Refworks & Mendeley & EndNote: Support, access and duplicates

* Support:

Questions regarding any of these reference managers can be send to refman@umcg.nl

* Access:

To use Refworks, Mendeley or EndNote at the UMCG network you need to get rights on the network. Contact your department's systems administrator or contact us at refman@umcg.nl

To use it from home: Refworks is online only and Mendeley is free to download (www.mendeley.com). To use EndNote from home please contact us!

* EndNote & duplicates

EndNote has the most deduplication options and we therefore recommend EndNote if you are doing a systematic review.

* Refworks & duplicates

You may search your RefWorks library for duplicate documents. If references are similar, RefWorks will suggest it as a match and you can delete any unwanted records.

** Mendeley & duplicates (advise: better not use Mendeley for a systematic review)

Mendeley reviews references’ titles, authors, file hashes, etc, when a file is imported to Mendeley, and these are checked against your existing library in Mendeley, even records that have been deleted in the past. The program will merge duplicate references into one record. You can't assess if these are true duplicates, because you can't see which records have been merged. There is no way to prevent this from occurring at the present time. Mendeley also appears to find more duplicates than other programs, like RefWorks or EndNote, so it's likely you'll lose studies due to false positives.
Mendeley is therefore NOT recommended for a systematic review, because for a review you should to be able to justify every step. The numbers are too big to easily detect mistakes, and it's extra important to have as little mistakes as possible with this type of research.

Compare Refworks vs. Mendeley vs. EndNote

	RefWorks	Mendeley	EndNote
Strenghts	Light-weight reference manager. Easy to use Good for organizing and deduplicating citations	Good for organizing citations	Recommended for doing Systematic Reviews. Good for organizing and deduplicating citations Endnote can automatically harvest pdfs and add these to references in your database. -
Duplicates	RefWorks allows you to determine yourself which duplicates should be removed. * more info	Mendeley determines for you which references are duplicates and removes them without consulting you, so you better NOT use Mendely for a systematic review.	EndNote allows you to determine which duplicates should be removed. And is therefore very suitable for Systematic reviews
Add documents (PDFs)	Loading PDFs into RefWorks goes slow and RefWorks adds very little metadata, such as authors, volume, pages and abstract. Often metadata are missing or incorrect	Loading PDFs into Mendeley goes well and fast, but Mendeley adds very little metadata, such as authors, volume, pages and abstract. Often metadata are missing or incorrect	EndNote has a "find full text" feature. It will search for the full text of your references and download the PDF if available.
Plugin for Word	The plugin doesn't work well in the virtual environment of the university (uwp.rug.nl) Works fine in general, but interference by other plugins might affect it. At the UMCG virtual workspace (toegang.umcg.nl) you need to use the shortcut "Refworks for Word" to work with refworks	The plugin works fine in a virtual environment (like toegang.umcg.nl) 01-02-2024: Mendeley is no longer available on the university network. (It is still available on the UMCG network).	The plugin works fine in a virtual environment (like uwp.rug.nl or toegang.umcg.nl) EndNote plugin in Word will not work when the Mendeley plugin is active too.
Search option PubMed	You can search PubMed within RefWorks and add papers from the results	There is no PubMed search option within Mendeley	You can search PubMed within EndNote and add papers from the results
Cloud/desktop	Only cloud	Cloud ánd desktop	Cloud ánd desktop
Speed	Slower processing time than other tools	Especially the desktop version is fast	Especially the desktop version is fast
Google Docs	Supports Google Docs	Does not support Google Docs	Versions before EndNote 21 do not support Google Docs With EndNote 21 comes support for Google Docs
Library databases	Works well with library databases	Not as agile with EBSCO databases (AMED, CINAHL, ERIC, Medline, PsycInfo and SocINDEX)	Works well with library databases. Either with direct export to EndNote online or by exporting from the database and importing in EndNote
After UMCG / University	You may continue using RefWorks after you leave the UMCG or University	Free (2 GB storage)	EndNote onilne is free, but the EndNote desktop software is not. After leaving the UMCG or University you need to either buy EndNote or get access via another institution.
Mobile options	Not available	Not available	Only works on iPads. No Andorid support