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Introduction to Citation Management

This guide is intended to provide an introduction to storing, organizing, and sharing your research with citation management tools.

What is EndNote?

EndNote is a popular reference management program.

You can use it to:

  • save and organize your references
  • insert and format citations as you write your paper
  • easily put together a bibliography
  • search and save article and book citations from library databases and/or Google Scholar

Use EndNote Desktop on the device you use most often; log in to EndNote Web from any other device with internet access and sync your work to your Desktop account!

To learn more about EndNote, please visit the EndNote @ Pitt guide

Managing Citations

Use the Groups menu or the Group section in your library to:

  • Create Groups - references that you select
  • Create Smart Groups - references that EndNote can select for you from your references
  • Create From Groups - a new group based on references in existing groups

You can share individual references with colleagues in EndNote Desktop by choosing the mail icon to share a PDF or right-clicking the reference and selecting E-mail reference.

Creating a Bibliography

When you export from a library, EndNote Desktop creates a file of references formatted according to the chosen style.

  1. Select the references you wish to format into a bibliography.
  2. From the File menu, select Export. Or select the Export icon from the library menu.
  3. From the Save File as Type list, select the type of file to be exported.
  4. From the Output style list, select a style (or choose Select another style to choose from all available output styles).
  5. Select the Export Selected References option if desired. If you want to export all of the references in the current  list, clear the check box.
  6. Enter a name for the exported file and use the Save Inlist to specify where it should be saved and use the triangle button to allow you to browse to the appropriate folder and specify where the file should be saved.
    • Note: The Export feature creates a new file; it does not append to an existing file. If you enter the name of a file that already exists, that file will be overwritten.
  7. Click Save. (It is best to keep the assigned file extensions as part of the exported file name.)
  8. Open the exported file in a word processor to edit or print it. At this point, the file is just like any other text document. You can change the font, margins, line spacing, or other page layout features if necessary.

EndNote Desktop is also designed to work with a word processor, such as MS Word with the Cite While You Write (CWYW) plug-in. As you insert citations, EndNote automatically builds a bibliography at the end of your document according to the rules of whatever citation style is selected. Changing the citation style will automatically reformat the bibliography and citations to the new style.