How I use Zotero to organise all my citations
If you’re writing academic papers or books (like this one), you need a tool to manage your citations. Academic articles need citations, which are basically sources you’ve used. These sources need to be listed at the end of (or within) each work, so that you can check if you’re writing rubbish or the next revelation. Without them, your work will look unscientific and unserious. Enter Zotero.
When I was a student, citations were made as you went along, so they often ended up as an unordered list at the end of an article. While you were finishing up, you needed to go through this list to sort and unify, and most of the time, some information was missing. As a consequence, you would be forced to go to the library again to search for the missing information, which you then had to repeat for every article. Looking back, this wasn’t the most efficient way of working. Some clever people came up with a system called a “Zettelkasten”, which was basically a paper database in the form of a box full of flashcards. You still had to go through the database card by card to find what you were searching for.
Zotero & Co.: Citation managers
Luckily, there are now lots of tools to help with citations. These days, there is no need to spend hours searching for the right style of citation or making edits. Citation managers can do all this for you, and they are really useful. I wish I’d had one of these tools right from the start. There are loads of options out there, and lots of good software available. In this article, I will focus on Zotero, which I have used for a long time and which I still use now. It is free and open source.
When you open the software, you’ll see all your citations in an overview on the left. Here, you can create or find collections to order and group your citations. In the centre, you’ll find a list of citations for the selected collection, and on the right, you’ll find a detailed view of the selected publication. I won’t explain every part of the software here, but I’ll give you an overview of the main features and how they helped me during my work.
Zotero Collections
Imagine you had all your citations on flashcards. Every single citation is written down with all the necessary information. If you wanted to order these flashcards, you’d probably create some folders. You could label these folders “Project A”, “Subject B” or “Bibliography of Book C”. In these folders, you would put your cards. Then, whenever you need a citation for subject B, you could simply open the folder and get your information. These are collections. These collections are like subfolders in your “Library”. The great thing about this is that you can put a citation into different collections.
What I use it for
When I write an article or a bigger piece of writing, I make a new collection and put everything in it. This way, I have everything I need for that piece of writing in one place. Another way to sort is by topic. So I have collections about “Reconstruction” or “Digital Humanities”, where I put everything that fits into that topic. The advantage here is that, for whatever reason, I can simply export all the citations of a collection in the format I want. So when I’ve finished my paper, I can drag the citations from the folder to the end of my article and have my bibliography ready!
List view
The detailed view of a collection is useful for more than just listing everything you put inside it. First of all, you can sort the list in whatever way you like. I, for example, list everything sorted by author and year, so I can find what I’m searching for quickly. The real advantage here, though, is the hierarchy. You can put files and notes inside the citations, which gives you lots of possibilities. You can, for example, use notes to write down an excerpt of the citation. Next time you use it, you can remember quicker. If you have a PDF of the cited article, you can also put it inside, to have it ready with one double-click.
What I use it for
I can connect PDFs, which is really useful. You can synchronise your Zotero library with the server to have your citations ready on all your devices, but a big collection of PDFs can be a bit much with the 300MB limitations. However, you don’t have to upload the files to Zotero. I keep my whole Zotero library in my OneDrive folder, which is constantly synchronising with Microsoft servers. In Zotero, I can specify where to look for the files, so I always have them via the OneDrive synchronisation. This means I have my library on my desktop at home, my desktop at work and even on my smartphone when I’m out and about (using the right apps).
Detailed view
The detailed view on the right side of the screen provides information on every single citation, including the type, author(s), editor(s), title, journal, pages, year and much more. You can also enter DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) to cite open access publications. Some fields use natural word processing, so if you enter today in the “Downloaded on” section, it enters the correct date automatically. Notes can be added using the tabs at the top, and keywords are a good way of organising your citations. The “Connected to” tab on the right is very helpful in case of volumes: if you have a number of articles all edited in one volume, you can specify here to which volume they belong, making everything even more connected.
What I use it for
I only use it to enter the information I need, and I pay special attention to the DOIs (digital object identifiers). Also, I make sure to enter them as today, open access is even more important. I also think the tags are a good way to sort and cross-reference your citations for later use. At first, it takes time to enter everything accurately, but after a while your list will grow and after a couple of years you will be very happy that you have everything ready and connected.
Extra tip for Zotero
One thing I find extremely helpful, especially today, is citing websites. Some topics require you to cite websites instead of publications, but there can be some pitfalls. The great thing is, you can drag a website from your browser into your collection, which will create a citation for you (usually you just have to update the author, date and website info). It will also save the whole website into Zotero. This is useful because you can still access websites that are no longer available, by saving them in Zotero.
To sum up, I really recommend Zotero as a way of managing citations. I haven’t even begun to cover everything Zotero can do here, because there’s so much more that I could write about. If you want to know more about using this manager, please write about it in the comments!
