It's all about biblatex. I only write using Word/docx if they force me to for publication, otherwise I use LaTeX for typesetting. It's vastly superior for serious publications, especially technical ones.
I use JabRef for managing my citation databases.
Jabref is great. Also, if you need other formats you can always import the bibtex file into Zotero.
Real question, are there any instances of someone's research being so niche that the only option is to cite themselves?
Happens all the time, depends on the paper. Often projects produce a lot of papers about a niche subject, so you're working through building that literature body.
I did some work In a field with a total of 6 papers over 30 years. It was niche as all get out. Did my second paper cite the first? You betcha. I literally cited every research paper ever done on the topic, including mine.
Now there's 7 papers on the topic.
Recently I've actually been wondering how the hell researchers manage their citations for big projects, because a while back I started doing some research on the Cass Review, tripped on my own dick and accidentally ended up with 70-something disorganized citations (that I actually used) that were a pain in the ass to clean up.
I'm definitely checking out those first three software lol
I made good experiences with Zotero. Works well with LaTeX, a browser-plugin allows to add papers directly and you can annotate downloaded PDFs. Only problem I had were the paper-metadata, which often needed some fixing. Also that you cannot host your own server is a slight disadvantage.
+1 for Zotero and Biblatex. You do need the "Better Bibtex"-Plugin though, or at least I highly recommend it.
"Zotfile" allows you to more or less automatically create a filesystem, so as long as you have a way to sync parts of your drive (or access a server) you can have working links to every paper in your library on any machine.
Zotero, trust me bruv.
