HNFE - Internship - Nutrition & Dietetics: Managing Citations

Citation managers are research project time-savers. They allow you to build your own database of citations and sources for your research projects. They provide tools to automate in-text citation and bibliography creation for research documents, such as research papers, grant proposals, and article manuscripts. They may also include options to share all or parts of your citation database with others - for collaborative research projects.

The Citation Managers library guide at VT Libraries is a great resource!

Virginia Tech Libraries recommends using any of these citation managers:

• Mendeley (free) | Mendeley Tutorials 
• Zotero (free) | Zotero Tutorials
• EndNote (provided by Virginia Tech Libraries through 2020) | EndNote X8 Tutorials

Each of these tools can be helpful, depending on what type of project you're working on. View this citation manager comparison chart from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for help deciding which tool to use:

Citation Manager Comparison Chart

If you have questions about using these tools, don't hesitate to contact your librarian or one of the citation manager support groups on the citation managers library guide!

If a particular journal or other citation style does not show in your citation manager, you can often add it. For example, for the Journal of Nutrition, the default style list often does not include the specific Journal of Nutrition style. See the information below to add a citation style to your citation manager tool of choice.

*Note: most citation manager tools also offer the option to create a custom style - either based on an existing style (the easiest way) or from scratch.

1. Does it matter which citation manager tool I use?

No, it does not matter which tool you use as long as the tool you select can do all you need it to do. If there is a tool you are most comfortable with, it is typically best to stick to using this tool.

2. What if I don't know which citation manager tool to use and need a recommendation? 

You can feel free to email me about the scope of your project and I can let you know which tool would work well. Typically, Zotero works well for students with some or little previous use of citation manager tools. Zotero remains free of cost after leaving Virginia Tech as well.

3. What if I am having trouble using my citation manager tool to do something specific (like downloading many records, uploading full-text PDFs, etc.)?

You can again feel free to email me. I'd be happy to help or to put you in touch with our library liaison who also leads many of the citation manager resources for the University Libraries.