The most popular ones are RefWorks, EndNote, Mendeley and Zotero. These electronic tools help you to save and organize the bibliographic references and to associate documents from a research in databases, catalogs or the Internet. In addition, this software is able to connect with text processing programs which allow you to elaborate bibliographies in different formats automatically or semi-automatically.
Choosing among the diverse software will depend on several aspects considering that, even though they may look very different, in the end, they do the same tasks. The aspects to be considered could be the kind of format (free or limited to University users), the possibility of personalizing the bibliographic formats or how easy to use they are.
Being a member of the University of A Coruña is required to start using RefWorks. At the same time, you need to register as a user with the institutional e-mail @udc.es in order to get an individual account. Get registered by clicking on this link: https://refworks.proquest.com/
Important aspect to consider: first time you create a RefWorks account, you must be connected to the UDC network. Once you have been registered, you will be able to use it through any computer connected to Internet.
RefWorks operates as an online reference manager whose main advantage is to be the only one with the possibility of editing bibliographic formats or changing the fields that must appear in the references (the DOI, for instance).
RefWorks uses the plug-in “Proquest” to work with text processing programs such as Word (in different versions), Mac or Google Docs. It also uses the button “Save to RefWorks” to capture registers from any web browser.
For further information: (Quick Start Guide in spanish)
EndNote basic is the web-based reference manager offered by database Web of Science through FECYT. It is necessary to register on the home page of Web of Science in order to work with it.
Working side by side with Web of Science is the main reason for many researchers to use WoS as the principal information source. A special feature of EndNote is “Match”, a functionality that allows you to find the most suitable journals when publishing a research work just by typing the title and the summary of the work.
EndNote makes use of the plug-in “Cite While you Write” to work with text processing programs like Ms Word and Mac; and the button “Capture Reference” to capture web contents in browsers such as Firefox, Chrome, Explorer or Safari.
For further information: Presentación de EndNote
Mendeley belongs to Elsevier, the same enterprise that produces Scopus. You can create an account in its web page or use the Scopus account so that you can work with the free version of Mendeley.
Mendeleys´s workflow goes from the compilation of registers and documents through the online version to the Mendeley Desktop, a local program that we must install in our computer and synchronize with the online version. Installation of the plug-in “Citation Plugin” is required so that Mendeley Desktop can work with text processing programs like Ms Word or Libre Office.
Mendeley is really easy to use and this is partly thanks to “Web Importer”, a plug-in which works mainly with Firefox and Google Chrome and allows you to capture bibliographic references from databases and web pages in a quick and reliable way. This is why Mendeley turns to be the ideal software to all that people starting their research activity.
For further information: Mendeley, quick start guide (in Spanish)
Zotero is a free reference manager elaborated with free software and integrated on the web which works as a complement or extension of the browser Mozilla Firefox. To use it with another browser, the Zotero Standalone version allows you to install it as an application independent of Firefox.