EndNote
The veteran reference manager, deeply embedded in institutional workflows.
At a Glance
- Publisher
- Clarivate
- Coverage
Not a content database — a reference manager for collecting, organising, citing, and deduplicating references, with deep Web of Science integration.
- Access
Paid (perpetual desktop licence; commonly site-licensed by institutions, with student pricing).
- Free alternative
- Zotero
- Regional
Used worldwide, strongest where institutions standardise on it.
Our Take
EndNote is the incumbent — powerful, feature-dense, and often the institutional default, with Cite While You Write in Word and tight Web of Science integration. For deduplication in large literature reviews it’s capable, but its defaults can miss matches when author formatting is messy, so the criteria matter. Versus Zotero the honest trade-off is cost and openness: EndNote is paid and proprietary where Zotero is free and open, and for most individuals Zotero is the better starting point. Choose EndNote when your institution standardises on it or you live in the Web of Science ecosystem; switch its dedup defaults before trusting the counts.
Power Tips
- Switch deduplication criteria to DOI-first matching to catch duplicates that messy author formatting would otherwise hide.
- Keep one library per project with consistent import settings so dedup and PRISMA counts stay clean; lean on Web of Science integration if that’s your primary index.
Alternatives & Complements
Zotero, Mendeley, ASySD, Deduklick
Figures last verified: June 15, 2026