Zotero 7 recently launched with a major refresh so I figured it’d be a good idea to do a review of my reference manager workflow. 

I’ve tried all of the major reference managers out there and each time I’ve come back to Zotero. It’s open source, continually updated, works seemlessly with Word, has a great range of useful plugins, and it’s free. The other reference managers are great, don’t get me wrong. I’ve used Endnote for a bit since my university offers free subscriptions. I like the ability to look for related articles and download new articles in the app but there were a couple of standouts for Zotero. 

1. Zotero’s database of citation styles has had every journal that I’ve ever submitted to. That means after I finish writing and I decide what journal I’m going to apply for, I can just search for the journal’s citation style, apply it to my document, and it’s automatically in the journal’s citation format.

2. Collaboration is easy. I’ve done a few co-authored articles which involve collaborating on Google Docs. With Zotero, I can create a collaborative Zotero folder that syncs online and cite directly from that collaborative folder in the google doc just like I would in MS Word. It helps that it’s free and I don’t need to expect my colleagues to have a subscription to a paid citation manager. 

3. I can extract annotations. Using the Zotfile plugin, I can extract my highlights as a note with text and page numbers. This works lightning fast, although I need to bring those notes into a third-party app like Obsidian or Beloga to search effectively. 

I love the new layout. The colors really pop and the new icons give it a modern look. There are also some great new insights at a glance. On the “Info” pane, I can glean a preview of the PDF, a count of the number of annotations in a given document, the file path in my library, and tags and relate articles. 

I’m going to write more about the my citation and reading workflow in another post but in the meantime, I’m liking the new Zotero.