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    © Bielefeld University Library

Reference Management

Our campus license Citavi - free of charge for university members

The Bielefeld University Library offers free use of the reference management software Citavi to all members of the university (campus license since 2008). This service includes general and subject-specific tuitions and consulting services for the use of the software.

The currently expiring Citavi campus licence of Bielefeld University will be extended again for 2 years on 1 April 2023. As a Citavi user, you will need to confirm your account or your status as a member of Bielefeld University to Citavi in order to continue using your free licence. You will probably receive an email from Citavi in mid/end March containing a link to confirm your email address.

  • Automatically fill in book or article data (e.g. by entering the ISBN)
  • Collect and organise references and enhance them with abstracts, keywords and comments
  • Import search results from databases and references from other programmes
  • Automatically create reference lists (with selectable citation styles)
  • Collect important citations and ideas for a research paper
  • Schedule tasks at hand by deadlines, significance and state of study
  • Search for citations via comfortable plugin directly in Word with immediate embedding. Short title records and a reference list are immediately displayed in the corresponding citation style
  • Edit literature projects in a team (cloud function)

Important note for users of the Windows version of Citavi

Please note that the Windows version allows you to store your data locally and in the cloud. When storing data in the cloud, the library explicitly states that only non-critical data may be stored, as only the provider has data authority over this. For critical data, the data should be stored locally on a university drive. Therefore, it is up to the Citavi project management to influence the Citavi project participants to keep critical data away from Citavi or to remove it if it has been stored there after all.

Download / personal license key


Step 1: Download and install Citavi Free

Citavi 6 runs on computers with Windows 10, 8, 7 and also on Windows Server 2012

Download Citavi 6

Step 2: Create personal Citavi Account

Please register for a Citavi account. Please note, when you sign-up it is necessary to authenticate as member of Bielefeld University using your university mail address (@ uni-bielefeld.de).

Create Citavi account

Step 3: Important: Download the configuration file with Bielefeld specifications

Download configuration file

Please click on "Save target as" in the context menu with the right mouse button.

If you install this file in Citavi, you will get a default selection of the most important local databases (Bielefeld University Library catalogue and more), so that e.g. call number / class mark are automatically added. Upload the saved file to Citavi by simply clicking on "Import settings" in the "Extras" menu in Citavi. The file must be uploaded in ".csd" format. If the file has a different extension, simply rename it ".csd"


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