Using Zotero as a Reference Management Tool

When I joined Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2022, I was already well-versed with Zotero as a tool for academic citation. But that isn’t a good start for a blog, is it? While romanticising the idea of pursuing a PhD, I began watching YouTube blogs of PhD students to get a sense of what it is like to do a PhD and what happens in it.

In one such video, the YouTuber discussed valuable tools for PhD students. They introduced me to Zotero, Mendeley, Evernote, Notion, ResearchRabbit, and Grammarly applications. I have come to like some, while I have grown out of liking with time. Zotero is one such app that has remained consistent.

What is Zotero—and what does it do?

Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, open-source referencing tool that helps you manage all your references, articles, and readings in one application. It allows academics/researchers to extract citation information from raw PDF files.

Zotero also helps arrange the articles and cite them thematically in your Word documents. It further syncs your documents to a cloud server, allowing you to access your files on the web—no matter where you go.

Zotero enables you to merge duplicate files and retain the same file in multiple thematic categories. It can directly save references from the web to your application—with just a click on the Zotero browser extension. It also allows you to add your publications in a separate section.

Furthermore, it enables you to navigate multiple citation styles with a single click. Even as you navigate through a tardy in-text citation, you can cite the same in other formats (such as footnotes and endnotes) without hassle.

How to manage files using Zotero

In this blog, I will guide you through using the Zotero application to meet your everyday academic needs. To download Zotero, head to their website and install the application. On their homepage, you should ideally see a download button.

Once you have installed the application on your Mac/Windows/Linux system, you need to sign up for the application. While the signup requirement is not mandatory, I recommend signing up, as it will enable you to store your files in the cloud and access them later through a web browser. You must also download the Zotero Connector (an extension/plugin for the browser), a Microsoft Word add-in and a Google Docs Plugin.

Once you sign, you will see a workspace like this:

This is my workspace on Zotero. It includes the kinds of books I have saved for my research. In the left corner, you will find a section titled My Library. It consists of the collections or lists of topics I deal with, along with the readings they contain. You may see that they are numbered from -1 to 12. I did not really begin numbering them from -1, but from 1, according to the importance I ascribed to these collections in my research.

However, as I started working on my synopsis and research paper, I added the -1 and 0 to appear on top. You may use this technique as you navigate through this space. Furthermore, each collection contains subcollections, which store files, including books and articles. Here is a look at how I have arranged them meticulously:

In the picture above, you can see that I have two to three subsections for each section. For instance, the section “Research Methods” consists of three subsections: “Methods – Articles”, “Methods/Writing – Books”, and “Writing – Articles”.

Similarly, I have tried to divide each section into two/three subsections with specific titles, as mentioned in the image above. This technique will enable you to navigate your articles more easily over time. Academic life is made a lot simpler with this application.

Steps to upload files to Zotero

There are three main ways of adding a reference in Zotero:

1. Manually add the references

2. Add the references using an identifier

3. Add them using the Zotero Connector

You have a PDF of an article that you want to cite. So, you can upload the PDF file directly to the application or add a reference using an identifier (in the form of a DOI or ISBN). In addition to these two methods, you can also click on the Zotero browser extension (known as Zotero Connector) on any webpage you want to add, which will ideally save the file to your Zotero account.

Refer to the image below for the browser extension version of saving a document on Zotero:

The image above shows the tab that appears when saving a file in Zotero via a web browser extension. By default, it saves the file in the last opened collection/section of the Zotero workspace. However, you can change where you want to save the file on the browser.

Once you have uploaded a raw PDF file onto your Zotero application, it automatically extracts all the essential details from the PDF. It generates citation information for you automatically. Cool, isn’t it? I think so, too!

If Zotero cannot read raw PDF files for information, or if the PDF does not contain a DOI, you can also input all information manually. It also allows you to add a DOI for a file so that it generates all the information for you.

For instance, here is a raw file of Ian Talbot’s Pakistan: A Modern History, from which Zotero was unable to extract the information. So, I left-clicked on the file, which opened a tab with several options, including “creating a parent item”. In the picture above, you see the image of the space for creating a parent item.

It would be best to have one of the following pieces of information: DOI, ISBN, PMID, etc. There are two ways to get them: first, through a basic Google search, and second, by manually opening the file and navigating the ISBN information page. The moment you obtain this information, please add it to the tab shown above. It’s that simple.

Using Zotero to Cite in Word

Zotero’s primary tasks are referencing and citation management. It is a citation-management application. Zotero makes citations so simple that you don’t want to stop once you get the hang of it. It allows you to cite multiple authors without having to add all of the information yourself manually.

I will illustrate this here. For instance, if I want to add a citation here in this document, I hover over the word extension of the application.

The extension looks as depicted in the image above in the Word file. You need to add first and then click on the “Add/edit citation” option. It will open a new set of “document preferences” options, as shown in the image below.

Zotero contains over 10,000 distinct citation styles, which you can navigate and choose according to your preferences. I chose the Chicago Manual of Style’s author-date style for this example. However, you can always change the citations via the “document preferences” tab. Please use this to the fullest. It will save academics a significant amount of time navigating through the myriad citation styles for journals on a daily basis.

After setting your citation style in the “document preferences”, you can cite the articles per your requirements. Now, when you click on add/edit citation, a {Citation} element pops up along with a red coloured tab for you to type the author, book/article title.

Once you click on the article you want to cite, Zotero will cite the following article per your preferences—even including the pages (if you ask it to). It is an easy-to-use application for this reason. It helps you navigate through millions of articles on an everyday basis.

Once you have generated all the citations in your text, you can also click on the “Add/Edit Bibliography” section to create a bibliography based on the citation style you initially input. These features make this application compelling for students and academics to write assignments and articles and share them.

I want to caveat something here. While navigating these tabs alone may seem easy, it is a cumbersome process. It takes time to get accustomed to the application, just as it does when learning to use a new phone. You will be amazed at the kinds of work Zotero does for you when you begin to use the application to its fullest.

Tell me in the comments below if you found this blog useful 🙂 Also, please let me know if you have already used the application and if you have any other recommendations.

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Links Related to Zotero

To download Zotero, head over to their website: https://www.zotero.org/

Here is a link for Zotero Connector for your browser: https://www.zotero.org/download/connectors

Read: https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_usage (for word processor plugin)

Read: https://www.zotero.org/support/google_docs (for Google Docs)

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