Evidence Synthesis, Systematic Review Services : Citation Management

Citation managers are software tools that help you collect, organize, cite, and share references. You can use them to organize collections of PDFs and source citations into a personal library and to generate in-text citations and reference lists in writing software for your manuscript.  

We recommend using a citation manager as you collect, sort, and analyze the resources you identify for your literature review. EndNote (desktop edition) and Zotero are good options for evidence synthesis projects. 

• Consultants
  • EndNote, Help files and customizing for UW-Madison
  • Zotero, Help files and customizing for UW-Madison

• Steps to remove duplicates from your EndNote Library
• Duplicate Detection (finding and merging), Zotero

Once you have generated a search strategy and have translated it, as necessary, for each database you will be searching, you will:

• Run the search in each database.
• Export the results (citations and abstracts only) using the exporting choices of the database and/or as mediated by your citation manager (BibTeX, RIS, or XML...) and save files.
  • Note that you may need to export results in smaller sets given restrictions of the database.
• Import files into your citation manager using its feature to do so .