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Citavi is the only all-in-one scholarly note taking and reference management application. Search, organize, collaborate, take notes, write and manage citations all within one platform.
Provider
Lumivero
Located In
United States
Foundation
1984
Open API
No
Deployment
Cloud, SaaS, Web-Based, On-Premise Windows
Training
Webinars, Documentation, Videos
Support
Email/Help Desk, Knowledge Base, FAQs/Forum
Intended for organizations and individuals for collaborative research and note taking.
Content Source: Citavi
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Citavi Reviews
Pros
With citavi, it is super easy to keep track of thousands of sources and also retrieve them again after years, even if you didnt know anymore that you have a source.
Super helpful and easy to use. Very stable and reliable.
I am not only satisfied, but enthusiastic about the software - the Citavi support team is extremely competent, friendly, seeks and finds individual solutions - great.
CITAVI is a SUPER stable, easy to use and useful program. Within years of working with it I collected 1635 sources, many with quotations and some with full text.
Cons
For sure there are missing features - this is always the case when you use a software as this is a living process. But the missing points are on a high level.
So, there is no speacial feature which could be presented here.
Problem: We have a collection of now over 10.000 titles listed in the software Citavi, many of them kept in over 33 folders. With those consecutive numbers we could find them easily.
That's a shame since this limits the user base.
"Reference Manager and Knowledge Manager in One Pack"
Pros: Citavi is a reference manager which works well with various word processor software. However, Citavi is more than reference manager. It also provides tools for users to quote important texts, to write summary and to arrange the references according to your article's structure. After you have done those, when you are working with your article, Citavi will detect the current chapter of your article and will show you relevant references and knowledge (those quotations and summaries that you have made before). Very handy! Citavi also provides a free student version which allows users to manage up to 100 references. This is very generous, considering Citavi has excellent features necessary for writing scientific articles.
Cons: Citavi does not work on Mac. Users need to install third party software to allow Citavi in a Mac. That's a shame since this limits the user base.
Vendor Response
"Extremely powerful tool, withoud which I could not work"
Overall: I have been using Citavi since my last years of high school all through university and for my PhD thesis. Without citavi, I would not know how to effectively organize my sources. With citavi, it is super easy to keep track of thousands of sources and also retrieve them again after years, even if you didnt know anymore that you have a source.
Pros: The product is incredibly powerful. In my opinion, there are two core functions: on the one hand, you can use Citavi to organize materials (like papers and other files). On the other hand, you can use citavi to facilitate citing those materials when writing papers. But, you do not have to use both. Already, the organizing function is incredibly powerful.
Cons: Personally, I am not missing anything. But you have to keep in mind that it is an incredible powerful tool, so you need time to discover those functions you need most.
Vendor Response
"Does not function as expected - promise refunds they do not honour"
Overall: Terrible. I have contacted them three times and they have promised finance will contact me about a refund. They don't and no refund is forthcoming.
Pros: The sales pitch is great. The technical support do come back to you even if it is to say hey that is how our product works sorry about that.
Cons: It does not do what you need it too. It is very cumbersome and has bizarre quirksYou need to spend a lot of time watching videos and working it out to learn how to do things that should be pretty easy to do. They promise refunds but do not honour them.
"The must have Literature program for research and education"
Overall: By using a literature program you want to collect knowledge and want to share it. Working together in a team can be done now with the cloud version very easily without boundaries. Making comments, notes and using the citations for the resulting article can be done quickly and efficiently.
Pros: The list of features is very long. All in all it is the easyness of using the program at first which makes it possible to use it for beginners and also later on for real research. We can make Citavi as required for our students without making them troubles - it is the opposite. Often students discover that they get more time concentrating on the content and do not have to think about citation rules, e.g.
Cons: For sure there are missing features - this is always the case when you use a software as this is a living process. But the missing points are on a high level. Often it could be discovered that they have been built in already when asking the support people. So, there is no speacial feature which could be presented here.
Vendor Response
"Good software for reference management"
Pros: The category function, where you can categorize your literature sources, meaning divide your literature sources per topic. You can take notes or extract portion of a document and label it as direct or indirect citation
Cons: It's free of charge until 100 references. This is few for a normal project/manuscript or for a thesis
