Cost: free; no UMD-affiliated account needed
Writing Plugins: Word, Open Office
Browser Integration: Firefox (can also operate without client), Chrome, Safari, Opera
Groups: Public or private
Desktop Clients: Windows, Mac, Linux
Apps: no official apps
Zotero's big strengths are its browser extensions, which let you grab citations right off the web, and its user-friendly features, like enabling drag-and-drop citation placement. Zotero also has great options for power researchers, like automatically remembering proxies and assigning BibTeX labels based on author name.
Cost: free while affiliated with UMD (Sign up)
Writing Plugins: Word
Browser Integration: bookmarklet; Firefox extension
Groups: Private only
Desktop Clients: None with Basic; paid desktop version
Apps: none
EndNote Basic (formerly EndNote Web) is the online-only version of EndNote, the popular desktop citation software. The desktop version is expensive, but EndNote Basic is free. EndNote Basic is good when you want a no-frills, entirely web-based citation management platform, but Zotero and Mendeley have more features. Consider EndNote desktop for dissertation, postdoc, and faculty research as it can manage hundreds of references efficiently.
Cost: free; no UMD-affiliated account needed
Writing Plugins: Word, Open Office
Browser Integration: bookmarklet, no extensions
Groups: Public or private
Desktop Clients: Windows, Mac, Linux
Apps: iOS
Mendeley is a citation management desktop client based primarily around the cultivation of PDFs. You can import PDFs, highlight and annotate them, get readership statistics, and even choose a folder on your computer for Mendeley to "watch" for new content. Mendeley also gives you the opportunity to search across papers cultivated by other Mendeley users.
