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The Effortless Academic

Zotero vs Mendeley vs EndNote for AI

Published about 2 months ago • 1 min read

Sourcely.net (Sponsor)

Your AI-powered academic search assistant, offering access to over 200 million papers. Sourcely finds papers matching an entire manuscript rather than a short query, providing scientific evidence for every sentence and enabling the so-called "reverse literature review": Write first, cite later.

Discount Codes:
​Effortless40 (40% off annual)
or Effortless20 (20% off monthly)

Which Reference Manager To Choose For AI

Dear Scholar,

Reference Managers are the workhorses of academic work. In 2025, we expect more AI integration and generally better workflow. So, which reference manager is up for the task?

In this week's article, I test the four most common reference managers and how well they integrate AI.

Spoiler: I think all of these reference managers could do better with AI: EndNote has a dedicated assistant, Zotero requires a plugin (article explains how), while Mendeley does nothing. Paperpile, on the other hand, relies on Google's AI suite, which, in theory, could be far more potent than the competition but requires an additional subscription. The case for AI in reference management remains complicated.

Effortless Literature Review Course Launched

The new Effortless Literature Review course was released last week with academics of all stages joining. Here is a walk through video, explaining how the contents will make your literature review process easier, faster, and more thorough.

Having designed it from my vantage point as a PhD student, I am surprised and humbled by the the number of well established academics taking this course and finding it useful. Take a look at these two testimonials from last week:

There are automatic discounts for folks in lower and middle income countries and for students, who reach out to me from their institutional address (just reply to this email).

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Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

​
Ilya Shabanov, The Effortless Academic​

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The Effortless Academic

Literature Review Tools, Note-Taking Strategies and AI tutorials for the modern academic. Publish more with less effort and supercharge your career.

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