14-02-2015

Mendeley, RefWorks and .CSV file format:

a Comparative Analysis of Citation
Management Tools

Yes the Citation Management Tools are an essential tool for

any kind of research. Because it acts as an enabler to create
& capture bibliographies, add footnotes and manage
research collections.
Scholars often called these tools with different names like;

Kshirod Das
Biju Patnaik Central Library
National Institute of Technology Rourkela
daskshirod@gmail.com, kdas@nitrkl.ac .in

Reference Management Software;

Bibliographic Management Software;
Citation Management Software.

These packages, like EndNote, RefWorks, Mendely, Zotero,

BibTex saves lots of time and are become very popular
among researchers and authors.
Citation management software falls into one of
four distribution models:

Citation Management Tools: An Essential for Research

It is an enabler to capture bibliographic information about research
materials; create bibliographies; add footnotes; and manage research
collections.

Desktop based: runs as per traditional model of computing.

For which a user needs to download & install to use.
Web-based: It works entirely via the internet. They
run in a browser from any computer with an
internet connection.

Alternate names like:

Reference Management Software.
Bibliographic Management Software.
Citation Management Software.

Browser-based: That supplies online functionality

as well as the ability to work without an
internet connection.

Different Models
Desktop-based
Web-based
Browser-based

Hybrid: Combine the best aspects of web or

browser-based tools with their desktop-based

Hybrid

Tools included for study

Mendeley is a free reference manager, combines
both a desktop and a web-based application
that is compatible across platforms.

In order to conduct this study, we considered three

different types of Citation Management Tools;

RefWorks is a web-based reference

management software package. a business
unit of ProQuest LLC was founded in 2001.

Mendeley (a Hybrid model having both web

and desktop based format),
RefWorks (a Web-based model) and;
.CSV (a plain text file uses save and excels
data import functionality to view the file.

Comma-separated values (.CSV),

because the separator character does
not have to be a comma). File stores
tabular data (numbers and text) in
plain-text form.

14-02-2015
This article aims to compare and analyze two methods of
export citation information from SCOPUS, i. e. direct
export to Mendely & RefWorks and export of citation to a
file format (i. e .CSV).

Objective of the Study

To know, which tool gives more accurate information about references?
To identify, which tool is ease for research scholars?
To see, the similarities for the fields of citation management tools.

Methodology for the study

And also to see which method and/or software can

produce more accurate and systematic information for the
researcher.
For this study, we used bibliographic database SCOPUS.

SCOPUS bibliographic database used.

Used both export function and a file format export (.CSV)
Keywords Degradation of FRP Composites used to search documents.
Both RefWorks and Mendeley software Downloaded and installed.
Finally prepared the comparative analysis between all the export results.

Both the integrated export function and a file format called

.CSV (which exports data into excel format) was studies.
Used keywords are degradation of FRP Composites.
The information presented here are the outcome of the
export process offered from the available reference
manager or file type.

Results of Comparative Analysis

Import results from Scopus Database
Sl. No.

RefWorks

Mendeley

Author

Fields

Title

Year

Journal Name

Volume No.

Issue No.

Pages

File format (.CSV)

Publisher

ISSN No.

10

URL

11

DOI

Author Keywords

Abstract

Database / Data Source

12
13
14

The result table clearly reflects, that both software and

.CSV format are similarly capable of importing first 7
fields (i.e. Author, Title, Year, Journal Name, Vol. no.,
Issue no., Pages), from SCOPUS database.
But we can see importing capacity is not similar in some
cases. Neither software nor .CSV file format could able to
import Publisher & ISSN No. fields.
Only Mendeley software is able to import Author
keywords & Abstract fields. At the same time Mendeley is
failed to import Data Source field.

Note:
1 = Fields imported from SCOPUS
0 = Fields not imported from SCOPUS

Comparison of RefWorks, Mendeley and .CSV file format

An interesting difference is .CSV file format uses EID

(Electronic Identifier), instead of DOI.

From the bar chart, we could easily differentiate

the importing capacity of those two software
and .CSV file format.
Here no zero (0) indicates the software failed to
import those fields from the database.

Import results of individual tool

Fig. 1 shows the RefWorks has imported all fields

except few fields such as Publisher, ISSN No., DOI,
Author Keywords, and Abstract.
Fig. 2 shows the Mendeley has imported all the fields
except 3 (three) i.e. Publisher, ISSN No. and
Database / Data Source.
Fig. 3 shows that import using .CSV file format also
failed to import several fields such as Publisher, ISSN
No., URL, Author Keywords and Abstract.

This study has revealed that, the citation management

tools are very useful particularly a time saving tool for
research scholars for managing their references.
Conclusion
These are very useful and a time saving tool for research scholars.
Mendeley has imported more fields from SCOPUS then RefWorks and

The result clearly shows that Mendeley has imported

more fields from SCOPUS then RefWorks and .CSV
file format with little ease.

.CSV file format with little ease.

These tools are more helpful then manual system for citing.
Finally this study suggests that scholars should make use of these tools for
managing citations.

The analysis also shows that, using these tools are

more helpful then manual system for citing accurate
information.
Finally this study suggests that scholars should make
use of these tools for managing citations.

Thank you