RefWorks and Other Citation Management Tools

Zotero is a free citation manager that you can download from the internet.

It works with most web browsers, and both Apple and PCs. It helps organize your citations, creates bibliographies, and works with Microsoft Word and Google Docs for in-text citations.

To get started, register for an account online. Next, download the Zotero app for your operating system (Windows, macOS, or Linux). You also need the connector for your browser (Chrome, Firefox, or Safari) to move citations into Zotero. *Please note: If you are using your UIC Google account, you won't be able to add the connector to your browser. To do so, you should log into your personal Google account.* 

Zotero 7 has significant upgrades.

With your free account, you receive 300 MB of storage. There are paid plans if you need more storage, or you can save PDFs to another location and link to them in the Zotero record.

Zotero's interface is organized into three columns. The first column contains folders to organize your citations. The second column shows the citations in your library or folder, and the third column shows citation details. You can customize the headings that appear based on your needs.

This tutorial was created for health science students, but the information applies all Zotero users.

Zotero will automatically find bibliographic information on web pages you visit. For example, if you are reading a journal article online, the connector (Zotero's save button) will show a page icon to show it will import a journal citation: 

When you click the icon, Zotero will save all of the available bibliographic information about that item to your library. In this case, Zotero will create a new “Journal Article” item with the item's bibliographic information (authors, title, date, journal title, etc.).

The icon on the Zotero save button will change based on the type of item on the page. For example, if you are browsing the library's catalog, the icon will be a book:

If there are multiple items on a page, the icon will be a folder. Once you click the folder icon, the Zotero Item Selector will appear, and you can click on the items you want to import:

You can use Zotero to create in-text citations or footnotes and to create bibliographies. When you install Zotero, it will automatically insert a new tab in Microsoft Word or Google Docs to allow you to insert a citation or a bibliography.

Zotero's "Library Lookup" feature is not 100% accurate. You may have to look for the PDF on the library website and attach the PDFs to the citation. Articles that are not available as PDFs on the library website may be requested for free via the ILLiad (Inter Library Loan) account.

It is possible to configure Zotero to link to full-text available through UIC.   

1. Go to Edit and select Settings. Choose General. 
2. In the Locate section of this menu, copy & paste the Library's OpenURL resolver:
   https://i-share-uic.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/openurl/01CARLI_UIC/01CARLI_UIC:CARLI_UIC?
   

Once the OpenURL link is set up, you can use the Library Lookup tool to check for full text in the UIC Library for any of the resources you've added to your Zotero library. To check if an item is available full-text at UIC, do the following in Zotero: 

1. Click to highlight the imported reference you want to check for full-text access in the center column of Zotero.
   
   
   
    
2. Next, in the right-hand column where you see the citation and the icons for Info, Notes, Attachments, etc., choose the arrow for Locate. Then select Library Lookup. This will bring up a library webpage linking to the full-text, if available.
   

In Zotero you can create annotations on pdfs that you have in your library, including highlighting text, adding comments/notes, and selecting graphics. You can also create a note that combines all of your annotations for a pdf into a streamlined list, or create a note that combines all of the annotations that you've added across multiple pdfs into a single note. These features are highlighted in the below video.

Under Edit - Preferences, it may be useful to uncheck "Automatically tag items with keywords and subject headings." This allows you to create your own tag structure. The tags that are automatically retrieved come from different contexts and may not be useful for your purposes.