Zotero

Starting with the Fall 2025 semester, Robertson Library will begin supporting the use of Zotero for "citation/reference management".

Zotero allows you to organize information about your research sources, then use that information to create citations and bibliographies/reference lists in your research papers. If you are working on a small project with only a few sources, and you don't expect to use those sources again in the future, you can make a bibliography more quickly by using Zotero's Zbib. Zbib will not create in-text citations for you.

Setting Up Zotero for the First Time:

  • Register for a free account at Zotero.org. This account is not connected to your UPEI account; you can use any e-mail address and password.
  • Download the Zotero app and browser connector. You will want the app on the computer(s) you use to write papers, and you may want the browser connector on any device you use to do research.
  • Log in to your account in the desktop/mobile app. Go to Edit -> Settings (on Windows/Linux) or Zotero -> Settings (on Mac) and look for the Sync settings. Log in with the username and password you created. We recommend turning the file syncing options off.
  • Watch or read our Zotero tutorial to learn more about how to add citations and how to use Zotero while writing a paper.
  • You can also set up Zotero to recognize that you are a UPEI user, which can help you find the full text of articles and books.
    • In the desktop/mobile app: Go to Edit -> Settings (on Windows/Linux) or Zotero -> Settings (on Mac). In the General section, find "Locate" or "Library Lookup." In the Base URL box, paste this information: https://resolver-ebscohost-com.proxy.library.upei.ca/openurl?  Double check it--there is a question mark (?) at the end of the link that needs to be included.
    • In your browser: open the options/settings for the Zotero connector plugin. Go to the Proxies tab. In the Configured Proxies section, use the "+" button to add a new proxy. (See "Connector Preferences" for more documentation.) Here's the information to paste:

Zotero is different from RefWorks in a few ways:

  • it's completely free and not tied to your being a UPEI student
  • it has both a desktop app and a web based app, and folders and references are synchronized between them (if you allow it)
  • it also has a browser plugin called Zotero Connector, which for Google Docs is also the Docs plugin
  • MS Word and LibreOffice integration are enabled from the desktop app under Tools - Add-ons
  • you must have the desktop app open to use many Connector features, and to use the Word/Google Docs/LibreOffice plugins
  • you can configure Zotero with UPEI's "proxy" settings, which will help you retrieve licensed articles and books when off campus
  • you only get 300MB of storage in the web platform, usually not enough for all of your PDFs (RefWorks had no limit); you have the choice of keeping the PDFs only on your desktop computer, linking to the PDFs in some other web-based storage space (eg Google Drive, OneDrive, DropBox, etc.), or paying Zotero for more web storage; we strongly recommend the web-based linking option
  • Zotero Connector recognizes citations on many web pages, and can even recognize multiple citations in a list on some pages like Google Scholar search results, enabling you to quickly import many at once
  • Many database products like OneSearch and Scopus could import directly to RefWorks; however, most will NOT offer Zotero as a choice, but will offer RIS, which is a file formatted in a way that is easy to import into Zotero. Download the RIS file to your local device, then in your Zotero account (online or desktop app), import the RIS file

Useful documentation on how to use Zotero:

Also note that if you just need a few citations formatted in a particular style, it would be faster to use Zotero's zbib tool - no login needed, but also no integration with your document. You can give it an ISBN, DOI, URL, or just an article title and it will look up the complete citation for you. 

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