EBM Literature Sources : 7. Reference management

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').

These are the four most used programs for reference management. Two of them are available for free, Mendeley (account required) and Zotero (account optional), the other two aren't free but have been purchased by the library/UMCU. Be aware that the license for Refworks ends at the end of 2025.

If you want to use EndNote or Mendeley within the UMCU workplaces, you should contact the UMCU IT helpdesk. The Mendeley web importer cannot be used there. Via the UMC Utrecht you can use Reference Manager, but this as well has its limitations and is outdated.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 installed via their MyWorkspace.

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

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.

There are more tools for managing your references
Below you will find the major characteristics of the four most well-known systems.

Whatever tool you select, you are not stuck with it forever. However, switching to another tool can cause some problems.

You can simply transfer your references to another system. But in the case of PDFs, notes and map structure you may enter some problems. It is advisable not to change from reference tool while working on a large paper or book. There is a big chance you will have to start again with including your literature references in the text.

EndNote licenced by UU and UMCU combination of desktop programme and online platform very suitable for processing large numbers of references and deduplicating (for instance for systematic reviews) very suitable for adding full text and the updating of references options for sharing your references with others add-in for MS Word,Google Docs, LibreOffice and Apache OpenOffice unlimited storage for PDFs. because of the many options it takes more time to familiarise yourself with the use of Endnote more about Endnote
RefWorks The Refworks license for UU and UMCU will end by December 31st 2025! We advise you to use another reference manager.
Zotero free download, open source system with a large community of users and developers. local installation and web based version possible; good synchronisation quick and simple collecting of references from your browser saves reference and PDF from most online systems add-ins for referring for citing in Word, LibreOffice and in Google Docs. limited free storage space for PDFs (300MB) more about Zotero
Mendeley free download (non-institutional version) good options to make notes on (and in) publications. sufficient free storage capacity (2GB) Mendeley Reference Manager does not have a reliable, transparent way to deduplicate. We therefore advise against using Mendeley in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. In that case, choose another reference manager more about Mendeley