Citation Best Practices: Citation Tools

A good citation management platform will help you organize your sources so that you have all the material you are using easily accessible as you write your paper. 

• Often there is a direct integration with MS Word so that you can cite as you write 
• You will be able to select a particular style to work with and your citations will be automatically formatted

CAUTION: The citation will only be as good as the information you provide or import in to the management tool. ALWAYS DOUBLE CHECK YOUR CITATIONS. Make sure all of the information is present and accurate. Double check it against your journal article, book, or book chapter. 

• Penn Libraries subscribes to Refworks
• There are other citation platforms available to you
• Zotero and Mendeley are the most common.

See the Libraries'

• Citation Management Guide for more information on citation tools
• Citation Practices and Avoiding Plagiarism (created by Penn Librarians and Weingarten Learning Specialists) for the how's and why's of citation practice
• Zotero for Research Management