Recommend APA-style formatting and citation software

January 10, 2016 9:25 PM

What software would you recommend for formatting papers, creating a research database, and building and inserting citations in APA-style?

My daughter-in-law is new to writing research papers and doesn't know APA style. For her first paper in her current program, I helped her using StyleEase, which I've been using for about 15 years and love. My DIL wanted to use the software but they went out of business last month. StyleEase formats papers, sections, and headings correctly; maintains a research bibliography; holds your hand for building reference citations (especially online references); automatically builds the reference list; and easily inserts in-text citations. This FPP from 2008 is a bit dated now. What is your current recommendation?

posted by angiep to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

If she is collaborating with others I'd suggest going with what dominates in her research team.
İ love Mendeley but I know a lot of other people prefer Zotero.
posted by k8t at 9:34 PM on January 10, 2016

Seconding Zotero. It works as a extension to firefox to collect citation info from any library web site. There is also a plugin for cite-as-you-write in a word processor. Libreoffice (have never used on MS Office) works fairly well with this, but always seems to find a way to choke when the paper got longer than twenty pages or so. But for term papers and so on it should work fine.

Another big plus: it's free and open-source, and there is a pretty good community using it and making plug-ins, etc..
posted by Stilling Still Dreaming at 10:22 PM on January 10, 2016 [3 favorites]

Lots of people write in APA style using LaTeX, apparently. LaTeX has a steep learning curve, but one of the advantages to learning how to use it is that it separates content production from formatting, so you let the program do all the formatting (in this case, in APA style) and you only need to worry about writing the content. Plus, it does cross-referencing of sections and citations and figures for you (if you put in the cross-referencing calls), and you can format the citations in whatever way your journal requires, just by changing the citation style in the document.

There are lots of references on the web for using LaTeX---on the mac, I like the combination of TeXShop plus BibDesk. (BibDesk is awesome; it lets you keep a big list of all of the articles you've ever looked at, plus it will file PDF copies of the articles, so you can use it as an article browser, plus you can drag-and-drop cites into your LaTeX file, plus you can easily pull out a small .bib file (just the articles you're actually using in your paper) from your big research bibliography to use in the article, but as you're writing you can just use your big bibliography and not worry about if you've got the right articles loaded in...)

One particularly useful-looking references was this tex.stackexchange question on using APA 6 in LaTeX, which has a lot of references and suggestions for good document classes, etc.

(but of course, go with what your collaborators use is also a good idea...)
posted by leahwrenn at 11:49 PM on January 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

If your daughter-in-law uses Word to write with then she's going to be hard-pressed to go past the standalone version of Zotero, but she should use whatever she needs to to work with the other people she works with. Endnote is another standard, many universities will have a licence for it.

I'm a LaTeX and biblatex/biber evangelist too but the learning curve to learn how to typeset really is very very sharp. Zotero will do citations and a bibliography perfectly well.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:07 AM on January 11, 2016

I use and love Mendeley and it works with any citation style (I'm using APA right now).
posted by Cygnet at 3:20 AM on January 11, 2016

Nthing Mendeley, which you can use for free and which has cloud storage of your references, so you can easily work from a different computer. Endnote is the devil's handmaiden, IMHO — the last time I used it, it was slow and unstable — but it is still an "industry standard" choice and cheap licenses abound in the university environment.

I like JabRef and LaTeX as much as the next nerd but unless your DIL really loves open-source software or tinkering with techy projects they're overkill for this purpose.
posted by en forme de poire at 3:49 AM on January 11, 2016

Best answer: With the qualification that my discipline leans to Chicago rather than APA, I have used Endnote, and Zotero and I have just begun playing around with Mendeley. Endnote and Zotero are both great, but I haven't explored Mendeley enough yet to say - and I'm in the last year of my PhD so there is no way I'm switching right now.

With all respect to leahwrenn above, LaTex, BibTex and so forth are absolutely the wrong choice for someone new to academic writing, unless the course or discipline specifically calls for it. LaTex is a hugely powerful language and 100% overkill.

I absolutely recommend that your DIL gets in touch with the library at her institution. It is almost certain that the librarians will have someone on staff who is dedicated to helping students tackle citation styles and software. From my (Australian university) experience, there was not only a dedicated subject librarian for my field, but a number of classes on using citation software (in this case Endnote) and formatting papers in Word. Many universities worldwide will have Endnote available for students to download for free, configured to retrieve citations by connecting to the databases and catalogs that the university uses.

My mum's a librarian, and I worked at the State Library of Victoria for a while, so I had it drummed into me early that an academic library is a resource that can be used in a huge variety of productive ways, and the staff there are an integral part of teaching and research. And I also know that university and college librarians are often left wondering "why do we offer these services that are designed to get you better grades when only a fraction of the students use them?" Librarians are awesome and should get every opportunity to show off.
posted by prismatic7 at 3:53 AM on January 11, 2016 [7 favorites]

Endnote is big at my university. If your DIL is a student, she may get a free copy of the software from her a school. Her school library may also give workshops on picking between zotero Endnote etc., and then on using them.
posted by Kalmya at 4:43 AM on January 11, 2016

It would probably be best if she made an appointment with a research librarian at her school, ideally a specialist in her topic, and asked this question of them. There may even be training sessions offered in whichever software the school supports, but they may be by appointment, so it's definitely worth asking for research help (which will also assist with how to best organize her database, tips on best practices in seaching, etc, etc, which can all save headaches along the way).

Otherwise, I highly recommend RefWorks, if it is available.
posted by epanalepsis at 6:32 AM on January 11, 2016

Response by poster: Thanks to all for your comments! I'll get her to check with the school about Endnote and will also recommend Zotero. DIL attends a polytechnic so is not starting an academic career, so LaTex and BibTex probably are too much for her right now.
posted by angiep at 7:06 AM on January 11, 2016

Endnote is godawful. Mendeley is much better and what many of the grad students I know use. LaTeX is definitely overkill, unless you start needing to typeset mathematical equations.
posted by quaking fajita at 7:43 AM on January 11, 2016 [3 favorites]

I write in LaTeX unless a coauthor doesn't use it, and will second that it's not appropriate here. About the only times it would be really appropriate for an undergrad would be (1) someone who's just really techy and doesn't mind messing with it and who is already used to IDE-style work, (2) someone who expects to need to include lots of equations in their papers, or (3) someone who already has firm plans for academic graduate school.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:08 AM on January 11, 2016

I'm an academic reference/research librarian and all the citation formats drive me bonkers. I nth telling her to talk to a librarian at her university. She should also look for library guides (often called LibGuides if the library uses that program) for APA on her university library's website.

Some of our students have found tutorials on youtube very helpful, I tell them to make sure the tutorial is coming from a university library and is very recent.
posted by mareli at 10:53 AM on January 11, 2016

I would also check with the school/library because many institutes of higher learning have different programs that can be used. My university uses Proquest Flow, and it has a google docs add-on, making it really easy to use when writing papers. I use a combination of Diigo to store and annotate articles, and Proquest Flow for reference and attributes within my google docs. I also made a template of an APA paper that I just copy and use with each paper. This all works really well for me, at the level at which I write papers- all the other programs were too much for me to learn alongside everything else I had to do.
posted by momochan at 4:33 PM on January 11, 2016