RefWorks is a web-based commercial

reference management software Reference management software, citation management software, or bibliographic management software is software for scholars and authors to use for recording and utilising bibliographic citations (references) as well as managing project references ...

package. It is produced by

Ex Libris Ex Libris may refer to: *An Ex Libris (bookplate), a label affixed to a book to indicate ownership * Ex Libris (band), a Dutch metal band * Ex Libris (bookshop), a Swiss retail company * "Ex Libris" (''Charmed''), a 2000 episode of the television ...

, a ProQuest company. RefWorks LLC was founded in 2001 as a partnership between

Earl B. Beutler Earl () is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. The title originates in the Old English word ''eorl'', meaning "a man of noble birth or rank". The word is cognate with the Scandinavian form ''jarl'', and meant "chieftain", particular ...

(development and customer service) and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (sales and marketing) from 2002 until being acquired by ProQuest in 2008.

Functionality and features

Users' reference databases are stored online, allowing them to be accessed and updated from any computer with an internet connection. Institutional licenses allow universities to subscribe to RefWorks on behalf of all their students, faculty and staff. Individual licenses are also available. The software enables linking from a user's RefWorks account to electronic editions of journals to which the institution's library subscribes. This linking is accomplished by incorporating an institution's

OpenURL An OpenURL is similar to a web address, but instead of referring to a physical website, it refers to an article, book, patent, or other resource within a website. OpenURLs are similar to permalinks because they are permanently connected to a r ...

resolver. Many bibliographic database providers have implemented the ability to export references directly to RefWorks. In some cases (e.g.

PubMed PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain ...

) reference citations must be saved to the user's computer as text files and then imported into RefWorks. In 2005 the bibliographic database

Scopus Scopus is Elsevier's abstract and citation database launched in 2004. Scopus covers nearly 36,377 titles (22,794 active titles and 13,583 inactive titles) from approximately 11,678 publishers, of which 34,346 are peer-reviewed journals in top-l ...

formed a partnership with RefWorks to allow enhanced integration between the two products. A word processor integration utility called Write-N-Cite enables users to insert reference codes from their RefWorks accounts into

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includi ...

documents, which can then be formatted to produce in-text citations and reference lists in various styles. A new version of Write-N-Cite (WNC4) for Mac was released in early 2012. In 2005 RefWorks introduced a module called RefShare, which allows users to make public all or part of their RefWorks databases. This is done by creating a

URL A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed as a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifie ...

for a read-only version of the database or folder, which can be emailed or posted to a website. RefShare folders can also be used to create

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

feeds that are updated when new citations are added to the database. RefMobile, a mobile phone interface, was introduced in 2009. RefWorks includes RefGrab-It, a utility designed to capture bibliographic information from websites. , it was optimized to work with Amazon, Google Scholar, PubMed, Wikipedia, the BBC, USA TODAY, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. The utility works with

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

and

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

browsers only. RefWorks-COS launched the current user interface, RefWorks 2.0, in 2010. In 2016, ProQuest launched New RefWorks, featuring new functionality such as the ability to drag and drop PDFs, and a Save to RefWorks utility as a replacement for RefGrab-It. RefWorks 2.0 was rebranded as Legacy RefWorks and users were given the option of upgrading from Legacy to New RefWorks.

Canadian university access

In 2004 the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) consortium licensed RefWorks on behalf of its 20 member institutions. The RefWorks software was mounted on data servers belonging to Scholars Portal, which provides the platform for the digital resources licensed by OCUL. In addition to the software, data in RefWorks users accounts belonging to member institutions are housed on the Scholars Portal servers at the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institu ...

. A number of other Canadian academic libraries that license RefWorks have since contracted for access through Scholars Portal, so that their data also resides on the servers in Toronto. According to news reports, this was due to concerns that information about individuals' research interests, represented by data stored on RefWorks servers in the United States, could be vulnerable to scrutiny under the terms of the

USA Patriot Act The USA PATRIOT Act (commonly known as the Patriot Act) was a landmark Act of the United States Congress, signed into law by President George W. Bush. The formal name of the statute is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appro ...

. As of mid 2015 OCUL will no longer host RefWorks on its servers in Canada. Some academic libraries chose to migrate their data to the RefWorks servers located outside of Canada, while others ceased their subscription to RefWorks.

References

External links

Ex Libris RefWorks - Reference Management (Website)Ex Libris RefWorks - Login page
{{Reference management software ProQuest Reference management software

Functionality and features

Canadian university access

See also

References

External links