Reference Tracker, a very useful tool for writers, researchers or students using a Mac, creates documents that store all the citations and references in an essay, research project or book. Just give Reference Tracker the book's ISBN and it will fetch all the details on the Internet! The newly released app automatically creates Harvard formatted reference lists to insert into your writing whenever you need them.

So, basically, you use Reference Tracker by giving it the book's ISBN so it can look up details on the said book over the web. If the ISBN is not enough, there's a plan B, which means you can just type keywords into Reference Tracker's built in publication search that will get a list of matching results, which are ultimately added to the reference list.

Reference Tracker can pull all the details out of Safari or Firefox with just one click, and if you have an email you need to reference, the program can pull all the details from Mail.app just as well. The app's intelligent formatted list importer can also read Microsoft Word or RTF documents and pull all the references into your Reference Tracker document, provided that you have existing Harvard or APA references in a word processor document. Additionally, Reference Tracker can import BibTex (.bib) and .ris files generated from websites or other referencing software.

Still, one of the most impressive features of Malkinware's academic reference manager and research tool for Mac OS X is its ability to send your formatted reference list directly to the end of you word processing document. "The dynamic 'Send To' menu will show you a list of your open documents in Word and Pages and with one click you can append your formatted list to the end of an open document, or create a new document with the contents of the list," the developers note.

Currently at its first public release, Reference Tracker 1.0 already introduces new features as well as fixes. The changelog says:

- New 'Send To Word Processor' feature to send formatted lists to open Word or Pages documents
- New Importing features to import Reference lists from word processor documents, BibTex and RIS files
- Nex export to BibTex or RIS feature
- New Reference Types: Conference Proceedings and Broadcast
- Fixed spacing in formatted references.

Malkinware is offering Reference Tracker at an introductory price of $29.95 (a 35% discount) if you buy the software by September 30th. A 21-day, fully-featured trial version is available right HERE on Softpedia.