Citation Management Tools

RefWorks

Please Note: UVa's RefWorks subscription expires on August 31, 2019. It is no longer possible to create new RefWorks accounts as of 2/25/19. Existing accounts will remain accessible until the end of the subscription, but no longer (individual subscriptions are not available).

You should begin planning to export your citations to another citation manager. Library staff are available to answer your questions about transitioning to any of the recommended alternatives below. Please contact us via the Ask Us service link at left.

How to export your citations/bibliographies from RefWorks to Zotero

After logging in to RefWorks, locate the Quick Access Toolbar on the bottom of the right-hand menu
Click Export
You can choose to export your whole database of references by choosing All in List, or, you can export folder by folder by clicking on a folder from the folder area at right.
Under Select an Export Format, choose Bibliographic Software (EndNote, Reference Manager, ProCite)
Click on the Export References button. A browser window will appear with your references.
Right-click in the browser window and choose Save as…. Save the export on your desktop as a .txt file and name it to match your RefWorks folder.
Open your Zotero desktop app and select File, then Import.
Leave the choice "A file (BibTeX, RIS, Zotero RDF, etc.)" selected and click Next.
Find your downloaded file and click Open. Leave the next screen with Options as is, then click Next.
The citations will be imported into Zotero with the name you used to save it as its Zotero folder name.

Please Note:

File attachments will not transfer from RefWorks to Zotero. You can save the attachments on your computer and add them to Zotero manually by dragging the PDF to the appropriate citation or adding it as an attachment to the citation.
The Personal Notes and User fields in RefWorks will not transfer to Zotero. You can copy and paste this information into another field manually.
You cannot use the Zotero Word plugin in a document that contains RefWorks Write-N-Cite formatted citations or bibliographies.

How to export your citations/bibliographies from RefWorks to EndNote

Select which references to be transferred by using the checkboxes.
In the command bar on the upper left-side of the screen, select References >> Export
Under Export Format, select RefWorks Tagged Format
Select Export to Text File. A new window or tab will open displaying references in text format.
From your web browser, select File >> Save Page As...>> name and save the text file.

Open up the EndNote library in which you will transfer the references from RefWorks. Then, in your EndNote library:

In the command bar on the upper left-side of the screen, select File >> Import...
Browse for and select the text file exported from RefWorks.
Under Import Options >>choose RefWorks Import
Select Import