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Universiteitsbibliotheek – LibGuides

EBM Literature Sources : 7. Reference management

Managing literature references

A systematic study of literature often yields hundreds, even thousands of references. To manage these references (saving, organising, removing duplicates) you can use a program for reference management (also called 'literature management').

RefWorks or Reference Manager?

Utrecht University (and so also Utrecht University Library) supports the use of  RefWorks, an online program for literature management.

However, RefWorks turns out to be less suitable for the large numbers of references that are sometimes retrieved within STARTBlok (part of medical curriculum year 6).

On the computers in the computer rooms and the study area at UMC Utrecht you will also find the program Reference Manager.

Increasingly, students and staff use Mendeley, which is freely available.

EndNote, RefWorks, Mendeley or Zotero

Utrecht University and the UU Library support the online reference management tool RefWorks.

Refworks is not the best to choice for managing hundreds of citations you might find during your systematic search.

Via the UMC Utrecht you can use Reference Manager, but this as well has its limitations and is outdated.

A better option would be EndNote or one of the free tools. EndNote is available via the Software Centre for UMC employees and for UU-students it can be intsalled via their MyWorkspace.

The free tools that are available and use to use are Mendeley and Zotero.

More info about RefWorks

To use RefWorks you need to create an account first. This can be done on each UU computer and also on the computers in the computer rooms and in the study area in UMC Utrecht.
For more information about the use of RefWorks, check the LibGuide RefWorks LibGuide RefWorks
More help on the topic of how to import references from several databases you can find here.

More info about Mendeley

Mendeley is a freely accessible tool for literature management and mamagement of PDF-files, with good synchronization between desktop application and web interface, an inbuilt PDF-reader en sociale functionalities.

A short step-by-step introduction to Mendeley can be found in the Reference Management.
More information on importing a larger number of references from PubMed and Embase can be found here.

Mendeley itself also offers help guides and support.