Zotero collects bibliographic details, inserts citations into your manuscript, and builds the reference list for you. It is free. This article covers the whole path, from installing it to producing a reference list.
What to install
Two things.
- Zotero itself, from zotero.org. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.
- The browser extension (Zotero Connector), which imports a paper from its web page in one click. It supports Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge.
Zotero works without the extension, but you would be typing bibliographic details by hand. Install both.
An account is optional. You need one only if you want the same library on several devices, or a backup.
Importing papers
With a paper’s page open, click the Zotero icon in your browser toolbar. The icon changes shape depending on what it detects: a page icon for an article, a book icon for a book.
What gets imported is the title, authors, journal, year and DOI. If the PDF is openly available, it is saved too.
There are other ways in.
- From a DOI. Click the magic wand icon in Zotero and paste the DOI. ISBNs and PubMed IDs work the same way.
- From a PDF. Drag a PDF into the Zotero window. Zotero infers the bibliographic details from the file.
- By hand. Use the green plus icon and pick an item type.
When an import fails
If clicking the icon does nothing, or the entry arrives almost empty, it is usually one of these.
- The site is not supported. Zotero uses per-site rules to read pages, and has none for that site. Import from the DOI instead.
- The page needs a login. For papers you reach through an institutional subscription, import from the page you see after logging in.
- Only the title arrives. This happens when details were inferred from a PDF. You can correct them in the right-hand pane.
After importing, check at least the authors and the year. An error there goes straight into your reference list.
Organising
Create folders (collections) in the left pane by right-clicking.
Zotero collections let one paper sit in several collections at once. No copy is made; the same item is visible from several places. Keeping both a per-chapter set and a per-theme set is fine.
Tags work alongside collections. If collections answer “which chapter is this for”, tags answer “what kind of paper is this”: empirical or theoretical, for or against.
Inserting citations in Word
Installing Zotero adds a Zotero tab to Word. If the tab is missing, open Zotero’s settings, go to the add-ins section, and reinstall it.
- Put the cursor where the citation goes.
- Click “Add/Edit Citation” in the Zotero tab.
- Type part of an author name or title into the search box.
- Choose from the candidates and press Enter.
The first time, Zotero asks which citation style to use. Pick the one your target journal requires. If there is no requirement, APA or IEEE is a safe start.
You can change the style later in one step. Choosing a different style in “Document Preferences” updates both the in-text citations and the reference list. Switching target journals does not mean editing by hand.
Producing the reference list
Once your citations are in, put the cursor where the list belongs and click “Add/Edit Bibliography”. Only the works you cited appear, in the chosen style.
Adding or removing a citation updates the list automatically. Editing the list by hand breaks that link, so correct the underlying entry in Zotero instead.
If you do not use Word, right-click a collection and create a bibliography to get the list on its own. For LaTeX, export BibTeX; the steps are in exporting BibTeX citations.
Sync and storage
With an account, bibliographic details sync without a storage limit. The limit applies to attachments such as PDFs, and going beyond the free allowance requires a paid plan.
You can also sync only the bibliographic details and keep PDFs in your own cloud storage.
Finding papers in the first place
Zotero manages the papers you have already found. Finding them happens elsewhere, and you import the results.
In Litlas you can search for papers and follow the citations as a graph, moving from one paper both to what it cites and to what cites it. Papers you keep can be saved with notes, and exported as BibTeX or RIS to hand to Zotero. The free plan needs no card and works right away.
The search method is in how to find prior research.