The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries' subscription to RefWorks will expire March 1, 2020 and will not be renewed. This decision was made based on a steady decline in RefWorks usage paired with the availability of free or low-cost options that function as well as or better than RefWorks. This Guide is designed to help you choose a new Citation Management Tool (CMT) and to answer your questions about the transition away from RefWorks.
Please read the information below to keep up with the latest developments in the RefWorks transition. Or, go directly to RefWorks.
What is the timeline for UTA Libraries' transition from RefWorks to other CMTs?
Use a citation management tool to create personalized databases of your source references.
Citation management applications will allow you to:
You can migrate your citations easily from RefWorks to EndNote, Mendeley or Zotero. Detailed instructions for each are listed below.
The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Libraries has decided not to renew its subscription to RefWorks due to its high cost and low use. It has also made the decision because of its support for three other high-quality citation management tools (CMTs) that provide comparable functions: EndNote, Mendeley, and Zotero, all of which will remain available to UTA faculty and students.
This decision was made by a working group created specifically for reviewing and assessing citation management tools at the UTA Libraries. The working group prepared a report based on actual usage data, a campus-wide needs assessment, a survey of library staff, reports from other academic libraries that have canceled or are considering cancelation, a side-by-side comparison of RefWorks to its top competing platforms (EndNote, Mendeley, and Zotero), communications with ProQuest (RefWorks’ parent company), and a review of the current library literature. This report was presented to the UTA Libraries subject liaisons, who approved it unanimously, before receiving final approval by the Dean of Libraries.
There is no way to export your folder structure from RefWorks into a new citation management tool. If you wish to keep your folder structure, you can recreate your folder structure in the new CMT and export references one folder at a time from RefWorks.
RefWorks doesn’t have an automatic bulk PDF export option. You will need to download your PDFs from RefWorks onto your computer and then import the PDFs into your new CMT.
All three programs offer both a desktop version and an online account where you can store references, and to which you can sync the data you have saved in the desktop version.
EndNote offers a desktop and online (basic) version. Online storage is unlimited if you own a copy of desktop Endnote.
Mendeley offers both Mendeley Desktop and an online account (attached files up to 2 GB for free, as well as citations).
You can download Zotero either as an add-on for your Firefox browser, or as a standalone program that works in Chrome or Safari. Data is saved locally. But you can set up an account on Zotero and sync your bibliographic information and attached files (up to 300 MB for free, and more for a modest fee) to your online account.
Yes, you can import items to each of the citation managers from the library catalog. Each one works a little bit differently:
For EndNote Basic, select the EndNote Basic option under the Actions menu.
For EndNote Desktop, select the Export RIS option under the Actions menu and then open the RIS file in EndNote.
For Mendeley, select the Mendeley option under the Actions menu.
For Zotero, you can use the Zotero save button as you would in any other database.
Other citation managers also provide the possibility of collaborative work, through “shared folders” on EndNote, or “groups” on Zotero and Mendeley.
Some of the citation managers we support offer this functionality:
Yes, when the University of Minnesota ends its institutional subscription you will have to migrate your Refworks database to one of the other citation managers
If you have used any of RefWorks' custom fields (user 1, user 2, etc.), please contact us for assistance in preserving this information.
RefWorks does not offer individual accounts at this time.
For inquiries into the RefWorks transition, please contact Martin Wallace, chair of the UTA Libraries Citation Management Tools Work Group. Martin's contact information is on the right side of this page.
This LibGuide was developed, with permission, from the University of Minnesota RefWorks Transition website.
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details and exceptions, see the Library Copyright Statement.
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