Reference management software

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Reference management software

Reference management software, citation management software or personal bibliographic management software is software for scholars and authors to use for recording and utilising bibliographic citation

Citation

A citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source . A bibliographic citation is a reference to a book, article , web page, or other published item....
s (references). Once a citation has been recorded, it can be used time and again in generating bibliographies

Bibliography

Bibliography , as a practice, is the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology ....
, such as lists of references in scholarly books, articles and essays. The development of reference management packages has been driven by the rapid expansion of scientific literature

Scientific literature

Scientific literature comprises scientific publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural science and social sciences, and within a scientific field is often abbreviated as the literature....
.

These software packages normally consist of a database

Database

A database is a structured collection of records or data that is stored in a computer system. The structure is achieved by organizing the data according to a database model....
in which full bibliographic references can be entered, plus a system for generating selective lists or articles in the different formats required by publishers and learned journals.

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Encyclopedia

Citation

Bibliography

Scientific literature

Database

Word processor

A word processor is a computer Application software used for the production of any sort of printable material.Word processor may also refer to an obsolete type of stand-alone office machine, popular in the 1970s and 80s, combining the keyboard text-entry and printing functions of an electric typewriter with a dedicated computer for th...
s so that a reference list in the appropriate format is produced automatically as an article is written, reducing the risk that a cited source is not included in the reference list. They will also have a facility for importing the details of publications from bibliographic database

Bibliographic database

A bibliographic or library database is a database of bibliography records. It may be a database containing information about books and other materials held in a library or, as the term is more often used, an electronic index to academic journal or magazines article s, containing citations, Abstract and often either the full text of...
s.

Reference management software does not do the same job as a bibliographic database, which tries to list all articles published in a particular discipline or group of disciplines; examples are those provided by Ovid Technologies

Ovid Technologies

Ovid Technologies, Inc. , part of the Wolters Kluwer group of companies, provides access to online bibliographic databases, journals and other products, chiefly in the area of health sciences....
(e.g. Medline

MEDLINE

MEDLINE is a literature Bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care....
), the Institute for Scientific Information

Institute for Scientific Information

The Institute for Scientific Information was founded by Eugene Garfield in 1960. It was acquired by Thomson Scientific & Healthcare in 1992, became known as Thomson ISI and now as Thomson Scientific....
(e.g. Web of Knowledge) or monodisciplinary learned societies

Learned society

A learned society is an organization that exists to promote an academic discipline or group of disciplines. Membership may be open to all, may require possession of some qualification, or may be an honor conferred by election, as is the case with the oldest learned societies, such as the Poland Sodalitas Litterarum Vistulana , the Italian Acc...
e.g. the American Psychological Association

American Psychological Association

The American Psychological Association is a professional organization representing psychology in the United States, with around 148,000 members and an annual budget of around $70m....
(PsycINFO

PsycINFO

PsycINFO is a Bibliographic database of Abstract s of literature in the field of psychology. It is produced by the American Psychological Association and distributed on the association's and through third-party vendors....
). These databases are large and have to be housed on major server

Server (computing)

A server is a computer program that provides services to other computer programs , in the same or other computer. The physical computer that runs a server program is also often referred to as server....
installations. Reference management software collects a much smaller database, of the publications that have been used or are likely to be used by a particular author or group, and such a database can easily be housed on an individual's personal computer

Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose original sales price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator....
.

Excepts for managing references, most reference management software also enable users to search references from online libraries. Usually those online libraries are based on Z3950 public protocol. Users just need to specify the IP address, database name and keywords to start a Z39.50 search. It's more quick and efficient than web browser. However, Z3950 is a little out of date. Some popular scientific websites do not support Z39.50 protocol, such as Google Scholar, IEEExploer, Arxiv, etc.

Reference management software

See also

External links