Skip to Main Content
Banner Image

Information Literacy Skills for Research (Engineering): Citation Managers

Overview

The main functions of a reference management software (also known as citation manager or reference manager or citation software or bibliographic management tool) are:

  • Stores and organises references from many sources (e.g. databases, library catalogues and search engines)
  • Inserts these references into a document
  • Formats your references automatically according to a predefined citation style

NUS Libraries conduct tutorials on how to use Zotero and EndNote effectively every semester. Watch out for NUS Libraries' newsletter.

Citation Managers

Zotero is a free bibliographic citation management software that allows you to save, collect, manage, cite, and share research sources.  Zotero is available either as a Firefox extension or as standalone software that works with Firefox, Chrome and Safari browsers.  It works right in your browser, making it easy to save you citations while you search. Use the Zotero word processor plugins to easily cite your sources and create a bibliography while you work.

To know more about Zotero, refer to Zotero Guide.

EndNote is a desktop-based citation manager, complimented with web-based version called EndNote Basic.  It has over 6000 citation styles to be used via Cite While You Write (CWYW) in word processing application.

To know more about EndNote, refer to EndNote Guide.