APA style is a standard for formatting papers and citing sources that is set out by the American Psychological Association. It is frequently used in education. It covers:

• Citing sources within the text of a paper
• Formatting a paper (capitalization, headings, etc)
• Creating a reference list of cited works at the end of a paper

The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association is the official guide to APA style.The current edition is the 7th edition. No automated citation generator is perfect and you should always double-check your citations using the Publication Manual.

At their most basic, citation management tools allow you to:

• Collect lists of articles, books, webpages (and lots more) for use in research
• Format and create bibliographies using a particular citation style, to export into a research document

More advanced tools also allow you to:

• Link to the source materials
• Store the source materials
• Insert in-text citations and bibliography entries while writing in Microsoft Word 
• Collaborate with others

For more information on citation managers like Zotero, Mendeley, Endnote, and more see our Citation Management LibGuide: