Zotero is a reference management software. It offers users a powerful and easy-to-use tool enabling them to collect, cite, organize, and share research sources. It was released in 2006 and was developed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

What are the key features of Zotero?

Collect: thanks to a single and searchable interface, the application can find any document you are searching for on the Internet. You can find them whether they are images, video or audio files, web pages, PDF, snapshots, or other documents.
Organize: Zotero works like iTunes playlists. Once you have the result of your search, the tool can manage them according to your needs. Users are allowed to create small collections and sub-collections. It is integrated with a keyword tagger that enables users to filter the library at any time.
Cite: This feature enables users to create endnotes, bibliographies, and in-text citations once the result of the search is found. It is possible to create citations in OpenOffice and Word. Zotero supports thousands of publication formats. If you use the application, you can add tags, notes, attachments, and also your own metadata.
Share: Another great thing about Zotero is the possibility to collaborate with your colleagues or share a library with your students.

How to use Zotero?

This software has a user-friendly interface that doesn’t require any particular knowledge in computer science. However, if you are not sure where to start, you can always follow the official tutorials.

Is Zotero free?

You can use this software for free. However, there may be some charges for additional storage space.

Is Zotero safe?

Zotero is open-source and has no history of security issues or abusive data collecting. As always, we recommend reading the official Privacy policy before installing.

Zotero vs. Mendeley

Choosing between the two software depends on your needs and personal style. For example, they are both free, but they charge users for additional free space. This being said, Mendeley comes with 2GB of cloud storage, whereas Zotero offers 300MB of cloud storage. Mendeley makes working with PDFs easier (easy info extraction, PDF full-text search-ability, very suitable for sciences) but Zotero can archive web pages and import citations from different sites (Amazon, Flickr, and ArtSTOR).

Around the same subject