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RefWorks - Reference Management: Welcome to RefWorks!

Welcome to the RefWorks guide. This guide will introduce you the reference management tool RefWorks including information on the benefits and features of using it and how to get started by setting up an account. 

Need help?

Have questions regarding RefWorks?

Answers to questions about referencing can be found here.  If you need further help please book an appointment with an appropriated adviser here.

You can contact learning services by email learningservices@uos.ac.uk

Welcome to RefWorks!

What is RefWorks?

The new RefWorks is a tool that you can use to collect, manage and organise research papers and documents.  You can read, annotate, organise, and cite your research as well as collaborate with friends and colleagues by sharing collections.

Who should use RefWorks?

You should ideally only use RefWorks or any reference management tool if you already have a good knowledge of the referencing style you will be using. If you're new to referencing, take a look at our general referencing guide and Cite Them Right

Tools like RefWorks are recommended for students doing larger pieces of work such as dissertations, postgraduates and staff. As explained above, a solid foundation of referencing knowledge is also recommended before using RefWorks or any other reference management tool. 

What are the benefits of using RefWorks?

If you are working with large numbers of documents, RefWorks can be used to organise them. RefWorks now supports drag and drop capability, along with smart document recognition to make it easy and fast to upload documents and bibliographic data into your library. The Save to RefWorks feature allows you to capture research from websites with the click of a button.

RefWorks can also make inserting references into your work quicker and easier. RefWorks supports many referencing styles, and we have four site wide styles you will have access to. Many of our databases are supported by RefWorks making it very easy to export references. 

You can use RefWorks to share your collections and collaborate with others. 

Get started with RefWorks

An institutional account is available to anyone at a subscribing institution and includes 10GB of document storage, unlimited sharing inside and outside the institution, easy institution-wide sharing, phone and email tech support, training and more.

To create a RefWorks account:
  1. Go to http://refworks.proquest.com and click the “create an account” link.
  2. Fill in your information making sure to use your institutional email address (you can’t sign up with @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, etc.).  Using your institutional email address will help us know whether you are entitled to an institutional account (with all the benefits mentioned above!).

Once you activate your account (you'll receive an email with a link to complete the registration process), you’ll get access immediately and can get started managing your documents.