Health Sciences Literature Searching Basics

What is Citation Management? 

When conducting research, you may sometimes find yourself overwhelmed by the number of citations from articles, books, grey literature, and other sources. Citation management, also known as reference management, is the process of organizing all your references so you can keep track of your research.

Citation managers are tools that help you collect, organize, and share your references. Examples of citation managers include Zotero and EndNote.

Citation Managers

Citation managers can help you save time by doing the following:

• Manage and organize all your sources in one centralized location.

• Add browser extensions to directly save sources to your citation manager.

• Export citations generated from searches in various databases.

  • Analyze and sort retrieved records for relevancy—this technique can serve as an alternative to screening records within the databases themselves.

• Add in-text citations as you write your document.

• Create a bibliography or references list, based on the required citation format (e.g., APA 7, AMA, Vancouver, etc.).

• Share and collaborate with colleagues and peers.

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Zotero and EndNote are both citation managers that help you organize your citations, including references and the full text of journal articles and book chapters. EndNote is provided free of charge to all current members of the McGill community and Zotero is a free, open source software.

For getting help with Zotero: Citation LibGuide: Zotero 

For getting help with EndNote: Citation LibGuide: EndNote

Citation and Referencing FAQ: McGill Library FAQs: Citation and referencing

For example, you can use Zotero or EndNote when you are writing a literature review and are exporting citations generated from searches in different databases and to remove duplicate records retrieved across various databases. The retrieved records can then be analyzed for relevancy and sorted accordingly. This technique is an alternative to screening records within the databases themselves, which can be frustrating if you have large sets of records to sift through to identify relevant studies. For example, it can be easy to lose your screening work if you are reviewing records within a database like PubMed.

EndNote and Zotero are also extremely useful when writing your paper, as they include "Cite While You Write" functionality. You can add in-text citations and references to your document from your EndNote or Zotero library and automatically reformat them to the appropriate citation style.