This post was originally published at the PhD Life blog on the 17th of Jan 2012, see here for the comments on this post.
Writing about web page http://reference.eventbrite.co.uk/
Exactly a year ago I gave up on EndNote after attempting to use it for a week. It was dull (the interface made me fall asleep), frustrating and confusing. It was then I decided to look into other Reference Management Software (RMS) and came across Zoteroand Mendeley. Mendeley came highly recommended by A Hariri (a fellow blogger at Warwick). After a conversation with him on his blog, I decided to give a shot and I fell in love with it (and it hasn’t let me down as yet). It is pleasant on the eye, easy to navigate and works on portable mobile devices too (such as the iPhone). It also places pdfs into a directory that are easily searchable and editable, allows one to add sticky notes to pdf files, papers are kept in the cloud so you can access papers and download to multiple platforms, allows importing from other reference managers, and facilitates collaboration within research groups too. In a nutshell EndNote is a reference management software, but Mendeley goes far beyond that and has many additional features that EndNote simply doesn’t have.
During the past few months I’ve been asking PhD students and academics at Warwick which RMS they use. When many told me they don’t use EndNote, in fact they don’t use anything (they manually write up the references by typing them up!), I was shocked to say the very least.
Do you use a Reference Management Software (like EndNote, Mendeley, Zotero etc)? If so, which one and why?
If you are frustrated with EndNote or are looking for a fresh way to organise your journal articles and reference with a click of a button, you are more than welcome to come along to the Mendeley Workshop I am running in the Library on the 16th of Feb. Just register here: http://reference.eventbrite.co.uk/
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