Why is citation management important? When search engines (by that we usually mean Google since it’s the most important one) find any kind of information about your business and website from other directories they get concerned. Their concern is that the information does not match your website. That can be very problematic since on one side (for example) you have one phone number and on the other is a different number. So, people, cant reach you. If they can’t reach you – you are losing business. Since this is a very important matter we will be discussing it in more detail today.
Citation Management Software
There is much software nowadays available for this purpose. They are software programs specially designed to help researchers collect, organize, and format citations in a variety of styles, and here is a list of the top 10 :
- Mendeley – this is a desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers. It can also be used in discovering research data and collaborating online so check this one first.
- ReadCube Papers – this is a cross-platform suite of reference management and discovery tools that might be able to improve the way researchers find, access, annotate, share, read, organize and even cite research literature very much
- EndNote – you can find, use or share research here
- EasyBib.com – provides citation, notes, and research tools, and its mostly free but there is a premium version as well
- Zotero – a free and pretty easy to use tool to organize your citations
- Cite This For Me (it was called RefME once) is specially designed to help researchers find and correctly cite sources
- Paperpile – very easy to use tool to reference management for the web
- Sciwheel – this is an award-winning and self-evolving technology with pretty accessible tools, also pretty simple to use
- RefWorks – research management, writing, and collaboration tool but it’s only accessible online
- Jab-Ref – this is an open-source, cross-platform citation and reference management tool
There is plenty more like Reference Manager, cite4me.org and Citavi but start with exploring our top 10 pics first and work your way from there. In this area, things change often so it’s important to find a website where you can see and read the news such as the AZ Citation Services website.
Why is it necessary to use a citation manager?
This is like any other helpful tool. It’s here to help you keep track and cite sources you go through the research process. They can come quite handy when writing long papers that require the use of many sources, like dissertations, capstone papers, and similar. As you can see it is not necessary to use any of those software but they can make your life and by that we mean your business much easier. Handling everything in one place can be very nice. So, give one of those a try. It will be worth it because providing relevant, consistent, and accurate information is the most important and you need to know everything about citation cleanup as well as ways to manage your citations.
Citations are good for your SEO
And that’s why you need them handled properly. Building citations is very good for SEO because it helps Google (and other search engines) to trust the authenticity and accuracy of the information you are providing. If Google (once again or any other search engine) can see and confirm that exactly the same information (phone number, address, or similar) exists across a number of trusted websites, this trust can be passed on to your business and you are in the game! Your citations need to be in perfect order since they can help others to discover your business. SEO is the most important part of your website. It is a way to get on top (or to be exact to be on the first page in Google results).
Who can help me with citation management?
You can hire an SEO expert to help you or you can use one of the apps we just showed you. If you want to handle it on your own, try some of the free apps we suggested and see how that works for you. If it’s not working you can always hire an SEO expert to handle this part of your business as well. You can hire one to be your in-house SEO expert or you can get someone for a part-time it’s up to you and your needs. Many people manage with those free tools we just showed you just fine so, give them a shot.
Zotero and Mendeley
Those are two by far the best citation management apps but they are not free to use. They are the best when it comes to paid apps. It’s hard to say which one is better because they are both great and on the other hand they both have their quirks like with PDFs and such. But generally speaking, they are very useful tools. You can get very good at managing your citations with them. Now if you see that Mendeley is free and you are wondering what are we talking about – read the fine print. This app is free up to 2 GB of cloud storage. Then you need to pay. But it’s a great desktop and mobile app and it’s definitely worth the money.
Mendeley and EndNote are compatible
They are compatible. This means you can import and export bibliographic entries from Mendeley to EndNote and other reference management software. It is even possible to do it the other way around (from EndNote to Mendeley) here is a quick trick for you how to do that :
- Open Mendeley Desktop
- Click File, and then choose Add Files
- Select the EndNote file you have saved earlier
- Click Open to import your EndNote references or the whole library to Mendeley and that’s it
Looks pretty easy now. Good luck with your further research of citation management and hopefully all your information is in order already.
