I Need to: |
Use: |
Why: |
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…work from multiple computers or locations. |
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Zotero saves your citation library to your local computer, and syncs with multiple computers so you can work from home, work, or school. Mendeley is a program that lives on your local computer, and syncs with a web account. EndNote Basic is fully-cloud based so you can access it from any device.
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…work without an Internet connection. |
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Zotero, Mendeley store your citation libraries locally on your computer.
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…archive web pages and import citations from sites such as Amazon, Flickr, and ArtSTOR. |
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Zotero allows you to easily save snapshots of web pages and annotate them within your citation library. It is a great tool for scraping citation information from web-based publications and some commercial and social networking sites.
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…work on a group project or share my citations with others. |
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Zotero allows you to share your citations through shared folders -- you can give individuals or groups permissions to add and edit the citations in the shared folder. Mendeley allows you to share citations and documents with a group of up to 2 other users, or create a public reading list that is open to all. EndNote Basic allows you to share with up to 1,000 other users.
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...work with unusual or complex citation styles, cite unusual document types or create my own document type |
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Zotero and Mendeley both use .csl (citation style language) scripts drawn from the citationstyles.org repository, which contains over 10,000 styles or variations of styles. EndNote uses a proprietary format, .ens files, and has over 7,000 styles or variations of styles in its repository.
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...work extensively with PDFs |
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Mendeley and Zotero both have the ability to extract citation information automatically from PDFs, PDF full-text search, and PDF reading/annotation in the app. Mendeley additionally has a social networking component to see what others in your field are reading and commenting on (particularly in the sciences). |