Zotero is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research. At the most basic level, it’s a citation manager. It’s designed to store, manage, and cite bibliographic references, such as books and articles. In Zotero, each of these references constitutes an item. Every item contains different metadata, depending on what type it is. Items can be everything from books, articles, and documents to web pages, artwork, films, sound recordings, bills, cases, or statutes, among many others.
Zotero automatically senses research as you browse the web. Need an article from JSTOR or a preprint from arXiv.org? A news story from the New York Times or a book from a library? Zotero has you covered, everywhere.
Zotero helps you organize your research any way you want. You can sort items into collections and tag them with keywords. Or create saved searches that automatically fill with relevant materials as you work.
The software instantly creates references and bibliographies for any text editor, and directly inside Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs. With support for over 10,000 citation styles, you can format your work to match any style guide or publication.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Intuitive interface.
- Zotero Connector extension.
- Save a copy of the webpage, or, in the case of academic articles, a copy of the full text PDF. Users can then add notes, tags, attachments, and their own metadata. Items are organized through a drag-and-drop interface, and can be searched
- Parts of the local reference library data can later be exported as formatted bibliographies.
- Generate citations and bibliographies through word processor plugins, or directly in Zotero, using Citation Style Language styles. The house styles of most academic journals are available in Zotero.
- Import and export citations from or to many formats, including Wikipedia Citation Templates, BibTeX, BibLateX, RefWorks, MODS, COinS, Citation Style Language/JSON, refer/BibIX, RIS, TEI, several flavours of RDF, Evernote, and EndNote.
- Associate notes with bibliographic items.
- Internationalization support – more than 40 languages are supported.
- Extensibility with extensions and plugins.
Website: www.zotero.org
Support: Documentation, Forums, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Corporation for Digital Scholarship
License: Affero General Public License v3.0
Zotero is written in JavaScript. Learn JavaScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| GUI Bibliography Tools | |
|---|---|
| Zotero | Powerful online/offline research tool |
| KBibTeX | Reference management software primarily for BibTeX |
| JabRef | Graphical frontend to manage BibTeX databases |
| WIKINDX | Provides a Virtual Research Environment |
| Paperlib | Academic paper management tool |
| cb2Bib | Extract bibliographic references from various sources |
| Citations | Manage your bibliographies using the BibTeX format |
| QuickBib | Fetch BibTeX for DOIs and arXiv identifiers |
| Pybliographer | Tool for manipulating bibliographic databases |
| Referencer | Document organiser and bibliography manager for Gnome |
| Bibfilex | LaTeX package implementing bibliographic functions with BibTeX |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Reference Management Tools | |
|---|---|
| KBibTeX | Reference management software primarily for BibTeX |
| Zotero | Powerful online/offline research tool for the Firefox web browser |
| JabRef | Graphical frontend to manage BibTeX databases |
| WIKINDX | Bibliography, notes, and article authoring system |
| BibLaTeX | Programmable bibliographies and citations |
| Docear | Academic literature suite |
| I, Librarian | Build an annotated library of scientific PDF articles |
| Citations | Manage your bibliographies using the BibTeX format |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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This can now also be used in Chrome and Vivaldi.