PSCI 361 - Political Research

Zotero [pronounced zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research sources.  

Take a video tour of Zotero

To get started:

• Create your free account at Zotero.org
• Download Zotero.  Follow the install instructions in this guide to download Zotero from http://zotero.org/download. There are plugins and apps for mobile devices.

Each Zotero account comes with 300 megabytes of file storage for storing citation information, PDFs, notes, etc.  If you find it necessary, you can purchase additional storage from Zotero.

Mastering Zotero is an online comprehensive user guide for the Zotero reference manager.  Chapters currently available are:

• Introduction
• Installing Zotero
• Adding Items
• Adding Files
• Tags
• Collections
• Citations, Bibliographies and More

Zotero doesn't include APSA style formatting by default, but you can install it from the Zotero Style Repository.

Zotero doesn't have an item type for datasets, so you need to do some extra editing to cite them correctly:

1. Use the Journal Article item type when importing or manually entering your citation data. Manual entry is recommended because importing through Zotero Connector doesn't usually work well for datasets.
2. In the Extra field towards the bottom, type "dataset" (without the quotes)

If the citation style you're using is set up for datasets, then it should display properly when you cite the dataset.

There are two ways to use Zotero on your computer:

1. Use a Firefox extension (RECOMMENDED).
2. Use Zotero Standalone and a browser connector (Safari, Chrome, Firefox).  Zotero does not support Internet Explorer.

Each Zotero account comes with 300 megabytes of file storage for storing citation information, PDFs, notes, etc.  If you find it necessary, you can purchase additional storage from Zotero.

• All Zotero Documentation
• Install Zotero
  • How to Install Zotero
  • Zotero preferences (settings)
• Put data into Zotero
  • Collect citations
  • Add PDF files that are on your computer to Zotero
  • Use "Library Lookup" to find full text
  • Make an ILLiad request from within Zotero
  • Sync with your Zotero.org account
• Using your Zotero data
  • Write and Cite
    • Write and Cite works best with Microsoft Word.  If you do not have Word, current students, faculty, and staff can install Office 365 through a no cost subscription, which includes Word.  Instructions for installing Office 365.
  • Create Bibliographies
  • Organize your citations: collections, tags, and notes
  • Rename and manage PDF files using Zotfile
  • Using Zotero on a mobile device
• Use Zotero with groups
• Back up your Zotero Library
• Use Zotero on a library commons or lab computer
• More help guides  

An online tool, AnyStyle can be used to extract bibliographic references from documents in 3 simple steps:

• Copy and paste your citations into the input box on the web site
• Use the easy editing tool to make corrections
• Generate a BibTeX that you can import into Zotero