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[nsldoc2b]

I'm a new grad student and sure could use some input on how best to organize what is quickly becoming piles interesting and potentially useful journal articles.  I like to keep a copy (usually just on a jump drive) when I find it, rather than try to locate it again, but I'm accumulating too many to keep track of without some sort of system.  Any suggestions? 

[evolution]

EndNote! EndNote! It will save your life. Seriously. I adore EndNote (and I promise I don't work for them). And if you start up your electronic library now, as a new grad student, you will potentially save yourself tons of time later trying to do it at a more advanced stage.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

There's also sciplore. - DvF

[bibliothecula]

Zotero. You can back everything up to their server so you can access form anywhere, tag items, take notes, link to articles and other sources, etc. It's awesome (I don't work for them, I just adore them).

[larryc]

Yep, Zotero. It is free is so much more than a citation generator and organizer. You can gather up your references (one click will turn that Amazon.com book you are looking at into a complete bibliographic citation, a screenshot, and places to take notes or add tags). And it can automatically back up all of your materials online. You can also share your references with other Zotero users if you like. http://www.zotero.org/

Currently Zotero is a Firefox plugin but a desktop version is about to drop.

[marigolds]

I'll rethink Sente when the desktop Zotero comes out.  I messed with Zotero a lot when it was new, but it was not very user-friendly then.  And Firefox is such a resource hog that I wanted something free-standing.

There's also Papers, if you're both science-y and Mac-y, OP.

I personally think EndNote is devil-spawned.

[niceday]

Zotero can do everything Endnote can do and more.

Yeah, FF can suck but you can use it as only Zotero. Browse using whatever browser you want and then use FF as if it were standalone Zotero.

[pigou]

Another vote for Zotero. Firefox may not be as fast anymore as it used to be (although the next version is a big improvement), but desktops generally aren't that resource constrained anyway. Nothing I've tried comes close to matching the convenience offered by Zotero.

[daniel_von_flanagan]

Does anyone know if the Zotero relative link problem (discussed here and here) will be resolved in the stand-alone release?  (Or maybe has already been resolved, I'm still on Zotero 2.0.9.)  - DvF

[merce]

I really like the way Sente saves the PDFs to the citation automatically and the ability to click on the list of citations in MLA without having to follow the link of each citation, unlike zotero.
However, so much else about Sente drove me batty (those MLA citations ended up with title of work listed as title of journal and no other info, for ex) so I´m now switching over to zotero.

Plus you have to pay for Sente. And the notes you take on a document don´t shuffle as people say is possible with zotero.

[collegekidsmom]

You can use any of the programs mentioned here. There are many others. Many are very robust and work well- and you can see that people are real devotees of one program or the other. That is because a particular program not only does the organizing and formatting of the citations and helps the writing process later, but also because the technology works for them. The choice of a product depends on many factors, but there is not one perfect tool, or one best tool. It depends on your personal situation with the technology as well as the way you like to work. Some people prefer a standalone thing, some work in the cloud, some want to collaborate and share with others, etc.

The most important thing is to tag or organize the articles so you can find them as your library grows and grows. Make sure you back up your library in a couple of ways, and it is best to drag the actual article and attach it to its citation (already formatted in whatever style you need). This way you have the citation, the actual article, and the necessary tagging so that you can retrieve every article on every angle in the future. You should use a program that will allow something you to later write a paper or book and insert those citations easily. If you start early and really give a lot of thought to the system that you will use, your research and eventual writing will be SO much easier.

I consider these products really amazing. Anyone who spent time in the days of piles of papers, notecards, elaborate list making, typing while looking at style manuals or losing track of citations in the text can be kind of wowed by any of the citation management solutions.

Well, many still use those old systems and they are fine too....

[kzkzts]

Check to see if your school offers RefWorks. Many do. RefWorks is a subscription-based product, but the license allows alums to continue using the product after they graduate.

[eigen]

I'm a fan of Endnote, myself. You have to pay for it, but it's not particularly expensive- you can buy the student version of X4 (newest release) for around $99 on Amazon or Newegg.

The ability to feed it a folder full of PDFs and have it pull out the citations is great, and I love the fact that it will automatically make separate sub-folders containing the references for a particular paper you're writing. I just finished writing a review, and I'm not sure what I would have done without it.

That said, as was mentioned earlier, a lot of it is personal feel- I got started with Endnote, and like it- but the others mentioned here (Refworks, Zotero, etc) are also solid programs.

[nsldoc2b]

Thank you for all the suggestions!  I've checked out several of them, and even found out that I can download EndNotes at no charge through our campus library!  I also downloaded Zotero and am pretty impressed with it, also.  I'm now in the process of deciding which one will work best with the way I work.  I only wish I had realized I would need something like this sooner!

[collegekidsmom]

Make sure you have access to Endnote, not something called Endnote Web. They are very different.