You’re only citing a handful of references

At the beginning of your studies as a student, you’ll write your first research papers. That’s when you’ll first start thinking about how to do scholarly research and how to cite. You may take part in courses on how to write and do research, read guides for the requirements of your major, or seek out help from teaching assistants or professors.

I can well remember my first papers and having to find where the footnote feature was hidden in Word. I also was confused about what exactly I needed to enter there. The first time I used a direct quotation, I was very careful to apply the citation and bibliography formatting exactly. As soon as I entered the direct quotation, I went straight to the end of my document and added the entry to the bibliography so as not to forget it. Before handing in my paper, I used the sorting feature in Word to put everything in alphabetical order. My system worked well for me since the bibliography for my paper only had a handful of sources.

In comparison to later research papers and my Master’s thesis, I didn’t have the feeling of being overwhelmed by the number of sources or that the formatting was time consuming. Plus, this manual work had a positive effect which later came in handy even when using reference management software: I learned what information was needed to cite a source in both the footnotes and the bibliography according to the style guidelines from my university.

You have enough time to write citations by hand and check styles

Reference management software can save you a lot of time typing and looking up formatting rules. Citavi, for example, offers automatic citation formatting for more than 10,000 styles! Also, if your style guidelines later change or if you later need to submit your work to a different journal with different guidelines, you just need to make a few clicks to update your citations and bibliography. Many of us often have to deal with short turnarounds. Especially right before a deadline, it can seem that every second counts. And reference management software is simply faster than you are.

However, if you have a more forgiving timeline or if you’re writing for your own interest and passion, you don’t need to worry about saving every last minute. You can take your time checking all of the formatting in your citations or you can even change your citations from footnotes to in-text citations if your guidelines change.

You like being in control of your system

Your motto is “better safe than sorry”. You wouldn’t trust your work to any software and you want to keep full control over your citations.

Unfortunately, full control goes hand-in-hand with full responsibility. If you suddenly need to work with a new edition of your citation style, for example switching from APA 6 to APA 7, you’ll need to make a lot of manual updates to the formatting of your citations and bibliography in the middle of your work.

Perhaps for you it would be good to know that even if you use Citavi as your reference manager, you never have to give up control completely. The program only outputs the data that you yourself put into it. If an entry is not as you expect, you’re always able to correct it. And who knows, sometimes your program might be able to implement a lesser-known rule in your citation style guidelines that you otherwise could have missed. At the end of your work you can always disconnect your document from your program and make any changes you want to the text. We anyway recommend always performing a final check, since you always bear the full responsibility for your work in the end.

You prefer working on paper instead of with software

Not only do you prefer reading articles that are printed out instead of on the web, you also prefer taking handwritten notes on paper. In addition to your notes, you also write out your source details and rough drafts of your arguments for your paper by hand. Only when your deadline looms closer do you sit down at your computer, open your word processer, and type everything out. Perhaps you find it more difficult than others to work with software, and it’s simply easier for you to do everything by hand. You might think that it would take much more time to learn a new software program rather than just typing “(Miller 2020)”.

You enjoy the monotony of creating bibliography entries

Academic work is difficult enough as it is. You’re constantly thinking about complex theories, discussing new projects with colleagues, and reading about new results in your discipline. Your brain hardly has time to process and make links between all this information – except when you are engaged in mindless tasks like checking whether each book title in your bibliography is really formatted in italics.

In such times you don’t need to think, you just need to do the work. Between footnote 245 and 246 you might suddenly have a stroke of genius and be thankful that this monotonous task helped you call up some divergent thinking.

You’ve already come up with your own alternative solution to reference management software

I remember a meeting with a researcher who I wanted to convince to use reference management software. He just waved my explanation away and explained to me that he had no need for such a solution. I expected that he would have one of the five reasons listed above, but then he surprised me.

He had programmed an application that output exactly what he needed for his citations. Most reference management programs offer many features, since they are meant to be used in all academic disciplines.

That can be overwhelming at first, since you need to pick out the features you actually need. This researcher had only what he needed and nothing else. In addition to individually programmed solutions, other researchers create customized Excel sheets in order to keep track of their sources and notes. You can learn more about using Excel for your citation tracking in our blog post Should you use Excel, Google Sheets, or Citavi for Your Literature Review?

You’re only citing a handful of references

At the beginning of your studies as a student, you’ll write your first research papers. That’s when you’ll first start thinking about how to do scholarly research and how to cite. You may take part in courses on how to write and do research, read guides for the requirements of your major, or seek out help from teaching assistants or professors.

I can well remember my first papers and having to find where the footnote feature was hidden in Word. I also was confused about what exactly I needed to enter there. The first time I used a direct quotation, I was very careful to apply the citation and bibliography formatting exactly. As soon as I entered the direct quotation, I went straight to the end of my document and added the entry to the bibliography so as not to forget it. Before handing in my paper, I used the sorting feature in Word to put everything in alphabetical order. My system worked well for me since the bibliography for my paper only had a handful of sources.

In comparison to later research papers and my Master’s thesis, I didn’t have the feeling of being overwhelmed by the number of sources or that the formatting was time consuming. Plus, this manual work had a positive effect which later came in handy even when using reference management software: I learned what information was needed to cite a source in both the footnotes and the bibliography according to the style guidelines from my university.

You have enough time to write citations by hand and check styles

Reference management software can save you a lot of time typing and looking up formatting rules. Citavi, for example, offers automatic citation formatting for more than 10,000 styles! Also, if your style guidelines later change or if you later need to submit your work to a different journal with different guidelines, you just need to make a few clicks to update your citations and bibliography. Many of us often have to deal with short turnarounds. Especially right before a deadline, it can seem that every second counts. And reference management software is simply faster than you are.

However, if you have a more forgiving timeline or if you’re writing for your own interest and passion, you don’t need to worry about saving every last minute. You can take your time checking all of the formatting in your citations or you can even change your citations from footnotes to in-text citations if your guidelines change.

You like being in control of your system

Your motto is “better safe than sorry”. You wouldn’t trust your work to any software and you want to keep full control over your citations.

Unfortunately, full control goes hand-in-hand with full responsibility. If you suddenly need to work with a new edition of your citation style, for example switching from APA 6 to APA 7, you’ll need to make a lot of manual updates to the formatting of your citations and bibliography in the middle of your work.

Perhaps for you it would be good to know that even if you use Citavi as your reference manager, you never have to give up control completely. The program only outputs the data that you yourself put into it. If an entry is not as you expect, you’re always able to correct it. And who knows, sometimes your program might be able to implement a lesser-known rule in your citation style guidelines that you otherwise could have missed. At the end of your work you can always disconnect your document from your program and make any changes you want to the text. We anyway recommend always performing a final check, since you always bear the full responsibility for your work in the end.

You prefer working on paper instead of with software

Not only do you prefer reading articles that are printed out instead of on the web, you also prefer taking handwritten notes on paper. In addition to your notes, you also write out your source details and rough drafts of your arguments for your paper by hand. Only when your deadline looms closer do you sit down at your computer, open your word processer, and type everything out. Perhaps you find it more difficult than others to work with software, and it’s simply easier for you to do everything by hand. You might think that it would take much more time to learn a new software program rather than just typing “(Miller 2020)”.

You enjoy the monotony of creating bibliography entries

Academic work is difficult enough as it is. You’re constantly thinking about complex theories, discussing new projects with colleagues, and reading about new results in your discipline. Your brain hardly has time to process and make links between all this information – except when you are engaged in mindless tasks like checking whether each book title in your bibliography is really formatted in italics.

In such times you don’t need to think, you just need to do the work. Between footnote 245 and 246 you might suddenly have a stroke of genius and be thankful that this monotonous task helped you call up some divergent thinking.

You’ve already come up with your own alternative solution to reference management software

I remember a meeting with a researcher who I wanted to convince to use reference management software. He just waved my explanation away and explained to me that he had no need for such a solution. I expected that he would have one of the five reasons listed above, but then he surprised me.

He had programmed an application that output exactly what he needed for his citations. Most reference management programs offer many features, since they are meant to be used in all academic disciplines.

That can be overwhelming at first, since you need to pick out the features you actually need. This researcher had only what he needed and nothing else. In addition to individually programmed solutions, other researchers create customized Excel sheets in order to keep track of their sources and notes. You can learn more about using Excel for your citation tracking in our blog post Should you use Excel, Google Sheets, or Citavi for Your Literature Review?