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.
RefWorks is available through the University of Maryland College Park. For more information and to sign up go to RefWorks: Online Tool for Managing Citations
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 quite 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.
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. Owned by Elsevier.
