Reference Management

A reference management program will help you to systematically organise your printed and electronic media. Use it to collect bibliographic data and documents, manage them efficiently, and output them as a bibliography or as text/footnote citations.

Citavi is licensed to the TU, only until 2026-09-30. The free version of Zotero will continue to be supported

ULB offers a learning format for Zotero.

The campus licence for Citavi expires on 30 September 2026. After this date, Citavi will no longer be available free of charge. We recommend switching to the free tool Zotero. We will provide further information on migrating your Citavi data to Zotero shortly.

What does a reference management program do?

Creates and manages individual or shared literature databases (collects, organises, searches, comments on references)
Searches and imports data from library catalogues and specialist databases (interface to online databases)
Outputs and formats reference lists (for theses, research articles, applications, documentation)
Collaborates with text processing (inserts and links references directly so that e.g. a reference management update is instantly updated on the relevant working papers)
Manages electronic documents (PDFs, images, e-books, websites)

Which software is suitable for me?

Most programs allow you to import and export collected reference data in standardised formats, so you can switch between various programs while still accessing the same data collection
When making your choice, you could also consider what is used around you in your working environment to help provide mutual support and for the easiest cooperation.
The following site will help with choosing the suitable software: Comparison of reference management software (German, English & French) / Technical University of Munich (various years of publication)