Research is a wonderful thing. Unlike many other professions out there, researchers in general love their work. In fact, a survey by nature reports that over two thirds of researchers reported experiencing high job satisfaction . It is interesting to note however, that researchers in fields such as industry and non profit scored higher on job satisfaction when compared to their peers in Academic. We have a feeling Academic writing may have something to do with it. Let’s be honest. While most researchers enjoy communicating their ideas to their peers, very few enjoy the publishing process which involves stringent formatting and citation requirements. In this article, we hope to make the academic writing process a little easier by introducing five open source tools that any academic writer can employ to ensure appropriate formatting standards.
Mendeley
Arguably the most popular referencing manager, Mendeley lets you organise your research, share documents with others, form multiple research groups within your account, and search academic databases. Cloud based services ensure that your documents are available wherever you are. Mendeley add-in can be integrated with popular word processing software, and the citation plugin readily generates the bibliography for all the references used in your document.
Mendeley add-in can be integrated with popular word processing software, and the citation plugin readily generates the bibliography for all the references used in your document.
Zotero
Zotero markets itself as a personal research assistant; and it lives up to the tag. When compared to Mendeley, Zotero may not have as strong a web and community platform. However, it is ideal when your references consist of diverse file types. While Mendeley is essentially built for PDfs, Zotero can handle multiple file types with ease. Its single click capture is more advanced that Mendeley’s web import as it has access to more databases. Additionally, Zotero is not just free, but open source. So, you have the option of contributing and making changes to the code if you are interested.
Docear
Another one in the open source category, Docear claims to have the most powerful information management approach. It is excellent for PDF documents and gives Mendeley some competition in this regard. However, its most attractive feature perhaps is that it allows for task management and drafting like Citavi without restricting the users to 100 references. The opensource philosophy makes it all the more attractive.
Citavi
Citavi is arguably the heavy weight among the tools presented here. With the ability to search research databases from within, citavi makes literature reviews much easier. Additionally, it can save copies of web pages and books as needed. Citavi is as much a planner as it is a referencing tool and lets you outline tasks and set timelines. When writing, it automatically adds the citations as and when they are used, and much like Mendeley and Zotero, it can be integrated with common word-processing software. However, the free version restricts users to a maximum of 100 references.
JabRef
An opensource reference manager like Zotero, JabRef specialises in Latex documents. It is said to have stronger grouping and sorting features, and has Bibtex as the default storage format. This makes it much easier to integrate the references to a Latex document. While Zotero can manipulate Bibtex with an add-in, JabRef users enjoy a higher level of control over their bibtex files. Basically, though JabRef may lack the aesthetics of Mendeley or other reference managers, it is a slim, no nonsense software with a set of dedicated users.
These are our top 5 picks, but there are tonnes more. Click here for a comprehensive list of reference managers compared.
In addition to these, if all you need is a reference formatted appropriately, just employ online interfaces such as Citation Machine or Cite This For Me.