LibGuides: Zotero for Citation Management: Introduction

The Importance of Citation Management

Citation management in academic writing is crucial for upholding integrity and credibility by crediting original authors, avoiding plagiarism, and ensuring transparency. Citation management tools such as EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley help researchers, academics, and students to organise and cite sources efficiently in their work, save time, and maintain consistency in formatting references. Mastering citations promotes honesty and professionalism, elevating the quality of research.

Understanding Zotero

What is Zotero?

Zotero is a free, open-source citation management tool that is known for its user-friendly interface and seamless integration with web browsers. It allows users to easily collect, organise, and cite sources from the web. Zotero also offers collaborative features, making it a preferred choice for those working in team settings or across multiple devices.

Why use it?

It is a free and open-source platform with a user-friendly interface.
It provides word processor integration for Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs, enabling better user experience as they write.
It gathers citations for both PDF and non-PDF content. Its Find Available PDFs feature works with many databases, websites, and catalogs. Users can also enable the retrieval of PDF metadata, which allows you to create citation records by retrieving metadata content from the files.
Zotero Connector allows users to save the content of a web page to the Zotero library with one click.
It has built-in PDF reading and annotation tools.
It provides 300 MB of storage for the free version, with additional storage available for purchase.
It can be operated on Windows, Mac, and Linux systems.
It can work without an internet connection.
Users can create group or shared libraries to work on a group project or share the citations with others.
Users can have community support through the forums at https://forums.zotero.org/.