Skip to content

Skills Team Workshops: Using RefWorks to manage your references

Using RefWorks to manage your references

Referencing your work can be quite difficult, but if you use dedicated software such as RefWorks, this can take all the hard work of referencing away. RefWorks is an online bibliographic management tool designed to help students easily gather, manage and store references, as well as generate citations and reference lists. This workshop will introduce participants to the tool and will enable them to start creating their first reference list.

Workshop description

Referencing your work can be quite difficult, but if you use dedicated software such as RefWorks, this can take all the hard work of referencing away. RefWorks is an online bibliographic management tool designed to help students easily gather, manage and store references, as well as generate citations and reference lists. This workshop will introduce participants to the tool and will enable them to start creating their first reference list.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

  • Create a library of references
  • Organise your references into folders
  • Choose the correct output style
  • Cite your references and generate a reference list in Microsoft Word

Who this workshop is for

This workshop is useful for students and researchers of any level who are looking to use RefWorks for their bibliographic management but is particularly suitable for undergraduate level. Bibliographic management is a ‘must’ for any extended piece of academic writing including dissertations and theses.

Facilitator

This workshop is run by an Academic & Library Specialist from the Brynmor Jones Library Skills Team.

Accessing RefWorks

To get started with Refworks go to https://refworks.proquest.com and click on the Create account link. Fill in your information making sure you use your University email address.

Once you activate your account you'll receive an email with a link in to complete the registration process. You’ll then get immediate access and can get started managing your documents.

This video goes through the process of creating your account and logging in.

Getting started with RefWorks

This video goes through creating folders to organise your references and exporting references from University Library search results.

This video shows you how to build your library further by exporting references from EBSCOhost databases, Web of Science, Google Scholar and Websites.

Citing within MS Word

To enable in-text citations you will need to use Write-N-Cite or the new Reference Citation Manager (RCM).

If you are using your own computer

Download Write-N-Cite from the RefWorks website.

If you are using a University computer on campus

Write-N-Cite is already installed within Microsoft Word on all open-access computers in the University but you will need to download this to your own PC to use at home.

If you are using a staff computer on campus

You can download Write-N-Cite by opening the 'Software Center' from the Windows Start menu and searching for RefWorks.

The video below shows you how to use and install Write-N-Cite to insert references into Microsoft Word:


This video will show you how to use and install Reference Citation Manager (RCM) from the Word store. This version is recommended if you are using Word 2016 or above and Office 365.


Note for users of a Mac with MS Word 16

Anyone using a Mac with MS Word 16 must use RCM.

You may install RefWorks Citation Manager (RCM) from Word 2016's Insert tab > Add-ins > Word Store > then search for RefWorks - select the RefWorks Citation Manager add-in and add it by clicking the 'trust it' button. You will then be requested to enter your RefWorks log in details before you can start using it.

Word Store - search for RefWorks then follow the installation instructions