While Scrivener is an incredibly feature rich application there are dedicated solutions for specific specialized purposes and Bibliography Management is one of them.

Supported Bibliographic Reference Solutions

Scrivener supports a range of paid and free reference management applications, including but not limited to:

• EndNote

• Bookends

• Sente

• Zotero

Configuration

Before you can use any of these solutions you need to tell Scrivener where to find your bibliography references.

This is done from within the Scrivener Preferences > General > Citations options. That option reveals all the applications installed on your computer allowing you to choose one application to use as your Bibliography Manager.

Inserting References

Once Scrivener and your Bibliography Manager are linked the Insert > Bibliography/Citations menu option will bring your chosen software to the front, launching it automatically if needed.

The precise next steps are determined by the Bibliography Manager app you chose in the previous step. In general terms though you would paste a citation placeholder into Scrivener in the precise place you want the reference mark to be shown.

Final Output

Compiling is the process of creating your final output from Scrivener

Once your content is compiled you use your Bibliography Manager to scan your output for the placeholders and replace them with the relevant citation.