refbase is an open source web reference and research tool.
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Zotero
Score 9.4 out of 10
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Zotero is a free reference management tool developed as a project developed at Carnegie Mellon and supported by a small team at George Mason University.
Zotero is well suited for any researcher, student or writer that wants to easily cite sources for web platforms that do not have easy citing tools integrated within the website. There are many browser plug-ins built for Zotero that allow users to click a button directly from the source into the main software and from there can be more organized for citation export. Zotero doesn't work well if you open an external PDF from a website as it cannot pull author information correctly from a PDF source.
Zotero, when paired with the Zotfile plugin, makes it incredibly easy to index sources and documents on a project-by-project basis. Users can store document files locally in a Zotero project filesystem, or merely store links to files stored elsewhere.
Zotero plays extremely nicely with PDF documents, thanks again to the Zotfile plugin: I can highlight sections of a PDF article's text and Zotero indexes these "pull quotes" in a searchable and well-organized manner for easy extraction when it comes time to synthesize my sources into a new paper.
Zotero automates the production of properly-formatted references (including APA, MLA, Chicago, and others), making it a breeze to create accurate and complete bibliographies.
Zotero's library system provides a straightforward graphical user interface to manage multiple research projects and associated files, including the ability to easily add items to a project by ISBN, DOI, PMID, and arXiv IDs.
For a brief time I tried Mendalay, since at the time Zotero didn't have a Google Docs plug in. Mendalay is not as intuitive as Zotero and if I recall correctly, was more expensive. Zotero works very well, and ultimately I found myself back in Zotero because it's easier to use and does a great job of managing my library of academic articles
