14 Reference Management: Zotero

Last updated 2023-02-10

Imperative to managing our education and research is managing our readings and references. We can do this manually or we can take advantage of a tool - citation management software - specifically designed to keep your references organized, shareable, and easily citable.

There are several options out there. Some are great for inter-institutional collaborations, some for review projects that have you processing 10s of thousands of citations, and others are great for managing your day to day needs.

Here we're going to get you set up with a tool well suited for the latter - Zotero.

This overview will get you set up with an account, and importing your first reference.

Zotero is comprised of 4 components

1. A desktop application.
2. A cloud application that syncs with your desktop application.
3. A web browser plugin that gathers bibliographic information when you’re looking at an article online.
4. A word processor plugin that facilitates creating citations and reference lists while writing.