RefME was a free citation management tool available on web,

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

and

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

. It offered a functionality that allowed users to scan book and journal

barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or o ...

s with a

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

and generate citations automatically. It was compatible with other citation management tools such as

Mendeley Mendeley is a reference manager software developed by Elsevier. It is used to manage and share research papers and generate bibliographies for scholarly articles. History The company Mendeley, named after the biologist Gregor Mendel and chemist D ...

Zotero Zotero () is a free and open-source software, free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as Portable Document Format, PDF files. Features include web browser integration, ...

RefWorks RefWorks is a web-based commercial reference management software package. It is produced by Ex Libris, a ProQuest company. RefWorks LLC was founded in 2001 as a partnership between Earl B. Beutler (development and customer service) and Cambridg ...

, and

EndNote A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a chapter, volume, or the whole text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of th ...

and enables exporting in over 7000 citation styles. In May 2015, the company released a Chrome plug-in to allow for direct clipping of web sources, which was followed in August 2015 by a similar iOS extension. RefME was shut down on March 7, 2017, after being acquired by the education company Chegg, Inc.

History

RefME was founded 2014 by Tom Hatton, Ian Forshew, and Tom Gardiner It was based in London and had over a million registered users. In April 2015, it was announced that

GEMS Education GEMS Education, founded as Global Education Management Systems (GEMS), is an Indian Emirati-based education company. It is a global advisory and educational management firm, and is the largest operator of kindergarten-to-grade-12 schools in th ...

had invested $5 million (£2.7) in the company’s seed investment round. In 2017, RefMe was acquired by Chegg, Inc. and RefMe user accounts were transferred over to CiteThisForMe, Chegg's own citation service.

Features

RefME was a free service that required registration to use. Registration could be performed by

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

single sign on, or via

Edmodo Edmodo was an educational technology platform for K-12 schools and teachers. Edmodo enabled teachers to share content, distribute quizzes and assignments, and manage communication with students, colleagues, and parents. It was shut down on Se ...

. It was available on Desktop (

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

) via the RefME.com web platform,

(for iPhones and

iPads The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating s ...

and

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...

via the RefME WebClipper browser extension. RefME allowed sharing and collaborating on resources, adding information through both desktop and mobile devices with cloud synchronization between platforms. The tool also allowed for citations to be exported into other tools as well as batch-importing using Ris files. The mobile apps also offered a feature that allowed users to scan books with their smartphones and turn them automatically into citations.

Awards

In October 2014, RefME was selected as one of the nineteen fastest-growing startups to participate in the Great Enterprise Tech Expedition organised by the

UK Trade and Investment , type = Non-ministerial government department , nativename = , nativename_a = , nativename_r = , logo = UKtrade.svg , logo_width = 190px , logo_caption = , seal = , seal_width = , seal_caption = , picture = Department for Business, Enter ...

(UKTI) to showcase UK technology in the US. RefME was named 2014 Startup of the Year by ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' and in March 2015 was voted Best British Mobile Startup at the

Mobile World Congress MWC Barcelona (formerly but still commonly referred to as Mobile World Congress) is an annual trade show organised by GSMA, dedicated primarily to the mobile communications industry. The event is held in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain at the Fir ...

(MWC) and also received the EdTech20 award in June 2015.EdSurge

References

{{Reflist Reference management software Bibliography Discontinued iOS software

History

Features

Awards

See also

References