This guide will assist you in choosing the citation manager that best fits your needs. You cannot go wrong with choosing any of the tools, but it helps if you take a few things into consideration before starting. Remember that switching between the tools is possible, but it does become less convenient the longer you use a tool and the more file attachments you collect.
All three programs can:
Reasons to Choose EndNote
Zotero and Mendeley are relatively young tools when compared to EndNote. Baldwin Wallace students, faculty, and staff may use EndNote Basic provided as part of our Web of Science database package. To create an account navigate to any Web of Science database and click on the Products menu in the upper right.
Reasons to Choose Mendeley
If your research content is primarily contained in PDF files, Mendeley has an integrated PDF viewer and can create citation records by using the browser extension. Mendeley has the strongest website and community platform.
Reasons to Choose Zotero
If your research content is diverse, Zotero is the easiest method to gather citation records for non-PDF content. Zotero's single-click capture works with more databases, catalogs, and websites than Mendeley's browser extension. You can also enable the retrieval of PDF metadata, which allows you to create citation records just from dragging a PDF into Zotero. Zotero is open source and cannot be acquired by a company.
Questions? Contact the library.
This guide is based on a guide created by Becca Greenstein at Northwestern University and on a similar guide by Daria Carson-Dussan, Melissa Vetter, and Cheryl Holland at WUSTL.
