Reference management software
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Reference management software refers to a kind of large computer program designed to aid the process of keeping track of the literature in some academic discipline, and preparing bibliographies.
The writing of reference management packages has been driven by the rapid expansion of the scientific literature. Such a package will normally consist of a database in which the full bibliographic articles can be entered, plus a system for generating selective lists or articles in the different formats required by different publishers and learned journals. Modern reference management packages can usually be integrated with word processors 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 databases.
Reference management software does not try to 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 (e.g. Medline), the Institute for Scientific Information (e.g. Web of Knowledge) or monodisciplinary learned societies e.g. the American Psychological Association (PsycInfo). These databases are large and have to be housed on major 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.
Examples of commercial reference management packages include:
In the LaTeX document preparation system, the BibTeX tool performs the reference management.
External links
Publishers' web sites:
- Bibliographix (http://www.bibliographix.com)
- EndNote (http://www.endnote.com)
- ProCite (http://www.procite.com)
- Reference Manager (http://www.refman.com)de:Literaturverwaltungsprogramm