If you’re actively engaged in research, you probably don’t need to be told how useful reference managers are. Aside from saving citations, I use mine to organize my PDFs and to participate in collaborative bibliography projects. All of this is saved to the cloud so that it’s accessible from any device.
Another reason reference managers are so popular is that most come with browser plugins to automatically pull citation information from the web. We decided to see how well these reference managers work with an institutional repository. IUScholarWorks is built upon a base of DSpace, which provides all the metadata that a reference manager needs.
In these examples, we’ve used a semi-randomly selected preprint from IUScholarWorks, one with complete metadata for recognizing the author, title, date, and with a link to the DOI of the version of record.
Zotero
Zotero is a free and open-source reference management software. I’m using the Zotero Connector plugin for Firefox to test it’s capabilities. This browser extension is available for most modern browsers.
When used on the test paper, Zotero automatically pulled the PDF for me and saved it to my cloud library.
Zotero also accurately identified many of the important features:
The author(s).
The title.
The date.
The handle.net URL.
However, when compared to the reference styles in the previous blog post of this series [LINK], Zotero has missed a few key pieces of information.
The name of the repository. This can be added to your Zotero record under the “Archive” entry.
The type of work. In the screenshot above, Zotero identified the document as a “Journal Article,” but I might prefer to have it listed as a “Preprint” or “Manuscript” to encourage it to generate better citation entries.
Zotero has several built-in item types including Article, Book Section, Preprint, Manuscript, and Thesis that should apply to the most common repository items, but Zotero Connector often has difficulty distinguishing these. When using Zotero Connector, you will want to confirm its selection and add any missing information to the record.
These concerns aside, with a single click on Zotero’s plugin, the record was most of the way there to a complete and accurate citation!
Mendeley
Mendeley, another popular reference manager, is a service of Elsevier. Registration is free for Indiana University affiliates, and though Mendeley strangely pegged me as belonging to IU Southwest, registration worked all the same. Like Zotero Connector, Elsevier offers the Mendeley Web Importer browser extension for most popular browsers. This is what we’ll use to test it’s functionality on an institutional repository.
In the screenshot, you can see that Mendeley has used the page title to search Elsevier’s databases and find the published version of the article. This would be a terrific feature if we were looking for a quick and accurate way to locate the version of record, which would be fantastic for a number of use-cases. However, you’ll remember from the previous blog post in this series [LINK] that it’s important to cite the version of the work that you referenced while writing your paper.
When pulling the version of record from Elsevier’s databases, you can see that it accurately fills in much of the correct information. However, the story is different for working with an institutional repository.
For the preprint version, Mendeley failed at everything but the title.
It’s listed as a “web page” document type.
Yet failed to recognize the handle.net permanent URL.
It failed to catch the author, the date, and other citation necessaries.
It failed to download the PDF.
As a product of Elsevier, it makes sense that they’d want to promote their database services, but that seems to come at a cost of working with open access resources. If you prefer Mendeley’s interface, you’ll have to do a lot of hand-correcting for works not in their database.
EndNote
IU affiliates receive free access to EndNote 2025 by Clarivate, which is another popular choice among researchers, especially those who use Microsoft Word. You can read more about installing and setting up EndNote on IU Libraries’ Libguide.
EndNote Click is the browser extension for automatically adding web content to your library. EndNote Click is built upon a base of the Unpaywall extension for finding open or institutional access to articles. This is essentially the reverse of what Mendeley attempted in the previous post, so it’s no surprise that Unpaywall wouldn’t find an alternative to our already-open-access test paper. On testing, EndNote Click did not recognize IUScholarWorks. No popup tab appeared, nor did EndNote Click recognize the PDF already there for download on the IUScholarWorks record.
With EndNote, it seems that one would have to complete the citation fields for many works by hand if working with an institutional repository.
Conclusion
Which tool is best depends entirely on your needs. If you’re often searching for the version of record for a work in a preprint archive, Mendeley has your back. If what you need is tight integration into Word, many recommend EndNote. If you’re managing a lot of citations for a survey and need the information pulled quickly, automatically, and accurately, Zotero may be the most useful. The great news is that all three of these services have tools for exporting or importing citational data so that you’re never locked into using just one.
Open Access Week (October 20 – 24) is an annual opportunity to learn and raise awareness about Open Access: free, immediate, online access to scholarly research and the right to use and re-use that research as needed. Click here to see the list of events at IU.
About the author: Elizabeth-Marie Helms is a graduate student in Library Science and the History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine. A former middle school history teacher, she now studies the public understanding of science and works as an assistant in Scholarly Communications for IU Libraries.
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