RefWorks

Duplicate references

What are duplicate references?

As you add references to your RefWorks library, you will probably add the same references more than once. This is because the content in different databases can overlap. 

To manage this, RefWorks has a process called deduplication to remove these duplicates.

For some advanced search assignments such as systematic literature reviews, you may be required to remove duplicate references as part of your search process.

Removing duplicates

You can remove duplicates from the All References section or from within a specific folder.

1. In the top menu, select Tools, then select Find duplicates.
2. By default, RefWorks only selects references that match exactly. Select Find Duplicates.
3. Once the process is finished, you will see a green Process completed button on the left-hand side. Click this.
4. RefWorks displays a screen with all the duplicates it has found. The right-hand side displays three numbers:
   Total (the total number of references found), Primary (the number of unique references) and Duplicates (the number of duplicates of these unique references).
5. RefWorks automatically highlights the duplicate references. Check that they are the same reference, then press Delete in the top menu.
6. To be thorough, we recommend repeating this process and changing the Matching Setting to 'References that are similar'. You will need to check any duplicates carefully to make sure they are the same item.

Video guidance - deduplicating references