website Mendeley.com CiteULike.org Zotero.org Myendnoteweb.
com
Scholar.google.c
om
Add to
Altmetric Score
Yes Yes Yes No No
Social groups Yes Yes Yes No No
objectives Making science
more open and
collaborative.
To help store,
organize and
share the
To help collect,
organize and
anlyze research
To support the
advancement of
science and
Personal
collection of
articles in
Comparison of selected RM
softwares

16.  User may use of different online reference managers
and PDF organizers for storing and managing
bibliographic references in online profile or online
account. These online reference managers have
options of creating free online account with certain
free storage limit, similar to any other web-service
giving free storage facilities with certain limit. Its give
options to users to subscribe to an extra storage
space and some other value-added services for a fee.
Conclusion

17. Thank you