A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion at the spot where the citation appears.
Bibliography, as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology. English author and bibliographer John Carter describes bibliography as a word having two senses: one, a list of books for further study or of works consulted by an author ; the other one, applicable for collectors, is "the study of books as physical objects" and "the systematic description of books as objects".
BibTeX is reference management software for formatting lists of references. The BibTeX tool is typically used together with the LaTeX document preparation system. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The name is a portmanteau of the word bibliography and the name of the TeX typesetting software.
CiteULike was a web service which allowed users to save and share citations to academic papers. Based on the principle of social bookmarking, the site worked to promote and to develop the sharing of scientific references amongst researchers. In the same way that it is possible to catalog web pages or photographs, scientists could share citation information using CiteULike. Richard Cameron developed CiteULike in November 2004 and in 2006 Oversity Ltd. was established to develop and support CiteULike. In February 2019, CiteULike announced that it would be ceasing operations as of March 30, 2019.
Parenthetical referencing is a citation system in which in-text citations are made using parentheses. They are usually accompanied by a full, alphabetized list of citations in an end section, usually titled "references", "reference list", "works cited", or "end-text citations". Parenthetical referencing can be used in lieu of footnote citations.
ASA style is a widely accepted format for writing university research papers in the field of sociology. It specifies the arrangement and punctuation of footnotes and bibliographies. Standards for ASA style are specified in the ASA Style Guide, which is published by the American Sociological Association, the main scholarly organization for academic sociologists in the United States. The ASA Style Guide, published by the American Sociological Association, is designed to aid authors preparing manuscripts for ASA journals and publications.
JabRef is an open-source, cross-platform citation and reference management software. It is used to collect, organize and search bibliographic information.
EndNote is a commercial reference management software package, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays, reports and articles. EndNote was written by Richard Niles, and ownership changed hands several times since it was launched in 1989 by Niles & Associates: in 2000 it was acquired by Institute for Scientific Information’s ResearchSoft Division, part of Thomson Corporation, and in 2016 by Clarivate. EndNote's main competitors are Mendeley and Zotero. Unlike Mendeley and Zotero, EndNote is neither free-to-use nor offers a freemium model.
refbase is web-based institutional repository and reference management software which is often used for self-archiving. refbase is licensed under the GPL and written in PHP and uses a MySQL backend.
Zotero is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies, an integrated PDF reader and note editor, as well as integration with the word processors Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, and Google Docs. It was originally created at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and, as of 2021, is developed by the non-profit Corporation for Digital Scholarship.
ContextObjects in Spans (COinS) is a method to embed bibliographic metadata in the HTML code of web pages. This allows bibliographic software to publish machine-readable bibliographic items and client reference management software to retrieve bibliographic metadata. The metadata can also be sent to an OpenURL resolver. This allows, for instance, searching for a copy of a book at a specific library.
The following tables compare notable reference management software. The comparison includes older applications that may no longer be supported, as well as actively-maintained software.
BibDesk is an open-source reference management software package for macOS, used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles. It can also be used to organize and maintain a library of documents in PDF format and other formats. It is primarily a BibTeX front-end for use with LaTeX, but also offers external bibliographic database connectivity for importing, a variety of means for exporting, and capability for linking to local documents and automatically filing local documents. It takes advantage of many macOS features such as AppleScript and Spotlight.
RefDB is a client/server reference database and bibliography tool for markup languages like SGML, XML, and LaTeX. It is suitable for standalone use for the purpose of self-archiving, but can be used as an institutional repository as well. Data storage proper is done in one of several supported SQL database engines. RefDB runs on Unix-like operating systems and on Windows/Cygwin. RefDB is licensed under the GPL.
NewGenLib is an integrated library management system developed by Verus Solutions Pvt Ltd. Domain expertise is provided by Kesavan Institute of Information and Knowledge Management in Hyderabad, India. NewGenLib version 1.0 was released in March 2005. On 9 January 2008, NewGenLib was declared free and open-source under GNU GPL. The latest version of NewGenLib is 3.1.1 released on 16 April 2015. Many libraries across the globe are using NewGenLib as their Primary integrated library management system as seen from the NewGenlib discussion forum.
Scholar's Aid is a shareware reference management software package. The project seems to idle. There have been no updates since September 2010.
WizFolio was a web-based reference management software for researchers to manage, share their research and academic papers and generate citations in scholarly writings. It used plug-ins to collect bibliographic information, videos, and patents from webpages. WizFolio ceased to be available at the end of 2017.
Nota Bene is an integrated software suite of applications, including word processing, reference management, and document text analysis software that is focused on writers and scholars in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and the Arts. The integrated suite is referred to as the Nota Bene Workstation. It runs on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh.
ProCite, a commercial reference management software program, was designed in the early 1980s by Victor Rosenberg, associate professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. ProCite was published in 1983 by Personal Bibliographic Software of Ann Arbor, Michigan. In 1996, ProCite was purchased by the Institute for Scientific Information, a division of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters discontinued sales and support of Procite in May 2013.
Paperpile is a web-based commercial reference management software, with special emphasis on integration with Google Docs and Google Scholar. Parts of Paperpile are implemented as a Google Chrome browser extension. It was founded in 2012, and is produced by Paperpile LLC.
