Learning in a digital age/LiDA101/Select open resources/Citation management

In this section, we introduce digital tools to assist you with citation management.

Citation management software or reference management software is software used for recording and utilising bibliographic citations for scholarly writing.

There are two components:
 * The citation which is a verbatim quotation published between quotation marks and / or a reference to a book or journal article. The citation appears in the body text.
 * The reference list which is a list of all the sources used for citations in the body text. The reference list is usually inserted at the end of the written work.

In both cases, the format for citations and reference lists are determined by the required citation style, for example: The American Psychological Association (APA) or the Oxford Citation style. For more information on citation styles, consult the OERu micro-course on Making your arguments more credible. Citation management software will assist in organising in text citations and generating reference lists within your word processor.

Choose or use the recommended tool
Selecting a software application is an important digital literacy, particularly when considering the adage "if you're using it for free, you are the product." Teaching the skills associated with software selection falls outside the scope of this micro-course. However, should you want to explore the process of selecting a software tool you can complete the optional activity below.

For learners pressed for time:


 * If you are already using a citation management tool, feel free to use this for the course.
 * If you don't have a citation management tool, use Zotero which is an outstanding open source product suitable for this course.

Help resources for Zotero

 * Zotero support documentation
 * Getting started with Zotero