RefWorks is a web-based reference manager owned by Clarivate (through its ProQuest business, which Clarivate acquired in 2021) and used to collect citations, generate formatted bibliographies, and insert in-text citations into a manuscript while it’s being drafted. It does the same core job as Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, and Paperpile — see Reference Management Software Comparison: Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks & Paperpile for how those five stack up feature-by-feature. What makes RefWorks distinctive enough to cover on its own is how it’s licensed and distributed: almost nobody buys an individual RefWorks subscription. Access comes through a university or research institution’s library, campus-wide, and that access is tied to the institution rather than to the person using it. That single fact drives most of what’s actually worth knowing about RefWorks — what you get, what happens when you leave, and how to get your library out before that access disappears.
What RefWorks actually does
Functionally, RefWorks covers the same workflow as any reference manager:
- Collecting references — via a browser bookmarklet/extension that captures citation metadata from a database, publisher page, or library catalog, or by direct import of RIS, BibTeX, or EndNote XML files.
- Organizing a library — into folders and shared folders, with tagging and search across a personal or shared collection.
- Formatting citations and bibliographies — RefWorks maintains a large, continuously updated library of output styles covering the citation formats used across most journals and disciplines.
- Citing while writing — through a Microsoft Word plugin and a Google Docs add-on that insert and update in-text citations and an automatically generated bibliography as a document is drafted.
Unlike Zotero, EndNote, or Mendeley, RefWorks has no native desktop application — it is accessed entirely through a browser, which is part of why it fits a library’s centrally hosted, centrally licensed distribution model so well.
The institutional licensing model, and what it means practically
Because RefWorks is licensed to an institution rather than sold to individuals, your relationship to it is really a relationship to your library’s subscription, not to Clarivate directly. This has a few concrete consequences worth understanding before you build years of citation work inside it:
- Your account exists because your institution pays for it. There’s typically no individual signup path with public list pricing the way there is for Paperpile — you get an account by being a current student, faculty member, or staff member at a subscribing institution, usually authenticated through your institutional login or a library-issued invite.
- Access is tied to institutional affiliation, not to you personally. When you graduate, leave a position, or move to an institution that doesn’t subscribe to RefWorks, your account access is at risk — libraries vary in exactly how and when they cut off former-affiliate access, but the underlying dependency is the same everywhere: no subscribing institution, no guaranteed continued access.
- The subscription itself can lapse or change providers. A library renegotiating vendor contracts, consolidating budgets, or switching to a different reference manager can end campus-wide RefWorks access for everyone at that institution, independent of any individual’s career stage.
Neither of these is unique to RefWorks — EndNote is commonly distributed the same way, via institutional site license — but RefWorks has no meaningful individual-purchase alternative the way EndNote does, which makes the dependency on institutional access more absolute. If you are building a research library you expect to use for years (a PhD, a long-running research program, a career’s worth of citations), it’s worth treating “what happens if I lose institutional access” as a planning question from the start, not a problem to solve after the fact.
Exporting and migrating your library out of RefWorks
The practical mitigation for the licensing dependency above is exporting your library in a portable format before you actually need to. RefWorks supports export to RIS and BibTeX, the two interchange formats every major reference manager (Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, Paperpile) can import, which is what makes migration realistic rather than a rebuild-from-scratch project.
General export steps
- Log into RefWorks and select the folder(s) or your entire library that you want to move.
- Use the export function to generate a RIS (or BibTeX) file of the selected references. Export the whole library in one pass where the interface allows it, rather than folder-by-folder, to reduce the chance of missing references that live outside any folder.
- In the destination tool — Zotero’s File > Import, EndNote’s File > Import, or Mendeley’s equivalent — import the RIS/BibTeX file into a new or existing library.
- Spot-check a sample of imported references against the originals, particularly ones with unusual item types (reports, datasets, webpages) or non-Latin-script authors, before deleting anything from RefWorks.
What commonly breaks or doesn’t transfer cleanly
- Folder structure — a standard RIS export is a flat list of references; RefWorks’s folder organization typically does not carry over automatically, so you may need to export folder-by-folder if you want the destination tool’s collections to mirror your RefWorks folders, or accept a flat import and re-organize afterward.
- Attached PDFs and annotations — RIS/BibTeX are metadata formats; file attachments and any in-RefWorks highlighting or notes generally need to be handled separately, if RefWorks supports a bulk attachment export at all, rather than assumed to travel with the citation export.
- Shared folders and group permissions — these are RefWorks-account constructs and don’t have a direct equivalent to import into; a shared RefWorks folder becomes, at best, a personal library in the new tool, with sharing set up again from scratch in Zotero’s or Mendeley’s own group-library features.
- In-document citations already inserted via Write-N-Cite or the RefWorks Google Docs add-on — a manuscript with existing RefWorks field codes generally needs its citations reformatted with the new tool’s plugin (e.g., converting a RefWorks-formatted Word document to Zotero’s or EndNote’s own field codes) rather than simply continuing to work once you switch tools; check your destination tool’s documentation for its specific conversion utility before assuming a drafted document will transfer cleanly.
Do this export well before you lose institutional access — ideally as soon as it’s clear you’ll be leaving an institution or a subscription is at risk, since a RefWorks account you can no longer log into is a library you can no longer export.
ProQuest, Clarivate, and what the ownership history means for continuity
RefWorks was originally developed independently, later became a ProQuest product, and has been part of Clarivate since Clarivate’s acquisition of ProQuest in 2021. Clarivate also owns EndNote and Web of Science, which means two of the reference managers most commonly distributed through university library licenses (RefWorks and EndNote) sit under the same corporate parent. For a researcher, the practical relevance of this ownership history is less about brand and more about consolidation risk: a vendor that owns multiple overlapping products has an incentive to eventually converge on one, and institutional licensing terms, pricing, and product roadmaps can shift when platforms are consolidated under a single owner. It’s a reason to periodically confirm your library’s current RefWorks contract status rather than assume indefinite continuity, not a reason to expect an imminent change.
Legacy RefWorks vs. the current platform
RefWorks went through a full platform rebuild: the original version (commonly called “Legacy RefWorks” or “RefWorks Classic”) was retired by the vendor, with institutions and users required to migrate to the current, redesigned RefWorks platform. If you’re an established researcher, or you’re a librarian advising one, and you encounter documentation, saved bookmarks, or older guidance that still references RefWorks Classic, treat it as describing a deprecated product — the login URL, interface, and some workflow details differ from current RefWorks, and Legacy RefWorks accounts generally could not simply keep running past the vendor’s retirement date. If you still hold references in an old Legacy RefWorks account, check with your institution’s library immediately about whether any migration path or export window remains open; retired platforms are typically not recoverable once fully decommissioned.
Write-N-Cite and the shift to RefWorks Citation Manager
Write-N-Cite is RefWorks’s original Microsoft Word plugin for inserting and formatting in-text citations while drafting. Current RefWorks has moved toward RefWorks Citation Manager (RCM), a newer add-in with broader Word/platform compatibility (including Mac, where legacy Write-N-Cite support was more limited) as the vendor’s primary supported citing-while-writing tool going forward. Two points matter here for anyone drafting now:
- Documents with citations inserted through the older Write-N-Cite are not automatically compatible with newer citation-manager tooling — a manuscript with legacy field codes may need those citations reformatted or re-inserted with the current tool.
- If you’re starting a new manuscript today, use whichever citing-while-writing tool your institution’s current RefWorks documentation recommends (typically RCM) rather than an older Write-N-Cite installer, since vendor support for the legacy plugin has been winding down. Confirm the current recommended tool and compatibility with your Word version directly against your library’s own RefWorks guide, since exact support timelines are set by the vendor and can change.
Frequently asked questions
Is RefWorks free?
Not to an individual by direct purchase in the way EndNote or Paperpile can be. RefWorks is distributed almost exclusively through institutional subscriptions, so it’s free to you personally as long as your university or organization maintains the license and you remain affiliated with it. There is no widely advertised public list price for an individual RefWorks subscription outside an institutional contract.
What happens to my RefWorks account when I graduate?
It depends on your institution’s specific policy and how quickly it deprovisions former-student accounts, but the underlying risk is the same everywhere: RefWorks access is tied to institutional affiliation, not to you personally, so graduating (or otherwise losing that affiliation) puts continued access at risk. Export your library to RIS or BibTeX before your affiliation ends rather than after.
Can I move my RefWorks library to Zotero or EndNote?
Yes — export your RefWorks library as RIS or BibTeX and import that file into Zotero, EndNote, or Mendeley. Citation metadata transfers well; folder structure, shared-folder permissions, attached PDFs/annotations, and citations already inserted in a manuscript via Write-N-Cite or the RefWorks Google Docs add-on typically need separate handling, as described above.
Does RefWorks work with Google Docs as well as Word?
Yes. RefWorks offers Write-N-Cite (legacy) or RefWorks Citation Manager for Microsoft Word, and a separate native RefWorks add-on for Google Docs that keeps in-document citations synced with your RefWorks library.
Is RefWorks the same company as EndNote?
They’re both currently owned by Clarivate — RefWorks came to Clarivate via its 2021 acquisition of ProQuest, and EndNote has long been a Clarivate (formerly Thomson Reuters) product. They remain separate products with separate interfaces and licensing models, not a merged tool.
For a full side-by-side comparison against Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, and Paperpile on cost, citation-style support, and Google Docs/Word integration, see Reference Management Software Comparison. For citation style mechanics that apply regardless of which manager you use, see Citation Styles and Referencing Formats, and for how AI drafting tools interact with reference-manager accuracy, see Citation Management with AI Writing Tools.
