Zotero is a free, open-source reference management tool designed to help you collect, organize, cite, and share research materials such as journal articles, books, PDFs, websites, and more. It's widely used by students, academics, and researchers.
How do I use Zotero with Word or Google Docs?
Zotero has plugins for Microsoft Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs. These plugins let you insert citations and auto-generate bibliographies while you write. After installing the plugin, a Zotero toolbar will appear in your word processor for quick citation access.
Can I use Zotero with Obsidian, Notion, or other tools?
Yes, Zotero integrates well with Obsidian using community plugins like Zotero Integration or Zotero + Better BibTeX, allowing you to pull references directly into markdown notes. For Notion, it's more manual, but tools like Notero or Zotfile can help export metadata or annotations.
Can Zotero automatically rename and organize my PDFs?
Yes, Zotero can automatically rename PDFs based on metadata (like author and title) and organize them into folders. You can customize this behavior under Preferences > General > File Handling. It can also save PDFs into a structured directory for easy backup or syncing with other tools.
Features
Collect with a click
Zotero automatically senses research as you browse the web. Need an article from JSTOR or a preprint from arXiv.org? A news story from the New York Times or a book from a library? Zotero has you covered, everywhere.
Organize your way
Zotero helps you organize your research any way you want. You can sort items into collections and tag them with keywords. Or create saved searches that automatically fill with relevant materials as you work.
Cite in style
Zotero instantly creates references and bibliographies for any text editor, and directly inside Word, LibreOffice, and Google Docs. With support for over 9,000 citation styles, you can format your work to match any style guide or publication.
Stay in sync
Zotero can optionally synchronize your data across devices, keeping your files, notes, and bibliographic records seamlessly up to date. If you decide to sync, you can also always access your research from any web browser.
Collaborate freely
Zotero lets you co-write a paper with a colleague, distribute course materials to students, or build a collaborative bibliography. You can share a Zotero library with as many people you like, at no cost.
Rest easy
Zotero is open source and developed by an independent, nonprofit organization that has no financial interest in your private information. With Zotero, you always stay in control of your own data.
What's New
We're excited to announce Zotero 9, which introduces a major new way to engage with your documents, along with a host of other improvements to the research workflow.
Coming less than three months after Zotero 8, Zotero 9 is the first major update since we announced a faster release cycle for Zotero, and it represents our commitment to getting stable features into the hands of users more quickly.
Read Aloud
Read Aloud reads your documents to you in high-quality, natural-sounding voices. It works on PDFs, EPUBs, and webpage snapshots.
To get started, just click the headphones button in Zotero's reader toolbar.
As you're listening, you can skip forward or backward by paragraph or by sentence (Option/Alt-click or Option/Alt-left/right), and you can start reading from a particular point by clicking in the left margin or by right-clicking and choosing "Read Aloud from Here".
An "Annotate Sentence" button – or H or U on your keyboard – will automatically highlight or underline the last sentence you heard, and you can use shortcut keys to quickly move, expand, or delete the new annotation.
Your last reading position is saved and synced between devices, so you can pick up where you left off on any device.
Read Aloud requires an internet connection and a Zotero account for high-quality voices, which we're calling Zotero Voices. If you'd like to use Read Aloud offline, you can still use the text-to-speech voices available on your system, but the quality will be significantly degraded.
We offer two tiers of Zotero Voices: Standard and Premium. Standard voices are generated on Zotero servers, with unlimited minutes for Zotero Storage subscribers and 2 hours/month for free accounts. Premium voices are the highest-quality voices available, processed by external text-to-speech providers – they make fewer mistakes, sound more natural, support many more languages, and can handle multilingual text. Individual Zotero Storage subscribers will receive up to 2 hours of Premium usage (varying by voice) each month, and free and institutional accounts will also receive a small quota in order to try the voices out. Initially, all subscribers can request additional Premium minutes for free. In the near future, we'll provide more details on monthly allocations and options for adding additional minutes going forward.
Read Aloud is currently available only in the desktop app, but it'll be coming to the iOS and Android apps soon.
Recently Read
A new Recently Read collection at the top of the collections list in each library shows items with attachments you've recently read, most recent first. Opening an attachment or changing pages will bump the item to the top of the list.
The collection includes a Last Read column, which you can also add to other views, and "Attachment Last Read" is available as an Advanced Search condition.
The last-read time syncs between devices, so you can quickly find a file on another device that you've read elsewhere.
Insert Annotations Directly into Word Processor Documents
The word processor plugins now feature a new Add Annotation button that lets you insert one or more annotations directly into your document, with active Zotero citations that automatically generate bibliography entries.
Previously, you could add annotations to Zotero notes and insert notes into your document with active citations, but it's no longer necessary to create an intermediate note if you prefer to work directly in your word processor.
Add Annotation opens a new mode in the citation dialog that expands attachments to show individual annotations. You can browse or search for annotations, choose one or more, and then add them to your document, along with active citations and any comments you added. Image and ink annotations are inserted as images.
"Added By" and "Modified By" for Group Libraries
You can now add "Added By" and "Modified By" columns to the items list in group libraries, letting you see and sort by the people who created and last updated items.
These fields also show in the metadata list along with Date Added/Modified.
Per-Group File Renaming Settings
Group admins can now configure file-renaming settings for each group library, ensuring consistent filenames for all group members.
Performance Improvements
We've made some major improvements to Zotero's performance, including reducing startup memory usage by 20% and drastically reducing disk access and network requests during file syncing in some situations.
On macOS, Zotero now uses a feature of the modern Apple filesystem to avoid additional disk-space usage when copying files. This includes the automatic daily backups Zotero makes of its database, potentially saving hundreds of megabytes or gigabytes of local disk space.
Web-Based Login
You now log in to your Zotero account via the browser instead of entering credentials in the app. This allows you to use a password manager to auto-fill credentials and will enable two-factor authentication (currently in beta), greatly increasing the security of your Zotero account.
