Best citation generator?

[RedPill]

I'm working as a research assistant on a book where I'm doing a good deal of fact checking and updating footnotes, references, citations etc (Chicago style)

 

Does anyone know the preferred citation generator for this type of work? Probably those of you in the social sciences/editing are more familiar with this line of work. I know there are a bunch out there (citationmachine, easybib etc.)

 

I've been using Bibme, but I'm wondering if there's a status quo or best engine among the gradcafe community. 

[TakeruK]

I use LaTeX and BibTeX with the natbib package. natbib uses BibTeX files, which basically just contain the data for each citation (author, year, publisher, etc.) and then BibTeX plus the natbib package takes this information and formats it into whatever footnote/endnote/bibliography style I need. I haven't written a citation by hand for ~8 years. I can tell natbib to use Chicago, or any other style that I want.

 

To get the BibTeX information, I use Mendeley to store my papers and it usually can either read the data right off the PDF, or do a DOI lookup to get it. In the cases where both of these methods fail (usually older papers or books), I manually fill out a form on Mendeley to give it the information.

[RedPill]

I'd use Mendeley for an academic paper, but this book is geared towards general/policy audiences. We cite a number reports, websites and federally maintained information. I'll need to use an online generator since the sources are so varied. Can't download most of them.

Edited May 16, 2015 by RedPill

[rising_star]

Why not use Zotero or EndNote? They allow you to put in the information for all types of different sources and output a reference list in literally thousands of styles.

[TakeruK]

As you know, since you also use Mendeley, you don't need to download the source in order to store it in Mendeley. Just add an entry manually and, like Zotero and EndNote suggested above, you can create reference list in any style you want. There is definitely a "website" type entry for Mendeley--I've used it myself a few times! I also do this for books since I don't usually have the PDF of the book in question.

[_kita]

Honestly, the best citation generator is the one you've worked with any know the quirks of. With citation formats changing so frequently (at least they do with APA), it's better to know what to look for after the fact, so using your comfort zone will help with it. 

[Pandawan]

Can i use https://cheapwritingservice.com/citation_generator.html? Just a send my paper and start worring about this.. 

[unræd]

I use LaTeX and BibTeX with the natbib package. natbib uses BibTeX files, which basically just contain the data for each citation (author, year, publisher, etc.) and then BibTeX plus the natbib package takes this information and formats it into whatever footnote/endnote/bibliography style I need. I haven't written a citation by hand for ~8 years. I can tell natbib to use Chicago, or any other style that I want.

 

To get the BibTeX information, I use Mendeley to store my papers and it usually can either read the data right off the PDF, or do a DOI lookup to get it. In the cases where both of these methods fail (usually older papers or books), I manually fill out a form on Mendeley to give it the information.

 

Can Mendeley output the bibliographical data as a BibTeX file, or do you need to enter it twice?

[TakeruK]

Can Mendeley output the bibliographical data as a BibTeX file, or do you need to enter it twice?

 

Yes, it exports all of my references as a .bib file (i.e. a BibTeX file)

[unræd]

Yes, it exports all of my references as a .bib file (i.e. a BibTeX file)

 

Thank you so much! Two of my tasks this summer are to learn to use LaTeX (which gets used a lot in my corner of the humanities) and start using a real bibliographic manager, so this is very helpful.

[TakeruK]

Thank you so much! Two of my tasks this summer are to learn to use LaTeX (which gets used a lot in my corner of the humanities) and start using a real bibliographic manager, so this is very helpful.

 

On our first day of grad school, an older grad student told all of us newbies about Mendeley and it was one of the most valuable pieces of advice I ever received! (Of course, it could be any other reference manager software). I was very glad to have learned about it prior to amassing a large number of PDFs to track manually