Zotero is an organizational tool for saving, citing, and sharing research sources and other document files.
Overview. Zotero is a free browser add-on tool that automatically senses the content you are viewing and allows you to click an icon to add it to your personal library. Zotero is available as a Firefox add on, or as a standalone application for Mac that can be used with a browser extension for Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Zotero also allows users to access their libraries through a plugin for Word or LibreOffice. The plugin can be used for creating citations in the text of a new document and creating a reference list.
Zotero allows users to store all file types (e.g., .pdf, .doc, .mp3, etc.) and automatically indexes all saved files into a searchable database. Users can organize their library into collections of folders and subfolders and can call up any item in their library with a simple text search. Zotero has a ‘saved searches’ function that allows users to create smart collections that fill with relevant new documents as soon as they are saved, and also allows users to create and assign tags to saved items to enable keyword searches.
Zotero users can also cite sources and create reference lists quickly and easily in APA format and a host of other formats and styles (e.g., MLA, Chicago) without leaving their word processing program. Once the plugin is installed, a user can click or use keyboard shortcuts to add or edit citations or a bibliography.
Zotero syncs automatically to save a user’s library across as many devices as they wish and allows users to access their libraries from the web. Storage on a users’ local device is always free and unlimited, but syncing across devices and/or to the web is free for the first 300mb of data, and currently costs $20/year for 2GB, $60/year for 6GB, and $120GB/year for unlimited syncing. These rates are quite high for data storage, but users can use a WebDAV protocol to save and sync their Zotero libraries to another file storage application (e.g., Box, Dropbox, etc.).
Finally, Zotero can be used for collaboration on research projects by allowing users to create groups and share files, notes, and discussion threads. Groups can include any number of users, and settings can be applied to keep groups open or closed to the general public.
Personal Impact. I began using Zotero early in my time as a doctoral student and haven’t looked back. Zotero has replaced for me a rather haphazard system of saved files and folders. Pre-Zotero, I often engaged in prolonged searches of my hard drive for a desired file, then gave up and re-downloaded. This process resulted in my accumulating duplicate or triplicate copies of misplaced or forgotten items. My Zotero library, in contrast, is organized, searchable, and allows me to access anything that I have saved quickly and easily.
The citation and bibliography tools have also become indispensable to my writing process. I use the Word plugin and keyboard shortcuts to quickly insert citations in-text as I write. I also typically create dedicated folders to house all of the sources for any given paper or project as I work, and then use these folders to create final reference lists with a few clicks. The APA formatting typically needs some revision, but the process takes much less time than creating a reference list completely by hand and allows me to keep a permanent, annotated collection of the sources used for all of my projects.
I also like the ‘notes’ tool in Zotero, and use this to attach notes to specific articles or to create stand-alone notes inside of specific folders. Before I started using Zotero, I would take notes on articles with my .pdf reader, but these were attached only to the edited .pdf. Notes taken in Zotero become part of your searchable library and make finding material much easier.
For more information, please visit the Zotero website at:
Zotero 6.0 update
Once a pdf is available in your Zotero library, you can
- highlight text of interest (creating an “annotation”)
- multiple colors can be used
- add a “comment” on the “annotation”
- “tag” the annotation
- The annotations and comments can be searched by text, tag, or highlight color
This is the really exciting part!
The annotations (i.e., highlighted text) can be added to an “item note”.
The item note
- can be retitled
- can be copied and pasted into a Word document
- the highlight colors can be turned on and off
- can be exported in a variety of formats (see youtube below)
If you highlight notes from multiple documents, then click Generate Report from Items…, you can produce a single document with all of your annotations aggregated.