Citation and Reference Management Tools#
Exploring, contextualizing, and documenting literature is a critical part of the graduate research process. Members of the Reed group use a variety of different tools to help navigate and manage publication citations. This page highlights some of the favorites from the group.
Click on the title of each tool’s description to take a look at their individual sites.
Citation Tools#
Research Rabbit#
Self-described as “Spotify for Papers”, the main idea behind Research Rabbit can be boiled down into three main points:
Organization of papers and authors
Discovery of papers and authors within similar or adjacent topics/fields
Visualizing the connections between papers within Research Rabbit ‘Categories’
Research Rabbit can also be integrated with Zotero folders to create categories specific to your pre-existing research topics. You can also share categories with collaborators to enable them to add their own reference papers as well. Effective use of Research Rabbit, however, depends on the fact that you need an initial set of papers of interest for it to suggest more.
Further information on Research Rabbit can be found here.
Connected Papers#
Connected papers is a tool that allows you to connect a paper to others that are similar. The tool builds a visual graph that connects a paper of interest to other papers in the field. It is easy to use and can be a helpful supplementary tool during a literature review.
Citation Tree#
Citation tree is quite similar to Connected Papers, but uses slightly different methodology and presents graphs as a chronological tree where the most recent publications are at the top, and later publications follow below. It is also very easy to use and a helpful supplementary tool during a literature review. It is useful for tracking related literature or identifying “earliest uses” or the origins of a specific concept/idea.
Elicit#
Elicit is an academic search engine similar to that of Google (but for papers!) that uses natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to contextualize a user’s search terms and accelerate the search of papers relevant to your field of interest. Similar to many other citations tools, it has filtering function that includes options to filter by citation count, publication year, author, journal, etc. You can also upload a paper that you have read as a PDF to extract information such as its key findings, specific details on the paper’s methodology, and its limitations. All this information is presented in the form of a table (unliek the graph/network style of prior citation tools) where you can easily hide or reveal columns depending on your requirements.
Reference Management#
Zotero#
Zotero is a free, open-source reference managment software. Using Zotero, you can build a database of papers, storing information such as authors, title, publication and date fileds. The software also allows you to organize, tag and search the database. A great feature of Zotero is its ability to integrate with web browers. When the web browser extension is installed, you can add a paper to your database with a single button click. It also integrates well with Microsoft Word, allowing you to auto-update your References section when you add a new citation in your text using the Zotero Word plugin.
Visualizing this information#
Everything is (or potentially is) connected! There are visualization tools you can use to view our group’s and our collaborators’ bibliographic networks.
VOSviewer#
VOSviewer is a tool for crafting your own bibliometric networks. It allows for more customization in the data vizualization, while stil allowing for interactive maps.
For more tips on getting started with VOSviewers, see Rohini’s blog post: Viewing your scientific landscape with VOSviewer
Gephi#
Gephi is an alternative custom network visualization tool. This open source software is not designed for biliometric data specifically, as oppossed to VOSviewer, but is a general graph network visualization software.