A manual for writers of research papers, theses, and dissertations, Ninth edition - Kate L. Turabian 2018

Citation management tools
General introduction to citation practices
Source citation

As you do your research, you may want to consider using one of a number of available citation management tools to collect data about your sources. Most sources available online or listed in a library catalog or other database include bibliographic information that can be used as the basis of your source citations. Programs like EndNote, RefWorks, and Zotero are designed to help you by capturing this information and adding it to a library of citations, where it is filtered by source type and can be further organized by research topic or paper. You can also add sources and edit information manually. Then citations can be plugged directly into your paper as needed in one of the citation styles described in this manual (and referred to in most programs as either “Turabian” or “Chicago” notes or author-date style). A few things to keep in mind:

✵ ▪ Double-check your data. As you build your library, check each field against the actual source as soon as you acquire the data for it. Make sure that authors’ names, titles of works, dates, and so forth are accurate and that they are entered in the appropriate fields. Check also for missing or redundant data. (It is okay, however, to collect more data than you will use in your citations.) You will need to do this whether you entered the data yourself or exported the citation from a library catalog or other database.

✵ ▪ Double-check your citations. Once they’ve been inserted in your paper, make sure your citations are correctly formatted according to the citation style you’ve chosen. Things to look for include errant punctuation or capitalization and, more important, missing or superfluous data. Enter corrections in the citation management program (or adjust its settings, as applicable) and double-check the results. Review your final draft with extra care. These tools do make errors, and it remains your responsibility to ensure that your citations are accurate. For examples of notes-style citations, see chapters 16 and 17; for author-date style, see chapters 18 and 19.

✵ ▪ Always keep at least two copies of your citations library. If your school lets you keep a copy on its server, make sure you also have a copy on a local drive. Such backups might be needed in the event your paper must be resubmitted for any reason or if you plan to do research in the same subject area after graduation.

Citation management tools work best for papers that cite only a few types of the most common sources. Articles in academic journals, especially, are easy to work with. If you cite many different types of sources, expect to spend extra time making adjustments to your citations library and editing your final paper.