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Course & Subject Guides

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 Mendeley?

​Mendeley is a  reference manager and academic social network that can help you organize your research, collaborate with others online, and discover the latest research.

Use Mendeley to:

  • Automatically generate bibliographies
  • Collaborate easily with other researchers online
  • Easily import papers from other research software
  • Find relevant papers based on what you’re reading
  • Access your papers from anywhere online

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

To learn more about Mendeley web and desktop component  please see  Mendeley @ Pitt

Managing Citations

Mendeley Web allows you to create, edit, and share citations online.  Simply click on the citation title to expand the abstract, view attached documents, and edit citation details and tags.

Creating a Bibliography

First install the MS Word plug in:

  1. Open Mendeley Desktop
  2. Select Tools from the toolbar
  3. Choose Install MS Word Plugin

Once installed, the plugin will be available every time you open a Word Document.

Once the citation plugin has been installed, citations can easily be added to documents in many word processing systems.  To insert a citation using Microsoft Word:

  1. Place you cursor exactly where the citation will be used.
  2. Select the References tab and locate the Mendeley Cite-O-Matic options.
  3. Click the Insert Citation button and search for references by author, title, or year from your library.  References can also be added from groups.
  4. After a reference has been selected, click OK.  The reference will appear in your selected area.
  5. After a citation has been inserted, you may change the citation style using the drop down box titled Style.

Create a Bibliogaphy

After at least one citation has been added to your document, select the Insert Bibliography option add the bibliography.  If more citations are added, click the Referesh option to update the bibliography.