From proposal to formulating and exploring your topic, carrying out literature reviews, researching different ideas and theories, writing drafts to submitting your PhD and during your career as a researcher, you will need to searching and collate references/citations as part of your research activity. This helps you keep track of your sources throughout your studies.

There are many different types of software to choose from. Try a few different resources to see which one you prefer. The university has free access the web version of Endnote, via our subscription to Web of Science. Your Department may provide you with a laptop which includes the desktop version of Endnote. 

Free software

• BibSonomy                                  
• colwiz 
• citeulike
• Mendeley (web and desktop)
• qiqqa
• Zotero

You will want to collect, store, organise and annotate references either in a web account or on a desktop.

Consider whether the software offers you the ability to liink to full text, documents and websites and documents as well as cite your references and create bibliographies.

Many allow sharing your references, PDF highlighting, collaboration and social networking.

You should also be able to import references, for example for a list of search results in a database as well as manually create references.

When you save search results from LibrarySearch or from individual databases, select RIS format. This will import easily into any reference manager.