Fantastic Reference Managers and Where to Find Them

Photo by Geoffrey Coonen on Unsplash, edited by me.

After years of painful shifts between them and months trying to find the holy grail of reference managers, I decided to take the plunge. I have made a choice and decided to write about it, hoping that my advice will allow you to never have to go through all this.

I am a lover of desktop apps and I am currently running macOS. For this reason, this article will discuss solely desktop reference managers available on macOS. If you’re happy with your web based one or you’re running Windows/Linux, this post is not for you and deep down I envy you!

Papers 3

Four years ago, when I got a placement as a research assistant in a research lab, I was introduced to the concept of reference managers. At the time, having had no experience whatsoever with this kind of software, I just followed what the head of research recommended: Papers 3.

Papers at the time was a great piece of software. Even though it was not free (If I remember correctly, I paid £30, taking advantage of an educational discount) it had everything I needed. It was a sleek macOS-style app that worked seamlessly with Word. With a double tap of the [ctrl] key, I was able to call the Papers 3 assistant, type the name of the paper I wanted and place a properly formatted in-text reference. Once I was done with the document, I…