When you’re writing a thesis of 10,000 words, a reference manager is a good way to manage and keep track of your sources; when putting together a thesis of 80,000 to 100,000 words, you will quickly become lost without one.

Though there are a number of reference management software packages to choose from, your university most likely provided you with a version of EndNote at the start of your studies, and a workshop on its use may also have been offered.

For some, learning a reference manager like EndNote can be a little daunting. There is a learning curve. However, investing time early on will reap massive rewards when the time comes to engage a thesis editor.

EndNote is used in combination with a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word, allowing you to create citations and references as you write. Over time, this creates a store of entries in the program’s database which will automatically generate your reference list or bibliography, and can be connected to the digital libraries of universities and institutions around the world.

Part of the work of an editor is to check that each of your citations has a corresponding entry in the reference list and that each your references are cited in the text. In footnoting styles, a bibliography contains all of the references cited as well as additional sources used in writing the thesis.

So, an editor will almost certainly want to know whether you’ve made use of a reference manager in your work.

Use of a reference manager is especially important for students integrating words from a foreign language into their work. For non-Roman languages, referencing can require transliteration and translation from the original script. This is most easily done at the outset of writing the thesis rather than at the eleventh hour.

For those incorporating a non-Roman language and writing within the discipline of law, the rules are different again. For example, the Australian Guide to Legal Citation requires that, when citing Chinese primary materials, ‘Chinese characters that appear in the source should not be transliterated into pinyin’. (See AGLC 4, 16.1.)

Using a reference manager will not only make your citations and referencing consistent, it will allow you to focus on your work rather than losing time having to manually keep track of your sources.