Reading and Reviewing Papers › Module 4: Managing what you read

Reference managers

Lesson 1 of 3 · 2 min

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A reference manager stores the papers you read, their details (authors, year, venue, DOI) and your notes. It also writes your reference list for you.

Zotero

Zotero is free and open source, made by a non-profit. It is a good default for students.

  • A browser connector saves a paper's details, and often the PDF, with one click.
  • You can organise papers into collections and tags.
  • It works with Word, LibreOffice and Google Docs to insert citations and build the reference list.
  • It exports to BibTeX for LaTeX and Overleaf.

Other options include Mendeley, JabRef (popular with LaTeX users) and EndNote (paid).

Check what it saves

Automatic saving is not perfect. Check the details of important papers: is it the published version or the arXiv one? Are the author names and year right? A wrong reference in your paper is your mistake, not the tool's.

DOIs

A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a permanent ID for a paper, like 10.1145/1273445.1273458. Putting https://doi.org/ in front of it always leads to the paper, even if the website changes. Reference managers can fill in all the details from a DOI.

RememberSet up your reference manager on day one of a project. Adding fifty papers at the end, from memory and browser history, is painful.