Citation: Welcome

Mendeley
Includes Mendeley Reference Manager and Mendeley Cite. Generates citations and bibliographies in hundreds of citation styles, organizes and adds notes to PDFs, and enables groups to collaborate on researching. Also has an app.

Zotero
Creates a personal online library to store articles and webpages as well as generate citations.

Mendeley or Zotero, which one is right for you? These two tools are very similar, and, for the most part, they function in the same way. Both have basic versions that are available for free, but you can pay for additional storage (both) and the ability to create more private groups (Mendeley). For most people, the free basic versions are sufficient.

There are a few benefits and drawbacks to each that might make you more inclined to choose one over the other:

Mendeley

• Requires you to download 2 tools - Mendeley Reference Manager (for organizing your research) and Mendeley Cite (for connecting to Microsoft Word to create citations) - for full functionality
• Mendeley is owned by Elsevier, a company that publishes journals and provides database subscription to libraries. If you use your Chatham email, it will force you to sync it to Chatham. You can also use a personal email address.
• Mendeley has a free mobile app for Android and Apple devices.
• 2 GB of cloud storage with free version
• Users of the free version can create 5 private groups with 25 group members. This allows you to share full text of PDF documents and collaboratively highlight and comment on them. Storage is limited by the group owners personal account (so 2GB if using the free version).
• The comment/notation feature is a bit more sophisticated than Zotero - any note you make within a document is pulled out into the pane on the right side of the screen (for that document) so you can find it easily.

Zotero

• Only 300 MB of cloud storage with free version
• Desktop version works on Mac, Windows, Linux, and iOS.
• Zotero Connector works with Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Safari
• Saves a snapshot of webpages pulled into Zotero using Zotero Connector, which Mendeley does not do.
• Zotero mobile apps are only available from third-party creators.
• Users of the free version can create an unlimited number of private groups with an unlimited number of members.

Lastly, if you plan to take advantage of the private groups features of these tools, you’ll want to pick whichever one your colleagues are using.