Zotero.org - A Researcher's Best Friend

Citations, as students know all too well, are a veritable headache. Collecting the info—author(s), page numbers, dates, publishers, etc—on ten, twenty, thirty or more sources is one thing. But then you have to format everything according to insanely precise rules. And this is after you’ve slaved over a 20+ page research paper. Zotero, however, can make the process much easier. A FireFox 2.0 plug-in, Zotero is similar to Google Notebook, with its ability to capture URL’s, images and text directly from the web. Zotero will even detect and save full reference information as you do research across the web. Notetaking capability, formatted citation export, playlist-like organization and tags, as well as Word integration make Zotero a must have for academics and students alike. Zotero is open-source and completely free.

“Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways. An extension to the popular open-source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways.”

Zotero has all the capabilities of reference software like Endnote, and it’s free. It’s relatively easy to use, and it has both offline and online functionality. For researchers it’s a must have. It’s even got Google Doc integration.

Will academics favor Zotero over software like Endnote which may be freely offered by their Institute/Uni? How great is the learning curve? What about collaboration and access over the web?