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Blumberg Memorial Library

Citations

Information on citation and citation management software.

Citation Generators and Citation Management Software

Citation software come in two basic forms: citation generators and citation managers.  Citation generators are programs that take the information from your source and generate a citation in an appropriate style.  Citation managers can collect and manage all resources in one place, interact with documents as well as create the citations in the chosen style.

Whichever software you chose, you will still need to check the accuracy of the citations against the proper style guide. Capitalization, page numbers and punctuation are frequently incorrect.

Citation Management Software/ Bibliographic Citation Managers

Citation management software download, organize, and insert citations into the document you are writing. They use the citation style you choose to add the in-text citations and automatically build the works cited list, reference list, or bibliography at the end of the document. This type of software can allow researchers to import multiple citations at a time from library databases and Google Scholar. Some allow attaching the PDFs of the articles inside the software although there are space limitations in the free versions. Citation management software can also allow for group work and sharing citations among researchers. Most people use citation management software for longer scholarly works such as research articles, theses or dissertations, and books.

The three main and free citation mangers we recommend are EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley. They are considered robust enough for theses and dissertations.

Here is a Comparison of Citation Managers: Chart from John Hopkins University of Medicine.

Areas of concern:

  • Always check the citations against the style manual.  Errors imported into software will be errors in the bibliography.
  • Using more than one citation manager in a word processor with add-ins can cause glitches.
  • Having more than one person importing the citations into a cloud-based Word document can cause problems.
  • Save your document multiple times with new naming iterations especially when formatting the citations.
  • Work in the software when importing and editing citations.  Manual corrections in Word will not flow back into the citation management software. For example, typing a superscript into the document will not have it show up in the bibliography at the end because the citation management software wasn't used to insert the citation. 

Citation Generators

Citation generators are usually easy-to-use online forms that allow the user to type in information about a source (such as title, author, publisher, etc.) and automatically generate formatted citations to copy and paste into a paper. Most do this one citation at a time, but some can create a bibliography. Citations can also be generated from inside databases or library search everything tools.

Citation generators make the process easier than it would be to type the citations by hand. However, always check the resulting citations against the proper citation style for accuracy.  Errors do occur and it is your grade on the line. 

Recommended Citation Generators:

Other Citation Generators:

Many of the scholarly resources that you will be searching for articles and books have added citation generators to their software. 

For example, if you are searching for articles inside of the EBSCO Academic Search Complete database, look for the quotation marks to the side under the dots.  If you click on the citation button, EBSCO will create a citation in one of the several most popular styles such as APA or MLA.  

EBSCO Citing Function

The TLU Library PrimoSearch allows for a similar function.  Look for the quotation marks to create a citation for the book or article. 

Example of citing in PrimoSearch

Google Scholar allows for the same process.  

Google Scholar Citation

 

As with any tools like these, it is not guaranteed to be accurate all of the time.  Capitalization and punctuation are often incorrect.  Consult the official style manuals.

 

MS Word can be used to insert citations in the text of a document and create a bibliography from the created citations. This can be done in many different styles. 

To create a citation in the text of the document:

  1. On the References tab, in the Citations & Bibliography group, click the arrow next to Style. 

MS Word Insert citation

2. Click the style that you want to use for the citation and source. 

3. Click at the place in the sentence or phrase that you want to insert the in-text citation. 

4. Click Insert Citation and then select Add New Source. 

5. In the Create Source box, type in the citation details. Use the Edit button next to the name to insert multiple authors. Then click OK.

MS Word Insert citation detailed

By completing those steps, the citation is added to a list of available citations in Word. The next time you quote the reference, you won't need to type it all out again, just click Insert Citation and select the citation you want to use. 

MS Word Insert specific citation

 

Create a bibliography from the sources you have input:

  1. Click where you want to insert a bibliography. Typically, they are at the end of a document. 

  2. On the References tab, in the Citations & Bibliography group, click Bibliography.

  3. Choose the proper bibliography style. 

Having add-ins such as EndNote in Word may cause problems with this process. 

 

Google Docs has its own citation generator similar to MS Word.  However, keep in mind that transferring documents with references between the platforms will likely cause formatting errors. Find out if the publisher or the institution to which you want to submit your research will accept Google Docs before creating references and bibliographies in the software. 

Adding Citations in Google Docs:

  1. In Docs, open a document.

  2. Click Tools > Citations.

  3. Select formation style.

Google Docs Citation Insert

4. In the Citations sidebar, click + Add citation source.

5. Select the source type and how you accessed the source.Google Docs Citation Insert

6. Enter the citation details. 

For books, you may search by ISBN. 

For multiple contributors, click + Contributor. 

If the contributor is an organization rather than an individual, click Corporation/organization.

7. Click Add Citation source.

Add an In-text Citation:

  1. In your document, place your cursor where you want the citation to appear.

  2. In the Citations sidebar, point to the source and click Cite.

  3. If # appears in your citation, replace it with the page number for your citation or delete it.

Google Docs Citation Insert

 

 

 

 

 

Edit a Citation Source:

  1. In the Citations sidebar, point to the source that you want to edit and click More > Edit.

  2. Edit any details and click Save source.

Add a Bibliography:

  1. In your document, place your cursor where you want the bibliography to appear.

  2. In the Citations sidebar, at the bottom, click Insert references.