Managing bibliographic references in an efficient and streamlined manner has become an increasingly felt need in both teaching and research. Thanks to reference management software, it is possible to reduce the risk that a cited source is not included in the final bibliography and, at the same time, limit the time spent reformatting references when submitting an academic text to several journals and/or publishers requiring different citation styles.
How do reference management software work?
These software have different functions depending on the specific academic text, but in general the operations allowed or required are the following:
- log in;
- import bibliographic databases or manually insert references and full text documents;
- organize references in folders and shared groups;
- create, format and export of bibliographies;
- insert in-text bibliographical references using a word processor;
- share and collectively use the bibliographical references and related documents with working and research groups.
Choosing a reference management software
Here is the list of the tools subscribed by the University of Bologna and of the main free software available:
| Name and Login | Description | User guide |
|---|---|---|
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Subscribed by the University of Bologna (until 31 December 2025). To create an account, users must connect from the University of Bologna's Wi-Fi network or via Proxy. |
Official RefWorks page with Quick User Guides |
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By subscribing to Web of Science (WOS), the University of Bologna has an online version with enhanced functionalities compared to the basic version: direct export from several databases, 3300 citation styles (instead of 21), hundreds of import formats, visualisation of citation data from Wos, the availability of the A-link button (link resolver). To create an account, users must log into the Web of Science platform from the University of Bologna's Wi-Fi network or via Proxy. |
Official page with Clarivate Libguides |
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Open source software with the possibility of saving up to 300 MB of data for free. |
Official page with Zotero support |
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Free software with the possibility of saving up to 2GB of data. |
Official page with Mendeley Guides Mendeley plugin installation on Word |
AlmaRE has prepared a comparison table between these products: see the reference management software comparison table [.ods 6 KB].