Citavi is a reference management program for Microsoft Windows published by Swiss Academic Software in Wädenswil, Switzerland. Citavi is widely used in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, with site licenses at most universities, many of which offer training sessions and settings files for Citavi.
Citavi began as a reference management program called LiteRat, developed at the Heinrich Heine University in 1995, and considered version 1.0. The first version to bear the Citavi name was released as Citavi 2. Version 3 was released in November 2010 and was the first version with a user interface in English. Since version 4, released in April 2013, it is possible to switch between English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, and Spanish. Citavi 5 was released in April 2015.
Citavi 5 is offered in three editions:
Citavi Free (no cost, limited to 100 references per project)
Citavi for Windows (commercial, unlimited projects, concurrent access to database for up to three people at the same time if saved on a Windows network drive)
Citavi for DBServer (commercial, unlimited projects, database in MS SQL Server in Intranet, or in a private cloud on Windows Azure, concurrent access to database for unlimited users).
Citavi can be used in a virtual machine on Linux or OS X. Swiss Academic Software discontinued development for an OS X native application in 2011. A web version is being developed which will be operating system agnostic.
Citavi's core features are reference management, knowledge organization, and task planning. An online search feature lets the user search databases and catalogs from within the program. Citavi's integrated quick help in context is backed up by online help tools including an email tutorial, videos, an online manual, and a user forum.
Management of reference types for common sources like books, articles, lectures, audio or video documents, etc.
Online search in thousands of databases (among others, in PubMed, Web of Science, etc.) and library catalogs, support of the COinS method and subscription to RSS feeds from within Citavi.
The Citavi Picker add ons for Internet browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome) recognize ISBN numbers, PubMed identifier, and DOI names on web pages, the corresponding titles can be imported into Citavi with a click. Web pages can be imported as a reference and transformed into a PDF document to save the content of the page. The Citavi Picker for Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Reader can import PDF documents, bibliographical information is automatically added if available.
PDF documents can be annotated directly in Citavi.
Citavi works with various word processors. Citavi's add in for Microsoft Word permits to insert citations and quotations from Citavi into Word without leaving the word processor. The bibliography is created automatically. In OpenOffice and LibreOffice Writer, and any other program that can process files in RTF (i.e. Scrivener) placeholders are inserted into the text, with subsequent formatting in one of the included citation styles. Integration with LaTeX editor LyX via a Named Pipe (Configuration guide; PDF; 1.2 MB), further LaTeX editors can be used to directly insert quotations and configurable cite commands (i.e. cite{Smith2013}) per keyboard shortcut.
Publishing in all common citation styles. Over 8,300 citation styles are available (28 February 2017). Registered users can request styles for scientific journals for free. Citavi's citation style editor supports programmable components and templates, an advanced style finder is available to search with style features to find a fitting style.
Citavi can import text excerpts and images from documents as quotations, and organize them together with own ideas imported as "thoughts". Quotations and thoughts can be copied into the word processor, citations are added automatically. There are five types of quotations and two further types of ideas for text and images. When annotating PDF documents in Citavi, quotations and comments are linked to the exact position in the PDF document.
Citations, quotations and ideas can be categorized in Citavi to reflect the structure in chapters of the final publication, making it possible to outline the paper before beginning the actual writing process.
Citavi includes a task planner for scheduling tasks and project milestones. to organize deadlines like lending periods for books. Tasks like "Discuss" or "Examine" can be linked to specific parts in PDF documents.
Citavi can export data in different formats to other reference management programs, and Citavi can import references from other reference management programs, either directly, as from EndNote or BibTeX, or with an import filter or via a RIS export file, as from Mendeley, ProCite, Reference Manager, RefWorks, Zotero, and others.
