Reference management software is software for scholars and authors to use for recording and utilising bibliographic citations as well as managing project references either as a company or an individual - wikipedia 
Once a citation has been recorded, it can be used time and again in generating bibliographies, such as lists of references in scholarly books, articles and essays. The development of reference management packages has been driven by the rapid expansion of scientific literature.
Reference management software does not do the same job as a bibliographic database, which tries to list all articles published in a particular discipline or group of disciplines; examples are those provided by Ovid Technologies (e.g. Medline), Thomson Reuters (e.g. Web of Science) or monodisciplinary learned societies e.g. the American Psychological Association (PsycINFO).
These databases are large and have to be housed on major server installations. Reference management software collects a much smaller database, of the publications that have been used or are likely to be used by a particular author or group, and such a database can easily be housed on an individual's personal computer.
Apart from managing references, most reference management software also enables users to search references from online libraries. These online libraries are usually based on Z39.50 public protocol.
Users just need to specify the IP address, database name and keywords to start a Z39.50 search. It is quicker and more efficient than a web browser. However, Z39.50 is a little out of date. Some popular scientific websites, such as Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore and arXiv, do not support the Z39.50 protocol.
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