Using Zotero for Managing References

If you manage a lot of references, you should have a reference manager and get one sooner rather than later. It will be a bit of up-front work, particularly if you wait a long time before using a reference manager, but in the end, it will save you a ton of time.

Zotero Features

I personally use Zotero as my reference manager. While most reference managers have pretty similar features, here are some that I personally love.It’s free (to a point). Anything up to 300 MB is free. Up to 2GB is $20/year, up to 6 GB is $60/year, and for unlimited storage you pay $120/year. I am personally at 6GB storage and I imagine in a few years as I continue to collect references that are useful to me that I may need to increase to the unlimited.It’s non-profit and open source. Most reference management software are owned by large companies and thus charge sometimes exorbitant fees. Zotero will always be free and, because it’s open access, will always be improved.References are easily added. You can do this by importing documents such as PDFs into the Standalone software or you can do it through a browser add-on. The latter option has the added benefit that, if the PDF is available, it will automatically download that into your reference management software.It can retrieve metadata for PDF files. When you import PDF files, it now can automatically attempt to retrieve the metadata (i.e., the reference) online. Before you just had to right click and choose to retrieve metadata. Easy!Organizing and finding your references is easy. The folder (collections) system works great. They have a tag system, though admittedly I never use it (way too much work in my opinion). You can sort documents across a ton of metadata columns. Their search feature seems to get better and better with time, though a more advanced search feature would be nice. It also has a feature to clean up duplicate files.It works really well inside Microsoft Word. This is where I think Zotero is freaking amazing. When you download the Zotero word processor, you’ll get a new toolbar inside Word. Here are some tips for using Zotero in Word:

• Getting started: Have Zotero open while you have your Word document open. It can’t work without Zotero open on your computer.
• Adding citations: You can easily insert citations by clicking “Insert Citation.” It will first ask you which citation style you want and then open a quick-format box. Search for your article, click enter, and your citation is entered in your citation style. It will automatically do et al. for >5 authors or in the second citation (note: I use APA style), alphabetize your citations appropriately, add initials for different authors with the same last name, and keep track of all your citations. Need to edit? Just click inside the citation and click the “Edit Citation” button.
  • Just the year: If you specifically mention the name and just want to add the person, such as saying Wanzer (2018) said X, then edit the citation, click on the particular citation, and choose “suppress author.”
  • Page numbers: Need to add a page number? Edit the citation, click the citation, and then add the page number.
  • Prefixes and suffixes: Sometimes we need to add something to the citation, such as “e.g.,” or “i.e.,”. In these cases, you can do the by editing the citation, clicking the citation, and editing the prefix/suffix. This has the benefit of updating if you update the citations in the future. Never update the citation manually by typing inside the Zotero field to ensure it can update!
• Adding reference list: When you’re done with your document, you just click “Insert Bibliography” and your reference list is added.
• Updating references: Do you see incorrect references? Edit them directly in Zotero. Then click the “Refresh” button in Word and it will refresh your citations.
• Built-in keyboard shortcuts: There are some built-in keyboard shortcuts that are incredibly helpful:
  • Once you have the Quick Format bar open and you have typed in the search for your citation, you can scroll through the list with the UP and DOWN arrows.
  • Choose an item by selecting ENTER when it is highlighted
  • Edit the details by clicking CTRL + DOWN (Mac: CMD + DOWN). Scroll through the details by clicking TAB. If you need to check or uncheck the “Suppress Author” box, use SPACE.
• Additional keyboard shortcuts: There are two more that I highly recommend you add:
  • In the Files, choose Options and go to Customize Ribbon. At the bottom, click the "Customize" button next to "Keyboard shortcuts." Under Categories, choose "Macros" and you should see the list of seven Zotero macros on the right. Choose one and create your shortcut after you click inside the "Press new shortcut key" box. I personally have the "ZoteroAddEditCitation" macro assigned to "CTRL+SHIFT+Z" and the "ZoteroEditCitation" macro assigned to "ALT+CTRL+Z" but you can assign whatever keyboard shortcuts you like. Just don't use currently assigned ones, otherwise you'll have to find them again and edit them.

There are a lot of useful extensions out there. This list managed by Zotero shows a few dozen ones, some that I don’t currently have but think would be really useful. In particular, I love the extension ZotFile. This helps manage your attachments better. There are two features that I particularly use, but it has other features that I’m sure are also useful. ZotFile helps you manage your attachments, such as renaming them to a certain convention and, most helpfully, extracting annotations into a note! If you highlight your PDFs and want to extract the text, you need this extension.

Drawbacks

Here are some potential down-sides, but I doubt these are unique to Zotero.You still need to know your citation style. Sometimes references import wonky. Capitalization is incorrect, names are incorrect, it doesn’t pull the publisher information, etc. This can be a little frustrating at times, but this is why it pays to have a reference manager: if you clean up your references once, you will never have to clean them again! However, it would be nice if the software across computers could “speak” to each other and improve references in a crowdsourced-like fashion.It can’t find all references. This is particularly for PDFs where it can’t read the text. If you have software like Acrobat where you can convert the text into readable text, it can sometimes then find the metadata. However, sometimes you’re just going to have to add the reference manually. Again, not so bad if you already know your citation style.Obscure types of references are difficult to figure out. I have particularly found this for theses and dissertations. The fields that Zotero provides just doesn’t quite fit with APA style. This is probably because Zotero works with a ton of different citation styles.What do you think? Any other features or drawbacks that I missed? Are you going to start using Zotero as a result of reading this guide?