Reference Management with Zotero and Mendeley: A Beginner’s Guide

Over the course of a thesis you read dozens, sometimes hundreds, of sources. Keeping them in a Word file or in folders turns into "Which article did I get this from?" as the deadline approaches. Reference managers solve this problem.

What reference managers do

• Collect bibliographic details in one library
• Add articles from your browser with one click
• Store PDFs with their records and let you annotate them
• Work with Word to create citations and reference lists automatically
• Organise sources with tags and folders

Zotero

• Free and open source.
• Captures records from web pages and databases with a browser extension.
• Supports thousands of citation styles.
• Group libraries make it good for collaboration.

Mendeley

• Owned by Elsevier.
• Known for PDF reading and annotation features.
• Available on the web and desktop.

EndNote

• Paid software; some universities provide licences.
• Powerful features for managing large libraries.

Which one you choose often depends on personal preference and your university’s support.

Moving references: BibTeX, RIS, CSL-JSON

These tools can export references in standard formats:

• BibTeX (.bib): the standard for LaTeX users
• RIS (.ris): a common format almost every tool can read
• CSL-JSON: used by modern tools that work with citation styles

Use these files when switching tools or using your references elsewhere.

Habits for a good library

• Check details when adding a record; automatically captured data can be incomplete or wrong.
• Always include the DOI.
• Write a short note for every source: why it matters and which chapter it belongs to.
• Clean up duplicates regularly.

Using Academiana alongside your reference manager

Academiana imports BibTeX, RIS and CSL-JSON files exported from Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote; your sources are verified via DOI and duplicates are removed. You can export your project’s sources in the same formats, so you can keep your favourite tool while using Academiana’s source search, citation and writing features.