Having reference lists is one of the most indispensable tools a researcher must posses. Whether is a journal or article from conference proceedings, to books to web-clippings. etc. Many tools are available for a researcher to manage their reference lists. Here are a few
- Bibtex formatted text files: www.bibtex.org very useful when writing articles using Latex. Can also use various bibtex tools for searching, converting to other formats. Bibtex Tools
- Mendeley: www.mendeley.org An integrated tool where you can view pdfs, add metadata, extract references from various publication databases based on doi, pubmed, arxiv, ..etc. Also has web interface (linked to a web account) through which you can view and share publications.
- Zetero: www.zotero.org Similar to Mendeley and offers pretty much the same features, but this one is offered as a firefox web browser extension, while Mendeley is a standalone program. Not sure which one is better. Both have active development (frequent updates with new features). The verdict is still out there. Decide for yourself which one suits you better.
- Besides the above there are few commercial software to manage bibliographies. A comparison of a many bibliography management software is mentioned here.
