Research and referencing
Referencing is the task students told us causes a lot of stress, and it is the kind of detailed, rule-bound work that assistive software handles well. A referencing tool builds your citations and keeps your sources in order. Two things are worth keeping in mind: automated references can contain small errors, so always check the output against your required style; and finding good sources still depends on your own judgement, which no tool can replace.
LJMU uses Harvard Cite Them Right for most programmes. Learn the style at Cite Them Right Online (free with your LJMU login), and check anything a tool generates against it.
- Find your sources with LJMU Library Discover: start here rather than a general search engine, so you find sources you can cite and access.
- Need a hand? LJMU's Academic Success team of librarians and skills tutors can help with referencing and academic writing.
Research and referencing software
- MyBib: a free referencing tool that builds citations and bibliographies. It was a clear favourite in our survey for taking some of the difficulty out of referencing. Watch a MyBib tutorial. Always check its output against the referencing guide used in your course.
- Zotero: a free reference manager that stores sources and inserts citations into Word as you write. It suits longer projects with many references, such as a dissertation, better than MyBib does.
Zotero quick-start guide. - Mendeley and EndNote: fuller reference managers. EndNote is licensed free by LJMU, but it is more complex to learn than MyBib, so it tends to suit postgraduate and research students managing many sources. Mendeley has a free version.
- Elicit and Scholarcy: AI tools for working through research papers. Check the AI and copyright guidance, and do not upload material you do not have the right to use.
