Library Services

ProQuest Upgrades RefWorks with New Organizational Tools

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 06/21/16

ProQuest has unveiled a new version of its reference management system, RefWorks, in an effort to simplify and improve research and collaboration workflows.

"With full-text management and tools for collaboration, the new RefWorks platform addresses the needs of students, faculty and librarians with an innovative feature set," according to a news release. "Libraries that offer this powerful service to their constituents have access to administrative controls that help their institutions respect intellectual property rights, professional support for themselves and their end-users and analytics that provide a consistent source of information on patron and content usage."

Features new to this version include:

• A folder hierarchy designed to simplify content organization;
• Tagging tools designed to help users retrieve appropriate citations quickly;
• Z39.50 database search "with an initial set of databases that include the PubMed database, the Library of Congress and hundreds of library catalogs from subscribing RefWorks institutions," according to information released by ProQuest;
• Advanced search tools;
• A citation style view that displays references in any of more than 4,000 bibliographic or custom styles and identifies missing metadata; and
• User interface improvements for Quick Cite.

"The innovations we have implemented in the new RefWorks platform enable users to focus their time on the tasks that are going to produce better papers — like discovery, analysis and collaboration," said Steve Guttman, senior director of product management at ProQuest, in a prepared statement. "We've taken a big leap forward with this new platform, and it will continue to evolve quickly. The latest release has some remarkable features."