Source: http://www.open.ac.uk/library/help-and-support/bibliographic-management

Bibliographic management

Library Services
Help and Support
Bibliographic management

The
best way to keep track of your references is to keep a record of the
articles you have read. Reference management tools help you to organise
your references and automatically generate reference lists or
bibliographies in a variety of styles. Bibliographic management is
another term used to describe these tools and their use.

Moving away from RefWorks and My References by April 2016

The OU has made a decision to move away from supporting RefWorks and its dependent MyReferences service.

This is because of the growth in freely available reference
management tools, which can give you continuing access to your
references once you have finished your studies.

MyReferences and RefWorks will be available to current users until
the 31st March 2016, to allow you sufficient time to choose an
alternative tool.

For guidance on exporting your references from RefWorks and MyReferences to other tools see Moving your references out of RefWorks.

If you currently have an Open University RefWorks or MyReferences account, you can access this using the relevant link below.

Selecting a reference management tool

Before you begin using a reference management tool, it is best to concentrate on developing your referencing skills.
If you are going to keep records of large numbers of references then it
will be worthwhile investing time in selecting and learning how to use a
tool. This Being Digital activity will help you evaluate which tool might meet your needs.

While the Open University does not endorse a particular product, or
provide support for their use, there are several free web-based tools
from which to choose. Some are basic tools for undergraduate study.
Others are more advanced and suitable for researchers and postgraduate
students. The regular OU Live session on Introduction to reference management tools
takes you through some of the things to consider when selecting and
using reference management tools. For more general guidance on
referencing see Referencing and plagiarism.

Basic tools

BibSonomy is a social bookmarking service that enables you to export in a variety of formats and feeds.

RefME is a
web-based tool for generating citations, reference lists and
bibliographies, there is an option for importing .ris files. It is also
available as an App

Delicious is a
service designed for personal bookmarking on the web. Websites can be
accessed anywhere, no matter what computer or device you are using.

More advanced tools

Colwiz is
software that helps to sort, cite and share research. You can import
PDFs and references from the web to your desktop and mobile devices.

EndNote Basic
is entirely web-based and allows you to store, manage and share your
references, cite sources and write your papers. It is a simpler, free
version of the commercial tool Endnote Desktop. (Please disregard the
'Sign in via your institutional login' option on the 'Sign In or create
an account' page.) If you need more styles, log in to Web of Science,
create an account and then access Endnote via the My Tools menu. These
account details should be used whenever you access Endnote Basic.

Mendeley is a
reference manager and academic social network that is fully searchable
with capacity for reading and annotating PDFs on any device. It is
available as web-based or as a standalone desktop version.

Proquest Flow
is a cloud-based collaboration tool that allows you to collect, manage
and organise your documents. You can also annotate and cite your
research.

Zotero is a free bibliographic software extension for Firefox. It is also available as an extension for Chrome and Safari browsers, and as a standalone desktop version.

The Comparison of reference management software produced by Wikipedia has further examples of reference management tools and may also assist you with your decision.

Tools for purchase or subscription

RefWorks
is a web-based reference manager that will allow you to save references
from online databases, create bibliographies automatically and store
files within a reference (up to 5mb each, with a 100mb limit per user).

EndNote is desktop software that
can organise, store and manage references, create bibliographies
automatically and directly import references from databases (e.g. Web of
Science) and library catalogues.

The EndNote software is available
for on-campus users and those based at the OU regional centres through
the IT department. To request EndNote please raise a ticket via the IT Self Service system. If you are not on campus you can purchase EndNote at a discounted rate, remembering to use your OU email address.

Papers is a reference
management application that can search a number of databases from within
it. If you want access resources through the OU Library subscriptions,
follow the set-up instructions below.

From Papers Preferences choose the Sources tab
Set the authentication url to http://libezproxy.open.ac.uk/
Set the Library proxy to http://libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login?url=%@
Close preferences and restart Papers

This will allow you to use most of the search options in Papers, but to use Web of Science you need to

modify a support file called gatewayurl.txt which is found in the following path: Users/username/Library/Application Support/Papers/PlugIns/SearchEngines/WOSSearchEngine.searchengine/Contents/Resources/
Open this file and replace the single text line with this one (make sure there are no line breaks in the string): http://wok-ws.isiknowledge.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/esti/soap/SearchRetrieve