zotero vs endnote for american antiquity

In the end, it's 100% worth spending a day actually trying out the different alternatives and actually getting a feel for how each one will fit into your research workflow. You may love Zotero for its browser integration, while your labmate may swear by Mendeley because it does PDF highlighting. The main downsides are that community support isn't as good as for Zotero, and some academics don't like that Mendeley's development was subsidized by Elsevier's subscription journal publishing business.Īll that being said, one thing I've learned after helping develop a new reference manager ( - but that's a story for another time) is that one tool will never work for everyone. Mendeley has a cleaner UI than Zotero and more 'modern' functionality than Endnote, and some really great features such as PDF highlighting and public group libraries. That's really hard to beat - but, the developers seem to have neglected the core UI design (this often happens with community open source projects) so it doesn't have quite the level of intuitiveness / polish you see in the professionally-developed alternatives. Zotero is great in many ways: open source, developed by an active community, has great discussion forums, and FREE unless you need a significant amount of cloud storage.

Endnote looks and feels like a tool from 15 years ago (because it is), and frankly most of the competition has far outstripped it in features and design, BUT many academics are just too lazy/scared/busy to switch from Endnote to something more efficient.

(My girlfriend is using Endnote X6 for her medical thesis right now.) It's great to use, but only once you've memorized the 20+ clicks required to add and cite a paper how to navigate the 30+ item toolbar menus filled with obscure features and how to download your own PDFs and manually attach them to your library. Endnote is a very powerful but old-fashioned and clunky machine.

Zotero vs endnote for american antiquity