Reference Management Tools

Bibliographic management software is Referral software designed to establish, store, sort and use bibliographic references of articles, books or even websites to facilitate the citation and to automate the production of bibliographies for various publications scientists

Principle of operation

Bibliographic reference management tools are based on the principle of data separation and formatting. Indeed, all the information and data are stored in a database in separate fields (author, title, place of publication,) which makes it possible to use it by applying for each text a different and adapted formatting the constraints of publishing houses, research institutions, journals etc. In concrete terms, the information stored in the database is therefore, for example, as follows:

For your thesis you must for example apply the style of the German standard DIN 1505-02:

For the publication of an article in a magazine, you are asked to respect another particular style (here that of the journal trajectories):

And for a presentation of a thematic bibliography of your university, you must provide references in accordance with yet another style (here that of the EHESS):

These three different layouts can be produced in just a few clicks and seconds with a bibliographic reference management tool.

The features of bibliographic reference management tools

 1. Feed the database

The tools allow you

 to add bibliographic records manually

 retrieve records from a library catalog

 to import and export bibliographic records

2. Work with bibliographic references

You can

 Search and sort records

 Organize records into folders and subfolders

 Work with keywords in the bibliography

 Annotate bibliographic records

3. Exploit bibliographic references

It is possible to

 Generate on the fly a bibliography of references selected according to different predefined styles

 Integrate bibliographic references into a word processor (Word / OpenOffice) to quote references in the text

The different types of applications

1. Specific software

Software that installs on a personal computer and stores all data locally. For example :

Endnote (paid software)

Jabref (free software)

Advantage: This solution guarantees independence from an internet connection because all information is stored on a personal computer. It is therefore possible to work on and with the data even without having an internet connection.

Disadvantage: If one often changes working environment (on a desktop computer, at home, a laptop, a computer at the library etc.), specific software installed locally is not suitable, because the data is precisely stored on a computer and remote access is not possible.

2. An online platform

An internet application that stores all data on a server. Access is through a personalized account. For example:

Ref works (paying, inquire for a campus license from his university)

Sign up for free

Advantages and disadvantages are reversed compared to the locally installed software solution. The online platform allows optimal synchronization for someone who works on several different workstations, but is a disadvantage in case of work situation without internet connection.

 3. Plugin / extension in the Firefox browser

The application is an add-on module to install in the Firefox web browser.

The zotero tool can nowadays be installed as standalone software or as an extension for some internet browsers, especially Firefox. Thanks to a custom account system on the zotero server, this tool combines the advantages of the two previous solutions. The data is stored on a personal computer, but is synchronized with a remote server which allows to use its bibliographic references of any workstation while also having them locally on his own computer.

Criteria of choice for a tool

For the practical work of our seminar, we have chosen zotero as a working tool, but we encourage our participants to also check with their university and research center about the tools and licenses available. Here is a short list of criteria for choosing a tool:

Compatibility for automatic record retrieval with popular catalogs of libraries and databases

Compliance with standard formats for import / export

Minimum desired features

The cost of software and possible access to campus licenses through his university

The complexity / time of training to use

Personal work mode (on one or more computers)

Compatibility with its operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux)

The variety / adaptability of bibliography styles

Automatic recovery, import and export

The first two criteria are undoubtedly the decisive criteria and deserve to be briefly developed. Automatic retrieval of bibliographic records from library catalogs and databases is fundamental. It can be done in different ways.

1. A transfer function between the search tool and the bibliography management tool

                        This is the case for zotero for example: if the search tool is compatible, a function allows to recover in a few clicks either a list of results or a single bibliographic record.

2. An export function in the search tool and an import function in the bibliography management tool

                      The import / export feature is doubly important. Firstly, it also allows automated retrieval of bibliographic records from a search tool (especially in the catalogs of German library networks) to its bibliographic reference management tool. The recognized computer formats are BibTex, Endnote, RDF, RIS; some bibliography management tools also manage the MARC librarian format. If the bibliography management software that we choose reads and exports in these formats, we keep - secondly - also a freedom vis-à-vis the different software, because we can change software at any time without losing references already collected previously.

3. A remote database query function in the bibliography management tool

                          Ref Works offers a third way to automatically retrieve bibliographic records from catalogs, bibliographies and databases: it is the bibliography management tool that acts as a metamotor by directly querying resources via a Ref Works common interface. By going through the protocol Z39.50, an interconnection protocol used in the world of librarianship, we have in Ref Works access to the catalog of the BNF for example, while a recovery of records of the BNF is not possible with zotero . However, this search interface also has the disadvantage of all metamotors: since the search is not performed in the interface of the resource in question, but in an interface implanted above.