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Academic English & Research vocabulary · Citing and Referencing

Reference manager

Meaning in academic english & research, with examples

nounCommon term

In academic english & research, reference manager means: Software that stores your sources, inserts citations into a document and creates the reference list in the required style.

In Turkish: kaynakça yönetim programı, referans yönetim aracı

How it is used

Popular tools include Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote. They import records from databases, store PDFs and work with Word or LaTeX. Supervisors often advise starting one early in a thesis; the output still needs checking, because imported records can contain errors.

Example sentences

  1. I use a reference manager, so changing from APA to Harvard took only a few minutes.

  2. Which reference manager does your research group use?

Common collocations

  • use a reference manager
  • reference management software
  • import references
  • change the citation style
  • reference listThe list at the end of a paper or thesis giving full details of every source cited in the text, arranged in the order a citation style requires.
  • citationA reference to a source in a piece of writing; also each time another publication refers to a work, counted as a measure of its influence.
  • APA styleThe writing and citation rules of the American Psychological Association, based on author-date citations and widely used in the social sciences, education and psychology.
  • Harvard referencingA widely used author–date citation system in which the author's surname and year appear in the text, with full details in an alphabetical reference list.

More terms: Citing and Referencing

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