CiteULike
CiteULike is a social bookmarking site oriented toward academics who want to save important information online. You can save and share academic papers and the search engine allows you to find information you need when you’re doing research. Your CiteULike account is available from any computer and works on any browser.
When you’re writing a paper, you have to sift through so many resources to find what you need on the internet, and CiteULike offers an easier way to do it. It takes lots of the work out of citing your sources as well.
When you save a site, it automatically saves all the details of the site, so you don’t have to worry about writing your own description and tags. You can also use programs like BibTeX or Endnote to export your links and save them in your bibliography. This means that if you are writing a research paper, you can simply choose the links you used, and it will save the source in your bibliography. This gets rid of lots of the headache of citing your sources.
CiteULike doesn’t save the actual papers; it just keeps the links for you. It is like your favorites or bookmarks on your computer, but you can access it anywhere. The whole system is backed up every 15 minutes and will always be accessible and free.
Most of the links on the site are biological or medical papers. Although these fields dominate, there are also lots of links to papers dealing with history, geography, anthropology, art and pretty much any other academic field you can imagine.
Using CiteULike, you can not only save your own research, but you can see what others in your field are reading. This can keep you up to date on what’s going on in your field. You can read all the newest literature that everyone is saving.
On CiteULike, you can put anything you’d like. If you want a site to just keep all of your random bookmarks, you might be better off using a regular, not-so-specialized service. This site is devoted to academic research, so it may not be ideal for keeping your funny videos or favorite entertainment news sites.
If you’re a marketer, you’re welcome to post your ads-disguised-as-links, but probably nobody will look at them. CiteULikers are academics and they’re on the site to get specific information related to their fields. They probably aren’t interested in your HDTV or weight loss website!
