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Zotero: Getting Set Up

Getting Set Up

In this section, we'll provide an overview of how to setup Zotero to take advantage of its full functionality. We recommend working through the entire guide. This page covers:

What is Zotero?

Zotero is a reference management tool. This is a piece of software you can use to collect, organize, annotate and cite research. 

You can use Zotero to:

  • Quickly save the referencing information of a source, from the web, with just one click.
  • Automatically create citations and bibliographies.
  • Organise your references and notes with tags and folders.
  • Back up and share your research.

Is Zotero right for you? 

  • Just need to create a quick, one-off bibliography? See our guide to Zoterobib.
  • You may already have an effective system to keep track of your sources. As long as you can easily organise, save, access and cite the sources you're using, you're good. Just be careful not to store all your work on your laptop. One of the advantages of Zotero is that everything is backed up in the cloud.
     

Important:

There are other reference management tools which might suit you better. Think about your operating system (e.g. Windows, Apple macOS, Linux) and any software you would like to use alongside your reference manager. For example, what word processing software do you prefer (Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Latex)? See the regularly updated Wikipedia guide to reference management software for a comparison of the different options and compatibility. 

Zotero Storage

The University of Sussex has a subscription to Zotero, which means our staff and students have unlimited storage! 
If you register for Zotero using your Sussex university email address, you will have unlimited storage automatically. 

If you've registered for Zotero with your personal email address, you can upgrade to unlimited storage for free by following these steps:

  • Log in to Zotero in your browser.
  • Visit your Zotero account settings page.
  • Scroll down to the 'Manage email addresses' section​.
  • Add your Sussex University email as an additional email address. ​
  • Verify this email address by clicking the link in the verification email from Zotero.​ 

You should now have unlimited storage. To check, visit your Zotero Storage page.

Remember:

When leaving the University, you can add your personal email address using the same method to keep your Zotero library's content (although, keep in mind, your storage limit will revert to 300MB). 

Getting Setup

Watch the video below to see how to setup Zotero to make use of its full functionality.

 

Video Transcript

This video will show you how to create an account with Zotero and fully install the Zotero desktop app for your device.

Before you start using Zotero, you'll need to create an account. Head over to the Zotero homepage and click "Log in," and then click on "Register for a free account." You will then need to fill out your information on the registration page. Once you've done this, Zotero will send an email confirmation to complete the process. It's important to make sure, at this point, that you use your Sussex University email when you register, as this will give you unlimited storage through the university's subscription with Zotero.

Once you've gone through this process and you have received your email confirmation, then just head back to the homepage and log in. Then just enter your details to log yourself in. After logging in, you will see your Zotero library inside your web browser. Your online account will mean you can access your library anywhere you go on any device. You will be able to back up your citation information, and it will also allow you to join Zotero groups.

Next, we need to install the Zotero desktop app. So if you go back to the Zotero homepage and then click on "Download." You’ll then be able to download the application from this page. Zotero is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, but in this demo, we’re going to download it for Windows. So if we then click "Download," and then if we click on the downloaded file that should start the installation process. Before we start the installation process it’s important to make sure that Word is closed. And once you’ve done that we can now click on "Next" and if is the first time you’ve used Zotero, just go for the standard installation and then click “Next” and "Install." Now the installation is finished, if you just leave this then box ticked and hit "Finish." The Zotero app should now open automatically.

And the next thing we need to do, once we have Zotero open, is to sign into our Zotero account on the desktop app. The easiest way to do this is to click on the Green Sync icon in the top right-hand corner and then just select "Open sync preferences." Then you just need to sign in using the details of the account that you just created. And then hit "Set up syncing." You can see that the desktop app is now synced to my online account. This means anything we add to our desktop app will be backed up in our online account. It will also mean we can access our library anywhere on any device.

So if we click “OK” and press the Green Sync icon again, we now have no red error icons, so we know we should be synced up to our online account. We can test this here by adding the information of a book. Here we have the "Cite Them Right: The Essential Referencing Guide” with all the information, and then, when we look on our online library, we can see the “Cite Them Right” guide has appeared here too. So we know that our accounts have successfully synced.

Next, we will want to install the Zotero Connector. This is going to be the best way to bring references and citation information into our library. To install the connector, head back to the Zotero homepage and, again, click "Download." This time, on the right-hand side, we are gonna be given the option to download the Connector for whichever browser we’re using at the time. So the Connector, as well as Chrome, also supports Firefox and Safari, but since we’re using Chrome we’re going to install the Chrome Connector this time round. So if we hit the "Install Chrome Connector" button, and we’ll then just click "Add to Chrome" and "Add extension." You can see in the top right corner we have now installed the Zotero Chrome Connector. We’ll use this connector to capture citation information from different sources that we see in our browser and add then add them to our Zotero library.

To make sure the Zotero Connector is always visible, you will need to select the jigsaw icon and check that the Zotero Connector is pinned to your toolbar.

The last thing we need to do is to check that the Zotero Word plug-in has been installed. The plug-in should have been installed during the desktop app installation, but, if Word was open, it may not have successfully installed. If this is the case, don't worry; we will look at how to manually add the plug-in at the end of this video. But first, let's check if the Zotero plug-in has successfully installed. So if we head over to Word we can now see along the ribbon at the top, a new option has appeared: this is the Zotero plug-in. If we click on Zotero, we get a new set of options that relate to Zotero and this is how Zotero is going to communicate with your word processor. Zotero is also compatible with LibreOffice and Google Docs.

If the plug-in failed to install, then all you need to do is to close Word, go back to the Zotero desktop app, go to "Edit" and select "Preferences." From here, select "Cite" and from the tab at the top select "Word Processors". All you need to do then is to click on the "Reinstall Microsoft Word Add-In" button, and that will reload the Word add-in to your word processor.

You can now refer to the instructions tab next to this video for instructions on everything we've just gone through, as well as various useful links which you will be able to use in the set up Zotero on your device.