Managing research citations is an essential part of the research process. Citation management tools can help you to:
- organize your research all in one place
- avoid plagiarism by tracking your research path
- create in text citations with the click of a button(s)
- easily format and re-format bibliographies and in-text references: a great tool for quickly changing formats for submission different journals.
source: http://wiki.ubc.ca/Library:Citation_Management/What_Is_Citation_Management