I mentioned Zotero in my first academic workflow post. Zotero is a great citation manager with many great features. And if you write your documents in Word, Zotero is a no brainer. A Zotero plug-in for Word lets you insert citations from your Zotero database in your Word documents, and then Zotero automatically formats in-text citations and the reference list at the end of the document. Plus, it’s free!
Most students, whether graduate students or undergrads, use Word to write their school essays, term papers, and manuscripts, so Zotero is a great, free option for easily handling citations in these documents.
In this post, I provide a tutorial for getting citations into Zotero and getting citations from Zotero into your Word documents. At the end of the post, I provide links to some additional tutorials (including screencasts) on installing and using Zotero.
Installation
Basic Installation
You can download and install Zotero from this page. There are two ways to install Zotero:
- Standalone
- Zotero for Firefox
The stand-alone option installs Zotero like any other application that runs on your computer. Note that if you install the stand-alone version, you should also install the plug-in for whichever browser you use when you do academic research (Firefox, Chrome, or Safari). Using a browser with Zotero makes it much easier to get citations into your reference database. Install the browser add-on after installing the stand-alone version.
If you install Zotero for Firefox, you will need to have Firefox open to use Zotero (including putting references into Zotero and citing references from Zotero).
Zotero Plug-in for Word
You definitely want to install the plug-in for Word so that you can create citations automatically in Word documents. If you install the stand-alone version of Zotero, the Word plug-in is included. If you install Zotero for Firefox, you need to manually add the Word plug-in (available here).
Getting Sources into Your Reference Library
There are four main ways to get citation information into your Zotero database. I give step-by-step instructions here plus a few exercises, so you can try them out.
Web Page with Embedded Metadata
The browser that is integrated with Zotero (e.g., Firefox) can quickly and easily import sources into the Zotero library. Many web pages embed metadata into the web page itself (e.g., the web pages for academic journal articles hosted on ScienceDirect). Zotero can recognize this information and import it.
Other useful websites with embedded metadata include Amazon, Google Books, and most newspapers. So, for example, when I have a hard copy of a book, I often look it up on Amazon and grab the citation information from there, so I don’t have to type it in manually.
Exercise
Open the web browser that is integrated with Zotero, and go to this random academic journal article hosted on ScienceDirect: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811902913303. (Note that it does not matter if you have access to the full text of the article.) Look at the right-hand portion of the address bar of your web browser. There should be a small icon that looks like a single piece of paper. If you click on that icon, Zotero will automatically import the citation into your reference library. It’s hard to imagine how it could be any easier.
External Citation Files
Citation information can also exist in external files. I usually only resort to importing from external files when importing from metadata embedded in a web page does not work. There are several citation file types (with extensions, such as *.bib and *.rdf). Fortunately, their details don’t really matter. Zotero should be able to import all of the ones you are likely to encounter. You can usually download these files from academic journal article databases (such as ScienceDirect and Google Scholar).
Exercise
Search for a famous journal article called “The Tragedy of the Commons” on Google Scholar. (Or click this link to navigate straight to the search results.) When I wrote this post, the second result was the correct article (by Garrett Hardin). Click on the link titled “Cite”. A dialogue will pop up with text that you can copy and paste for MLA, APA, and Chicago-style citations. Click on any of the links at the bottom of the dialogue: BibTeX, EndNote, RefMan, or RefWorks. The format doesn’t really matter, but RefMan is Zotero’s native format, so I recommend clicking that one. Another dialogue will pop up asking you where to download the file on your hard drive. Select a location, and download the file. (If you clicked on the RefMan link, the file will have a *.ris extension.)
Next, open Zotero, click on the gear button (which should reveal a drop-down menu containing items like “Import ...” and “Import from clipboard”). Click on the item labeled “Import ...”. Zotero will pop up a dialogue, so you can select the file from your hard drive. Do so, and Zotero will import the citation information for “The Tragedy of the Commons” by Garrett Hardin into your library.
PDF with Embedded Metadata
Just like web pages, PDFs of recent academic journal articles often contain embedded metadata. Zotero can extract this data and write a new entry in the Zotero database for the PDF. Note that this usually only works with PDFs of relatively recent academic journal articles, but you can try it with any PDF.
Exercise
Download the full text of the first result from the Google Scholar search in the previous exercise. This is an article written by Elinor Ostrom, a Noble Prize winner, who has written extensively about the tragedy of the commons and common-pool resources. Or you can directly retrieve the PDF by clicking here.
Open Zotero, and drag the PDF into the main window (which should also list other references, usually according to title and author). After doing so, the PDF will appear with an Adobe Acrobat symbol next to it, but the citation information for the PDF has not been properly entered into the database, yet. Right-click on the title of the PDF. A menu will pop up; select “Retrieve Metadata for PDF”. Another dialogue will pop up showing Zotero’s progress. If Zotero is able to retrieve the metadata for the PDF, it will automatically create a new entry and save the PDF as an attachment to the entry.
Note that you can select multiple PDFs at the same time, right-click on them, and retrieve metadata as described above for a single PDF.
Shared Libraries
Zotero comes with an amazing feature that lets Zotero users share references with each other via Zotero Groups, again, for free. See the link for instructions on setting up Zotero Groups and syncing your Zotero collection.
If you have a shared library (whether the library is owned by you or another person), sources that are added or edited by any member of the shared library will appear in your local copy of the library. If you have enough storage for the library (currently everyone gets 300 MB for free), attachments (including PDFs) will sync, as well. These sources are available to you like any other source in your library.
Using Your Reference Library to Make Citations
In Word for PC, Zotero commands appear in their own toolbar. In Word for Mac, Zotero appears under the script icon between the “Window” and “Help” menus. To insert a citation, click “Add citation”. The first time you use this command in a Word document, Zotero will ask which citation format you want to use in that document. Select your preferred citation format from the pop-up menu, and I recommend to leave the “Store references in document” option checked. Doing so ensures that when you share your document with others, they will also be able to see and work with your Zotero citations.
Anytime you insert a citation from Zotero, a Zotero search bar will pop up, or Zotero will bring you to a window of your Zotero library. If the search bar pops up, type in the author or title of the source you want to cite. If the window of your Zotero library pops up, click on the source(s) you want to cite. Zotero will automatically insert a properly formatted in-text citation.
You may need to edit your citations as you draft your document or to format them properly (e.g., to add a page number for an in-text citation after a direct quote). You can modify in-text citations by clicking on them (so the cursor is in the in-text citation) and then selecting “Edit citation” from Word’s Zotero menu. A Zotero dialogue will pop up. Right-click on the citation you want to modify, and select the options you want.
At any time, you can use the “Add bibliography” command in Word’s Zotero menu to insert the full reference list. The reference list will appear in the same citation format as the in-text citations.
To change the citation format for both in-text references and the reference list, use the “Set document preferences” command in Word’s Zotero menu.
Using More Citation Formats
Zotero has many citation formats (7,449 at the time of writing)—far more than the basic APA, MLA, and Chicago styles. See the Zotero Style Repository for a list. If you’re writing a manuscript for an academic journal, Zotero might even have a custom citation style for the journal you’re submitting to. Zotero does not automatically download all the available citation styles. The most popular ones are preloaded, and others need to be downloaded and installed manually. (See here for instructions.)
Additional Resources
Of course, this tutorial is not exhaustive, so here are some additional resources for your further edification:
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