Refworks

Today I went into Uni, ready to work. The most important thing on my agenda was to understand how the Reference Management Software used at DCU functions. The software is called Refworks. I had never used it before. However I understand the need for having organised references. All the work done at the beginning pays off big time towards the end. I used the tutorial available online, since classes in the subject are still a way off from being organised. It was quite easy, as everything is explained step by step. I like the way Refworks is set up. It seems to be quite user-friendly and simple to import citations, and keeping the citations linked to pdf documents etc. It is also web-based and therefore it is easy to access it from any location.

I am however still not convinced in the ease of introducing in-text citations. Refworks comes up as a separate window, and not inbuilt into Microsoft Word. So each time you have to go out of the window, scroll through all the papers you have (could not find a search function), and cite it. I do not think it is that user-friendly, especially once you have loads of papers. I have experience using BibTex, and while it may not be that easy to import citation data (or at least I never used it, but I think there is a way to do it), it was much easier to input in-text citations.

Now that I know how to use Refworks, I hope to become more proficient in it, in order to start effectively searching for relevant articles and saving their details effectively.