Zotero

New in 2022, Zotero has a built-in PDF reader. You can use this to highlight, take notes, and even clip quotes from article texts that include in-text citations.

To create an annotation:

1. Highlight the text you want to include
2. In the righthand toolbar, find the icon that looks like a notebook. 
3. Click the + next to item notes, and choose "add item note from annotations"
4. Now you will see an annotation and citation included, as in the screenshot above.

Zotero will not do its own Optical Character Recognition (OCR). But, Adobe Acrobat is more than capable of this- and then Zotero is able to annotate the document as normal! Follow this workflow in order to get scans or older PDFs into a state that you can annotate:

1. Open the PDF with Adobe Acrobat
2. Select "Scan & OCR"
3. Select "Recognize Text" in the toolbar, and choose "in this file"
4. Leave the settings at "all pages" and pick the language of the piece, then click "recognize text."
5. Save this as its own new PDF file
6. Load the PDF into Zotero, and annotate to your heart's content!

Zotero's Groups feature allows you to share references with other Zotero users online. It's a great way to work on collaborative research projects.

To use the Groups feature, you will first need to set up Zotero sync and synchronize your library.

• You must log in to the zotero.org website to create or join a group.
• To create a shared library, click the "Create Groups" button near the top left of your Zotero window (small blue/green button with two “people” icons, second from the left). Groups may be public (searchable, and anyone can join) or private (users can only join if invited).
• To join an existing Zotero library, search for it on Zotero's website or be invited by the group’s owner.

Once completed, you will have two sections in your Zotero collections pane: My Library and Group Libraries. Personal and group libraries are entirely separate, and changes made to items in one library do not affect the other. You can drag items back and forth between libraries to copy items.

It is possible to use EndNote and Zotero together or to share Zotero libraries with colleagues using EndNote (or vice versa). Both programs can read and write a standard citation file format called RIS, which means references can be converted back and forth with a few clicks.

Zotero to EndNote

To save your Zotero library for importing into EndNote:

1. Right-click click on the My Library button in Zotero and select Export Library.  
2. From the Export Library drop-down menu, select RIS as the file type.
3. Select a file name and click OK.
4. In EndNote, click File and then Import.
5. Click the Choose File button and select the file you just exported from Zotero.
6. Set Import Option to "Reference Manager (RIS)" and click Import.
7. Allow the import to happen. Make sure you check your citations for accuracy.

EndNote to Zotero

Follow these steps to export your EndNote library for use in Zotero.

Mendeley to Zotero

Zotero's documentation has instructions for importing a Mendeley library into Zotero. You will need to know your Mendeley account login in order to do this.

Zotero to Mendeley

1. Right-click click on the My Library button in Zotero and select Export Library.  
2. From the Export Library drop-down menu, select RIS as the file type.
3. Select a file name and click OK.
4. Open Mendeley Reference Manager, and select "add new."
5. Choose "Import Library," and then RIS file type.
6. Allow the import to happen. Make sure you check your citations for accuracy.

You've probably seen the IU-Link button in some article databases that allows you to locate the full text of an article online. Zotero allows you to use the same feature.

To set up Zotero to access the IU-link server:

1. Go to Preferences in the Zotero toolbar. 
2. Navigate to the Advanced tab.
3. In the Resolver box, paste the following url: http://kg6ek7cq2b.search.serialssolutions.com
4. Click Ok.  Once you've set this up, you can click the IU-link button on any citation you're viewing to search for the item online.