Zotero - reference management software review

I've been writing my thesis - but not writing it "up" - for a couple of months, and although I've previously managed all my references manually, I decided that I'd use some reference management software as I wrote my PhD thesis.

I've previously been happy to write all my references the old fashioned way - by looking at the book / journal, and writing down the salient information in the bibliography, and writing out my in-text citations manually. This method has always served me well and because I am a pedant when it comes to things like spelling, grammar, punctuation and indeed referencing, I have been able to manage my references flawlessly in this way. I haven't made mistakes because I know how to reference (Harvard-style) and so I continued with the mindset of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

However, since the number of references I'll probably be using for my PhD thesis was likely to be far greater than those I used for my essays and MA thesis, I decided that I'd start using some reference management software to help me keep track of it all. I'm glad I've taken the plunge, because even at this early stage, I already have 74 items in my reference list! (I've not fully read all of them yet though.)

So I decided that before I got started on my thesis, I'd compare / try a few reference management software (RMS) programs and decide on one which I was happy with. I probably spent nearly 2 days faffing around with RMS and making up my mind, but I was hopeful then - and I'm convinced now - that that was time well spent.

The RMS I settled on was Zotero. Below I list some of the other main RMS and why I chose not to use them:

• Refworks - this was the one which I had heard of most, and so was the one I was originally intending to use. Then I learned that unless your university had a subscription to it, individual students had to pay to use it (and that the University of Nottingham does not have a subscription to it). This quickly put me off Refworks.

• Endnote - The University of Nottingham does have a subscription to Endnote, so this became top of my list. I tried to follow the instructions I found for how to set up an account, and the instructions were unfathomable (for starters, they referred to a different version of Windows than the one on the library PC I was using, so were impossible to follow). I tried to get some help from an online chat person/bot, and from the IT support people in the library, but they struggled to use it too. This is not a criticism of them, but a criticism of Endnote, as I usually find them to be really knowledgeable and helpful. At length, with the help of an IT support person, a YouTube video, and an online help sheet, we finally managed to get the program running. I thought it'd be plain sailing after that, but it wasn't. The way to get an article onto Endnote seemed to involve a very complex procedure of searching an online library database... well, some of the sources I'd already taken a look at aren't on an online library database, and working out how to get these sources onto Endnote seemed impossible to me. Added to which, the 'main' version of Endnote could only be accessed from university PCs, and I'm likely to be doing most of my work from home. So I gave up on Endnote.

Once I'd dismissed these two 'big names', it was a question of doing some comparisons of the alternatives. I looked at a few online comparisons, and screenshots of different RMS systems, and downloaded a couple to try. I can't remember which ones (so this part of the blog post isn't that enlightening, as I can't recall why I dismissed Mendeley, BibTex and whatever else. What I can do is explain why I chose Zotero and why I like it).

Zotero - just click the Download button and Bob's your uncle.

Reasons why I like / chose Zotero

1. It's easy to use. This reason is up there front and centre of the reasons I chose Zotero. Here's how you do it: (1) go to Zotero website. (2) Download Zotero software that takes about 1 minute. (3) Start using it straight away. The Word plugin only has 5 buttons on it (add/edit citation, add/edit bibliography, refresh, unlink citations, and settings). It did take a little playing around with to work out all the functions, but more on that later.
2. Metadata is automatically uploaded to Zotero. Until I looked into RMS, I didn't even know what metadata was (data about data, I would have assumed). Metadata is in fact the details of a document such as its title, authors, publisher, date, URL, DOI, and suchlike. Having tried a few RM systems, it became evident to me that the sheer amount of time it can take to add metadata is just ridiculous on some applications. It can take a minute or two - at least - to write out all the metadata for one file. When that's multiplied by the possibly 300+ sources I may use during the course of my PhD, I realised that that would be a lot of time wasted and a lot of tedium suffered. The fact that Zotero automatically detects and uploads all the metadata on almost every file you drag and drop onto it was a godsend to me: "future me will thank me for this" I thought, and indeed I am grateful to past-me for choosing software which automatically sorts the metadata. And when metadata isn't detected (which has only happened on one online source so far) it's easy enough to enter it yourself with Zotero.
3. Zotero allows me to upload PDFs and other files whilst keeping those files on my computer. This is a must for me, because tech isn't always as trustworthy as we'd like it to be (yeah, I know my PhD thesis is about why we should trust tech to care for the elderly, but this is an entirely different issue!) If a company suddenly goes offline, into liquidation, etc, then I'd like to be able to have all - or at least, many - of my files stored offline on my hard drive as possible. Zotero ticks this box whereas so many other RM systems don't. This also appeals to me because I like to edit my PDFs with notes and symbols and things which aren't available in some RMS dedicated editors. eg some of the other RMS will allow you to edit a PDF, but only within the RMS program; if you then try to view that PDF in Adobe or similar, you can't see any of your notes. Or, the software allows you to highlight but not annotate PDFs on the page itself. Zotero allows me to edit documents with Adobe, Nitro or any other program, and then upload them as they are.
4. The code for Zotero is open-source. I'm not a software buff but apparently this means something along the lines of: if Zotero goes out of business, another company could use the same code to make the same program and so I'd still be able to use it. Or something like that.
5. Zotero is cloud-based, so wherever I am, I can access my saved sources, and the files can be viewed and accessed even if the source file is not on that computer. For example, say I annotate a PDF which is held on my home computer, and then I drag and drop it onto Zotero. The file is still on my home computer, but now if I go into uni and use a PC in the library, I can access and edit the very same PDF (with my notes already one it) even though it is not saved on that uni PC. This is a great feature which I didn't even realise was a feature when I started using it, but I find it really good. Most RMS is cloud-based, but still...
6. There's a Chrome plugin which allows you to upload sources direct from the web. The plugin takes about 30 seconds to download and sits right next to the URL bar. The program detects what type of page is being viewed (eg a news article, journal article, blog etc - I guess that's the metadata doing its job again!) and so when you click the icon, it knows what metadata is needed (date of publication, issue number, etc.) Amazing!
7. Sources of various different types can be uploaded. PDFs are standard for RMS, obviously, but some of the other RM programs I came across couldn't seem to handle a news website, let alone a Word document, powerpoint presentation, TV programme or a jpeg image. Zotero can handle any and all of these - and lots of others too.
8. I can use it as a cloud-based way of saving my own work. Because Zotero can handle Word documents, I made a folder within Zotero called 'my work' and now I upload my work to it at the end of each day as an additional cloud-based backup in case my house burns to the ground during the night. I suppose this wasn't the intention of Zotero, but it's a nice feature I'm utilising for my own gain.
9. It's easy to write notes and summaries. There's a text box on the right-hand side which you can write whatever you like into. I'm using it to write notes and summaries of documents. I know this is standard in almost all RMS, but it's obviously a useful feature!
10. It's possible to tag sources and link sources to one another. This is probably a simple feature which may be available in other RMS, but it's useful nonetheless. For example, I have scanned and uploaded a few different chapters of the same book, and although each chapter is written by a different author, I wanted them to be linked to one another, so that was easily done. I've also tagged my sources with various content-related tags like 'consent' and 'harm', but also 'fully read' and 'not yet read' to help me keep track of what I have and have not read. As one would expect, you can search for particular tags.

Screenshot of some of my Zotero sources at the moment

One wish

I saw on one RMS - I forget which now - that whenever you highlighted some text within a document, it transferred the quote to some sort of clipboard / note-taker interface. This seems like a really useful feature which it would be quite nice if Zotero had, but it doesn't. I suppose that's because it is a file depository rather than a file editor. My highlighting has been done in Adobe/Nitro, and not through Zotero itself; Zotero essentially just keeps a copy of the file. It's not too great a problem though, because it's still easy to cut and paste quotes if I want them.

Using Zotero

For the most part, Zotero is pretty easy to use. you drag and drop the files you want into the window as shown above. You download the Word plugin, and when you want to add a citation, you just click 'Add citation', type in the author or title you want to cite, add the page number, and press Enter. Pretty simple. And indeed far simpler than the other RM systems I had a go at.

But of course, there are always some times when there are slightly trickier things that one wants to do, like adding metadata, having one source with multiple sources attached to it, and it wasn't particularly easy to find Zotero help / guides on how to do these twiddly bits. I did find one help guide from Zotero, but this isn't exhaustive. I worked it out for myself though and wrote it down - here is my help sheet. Anyway, I've found Zotero to be pretty intuitive and easy to use, and I'm glad I took the time to choose a RMS programme which suited me and what I wanted. I definitely have no complaints so far.