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Reference management software,citation management software, orbibliographic management software is software that stores a database ofbibliographic records and producesbibliographic citations (references) for those records, needed inscholarly research. Once a record has been stored, it can be used time and again in generatingbibliographies, such as lists of references in scholarly books and articles. Modern reference management applications can usually be integrated withword processors so that a reference list in one of the many different bibliographic formats required by publishers andscholarly journals is produced automatically as an article is written, reducing the risk that a cited source is not included in the reference list. They will also have a facility for importing bibliographic records frombibliographic databases.
Reference management software does not do the same job as abibliographic database that tries to store records ofallpublications published within a given scope such as a particularacademic discipline or group of disciplines. Such bibliographic databases are large and have to be housed on majorserver installations. Reference management software collects a much smaller database, of the publications that have been used or are likely to be used by a particular researcher or group of researchers, and such a database can easily be stored on an individual'spersonal computer.
Many reference management applications enable users to search bibliographic records in online bibliographic databases andlibrary catalogs. An earlycommunications protocol used to access library catalogs, and still in service at many libraries,[1] isZ39.50, which predated the invention of theWorld Wide Web. Although Z39.50 is still in use, today most bibliographic databases are available asweb sites that allow exporting selectedbibliographic records in various bibliographic data formats that are imported by reference management software.
Citation creators or citation generators are online tools which facilitate the creation ofworks cited andbibliographies. Citation creators useweb forms to take input and format the output according to guidelines and standards, such as theModern Language Association'sMLA Style Manual,American Psychological Association'sAPA style,The Chicago Manual of Style, orTurabian format. Some citation creators generate only run-time output, while others store the citation data for later use.[citation needed]
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In 2013, a comparison of usage ofEndNote,RefWorks, andZotero among the legal scholars at the Oxford University Law Faculty was performed by survey. 0% of survey participants used RefWorks; 40% used Endnote; 17% used Zotero, mostly research students. The difficulty of using RefWorks, Endnote, and Zotero by Oxford legal scholars was estimated by the author as well. A comparison of these tools for legal scholars was made across several usage scenarios, including: installing and setting upOSCOLA citation style; building a personal legal bibliographic library and using extracting metadata from legal bibliographic databases; generating footnotes and bibliographies for academic publications; using and modifying OSCOLA citation style.[2] In the same year, a survey conducted at theUniversity of Turin found that knowledge of software was high but adoption was not, and the most known and used software was EndNote.[3]