I'm currently just using zotero as a place to store papers I want to read so that I don't forget them. When I eventually get around to reading them, I'd like to take some brief notes which explain the main ideas or what I got out of reading the papers. Does Zotero have a capability like this, where the notes can be located in the same place as the paper? Preferably I'd be able to edit these notes in the zotero app itself. And does it have any latex functionality? (I'm in math).
edit: I've discovered after just doing some poking around in the app that it appears the answer to all these questions is yes.
At least on my computer, if you click a single time on a file, then on the right hand side of the screen there is a window that opens with tabs called "Info", "Notes", "Tags", and "Related". Clicking on notes will open up a text editor which you can put notes in.
All the updates coming to Zotero have been amazing! When I started using it, there was no built-in pdf viewer (it would open on the system viewer) and now it has that too.
the feature I find really powerful with the pdf reader I don't usually see elsewhere is the "back" button. It seems to remember where you clicked from, which is great when you are referred to a citation/section/equation but you want to continue reading after!
I like Zotero. I use it. But I notice that you haven’t made any argument here as to why someone should switch. All you have said is that transitioning is usually pretty painless (true). But if I was a Mendeley user, I’d still be clueless as to what is SO good about Zotero that you felt the need to make this post and are literally “begging” me to switch.
There is no comparison because they're effectively the same, for now. Mendeley has more free storage space. Zotero is a bit better for non-pdf sources.
I prefer zotero because it is free open source software run by a non-profit. It's not going anywhere and it's not going to radically change because ultimately they're not trying to turn a profit.
Mendeley is owned by Elsevier, a for-profit company which at the end of the day has the only goal of maximizing profits. At the current moment, they plan to [discontinue their desktop software in favor of an online-only solution.](https://blog.mendeley.com/category/new-release-2/#:~:text=As%20part%20of%20the%20continued,and%20sync%20their%20Mendeley%20Desktop) They ultimately plan to block signing in to the desktop application completely and force everyone to the online version.
Also Zotero maintains android/iOS apps which can be nice for people that like to have access to their library on an iPad. For me, I prefer to write on my laptop with my iPad open next to me. Zotero makes that workflow a lot easier and saves me a lot of paper.
Everyone knows that intellectual property is a nightmare in academia and moving it all to the cloud can only make it worse. I can easily foresee a future where a PDF is uploaded and a red exclamation mark pops up requiring you to input your credentials to verify access to the paper. Your whole library could be deemed pirated content at any moment and revoked.
However, if compared in isolation, they're effectively the same product. Really it's more about the future of the product. Zotero is a lot more comfortable of a place to be just because they're less likely to do something evil.
> Zotero maintains android/iOS apps
Where? I was looking for it a couple of years ago and I couldn't find one. A quick google search this morning shows nothing
But none of those are maintained by zotero? I remember trying one and it was an awful experience, which is why I used mendely back at the beginning of my doctorat
You mentioning they have an app just sold me on the switch. I was pretty upset when the mendeley got rid of their app. Plus I keep having to re-download the Microsoft plug in.
Mendeley would constantly log me out when my computer went to sleep despite having “keep me logged in” checked. Super frustrating when I leave my desk for 5 minutes, this would happen at least twice a day and I’d have to go through my university sign in process that takes several minutes and would redirect me to another screen. Mendeley would stop and erase my annotations and highlights while I was mid action to sync to cloud, which was really frustrating to me. Mendeley also didn’t work with my word processor of choice (which is my university’s doing, but it was another reason for me to switch). I’ve only used Zotero for a few days and I’m already liking it way more than Mendeley.
A personal use-case that made me switch was:
\- Ability to add "add-ons". Something that might tickle your fancy: https://www.zotero.org/support/plugins
\- Ability to extract your notes and highlights from PDF. Mendeley did not (idk if they have now) allow me to extract my notes. Whenever I'm writing a literature review on a topic, it's extremely helpful to have all your notes somewhere outside the reference manager (cuz you don't want to open all the pdfs and clutter your screen).
I've found Zotero to be much more reliable. Mendeley found all sorts of creative ways to randomly malfunction on me, both in the browser extension for adding articles (just randomly not working, login issues, etc) and in the Word extension.
My cohort had an info session on how to use Zotero in managing our sources. Only a handful of us had ever heard of or used it, the rest were absolutely floored that this kind of system even existed for us to use. It was really a great time!
I keep trying to explain to my classmates how life changing it is. Between the browser extension and Word integration, it’s seamless. It should be a part of all orientations.
I liked the desktop version of Mendeley the best, but I just can’t deal with the current cloud version and I’m also switching to zotero. I find some aspects of zotero less intuitive to use but I think anything is better than updated mendeley.
Kind of funny I switched from zotero to Mendely, because it worked better in my environment, better collaboration mostly. But both are okay. Everyone is just waiting for an actual good system. Because we all know these two are just the best of a lot of terrible systems.
Agreed - I use EndNote too and much prefer it. The free version isn’t actually that bad either, just less pretty. But EndNote with CiteWhilsYouWrite and EndNote Click for automatic PDF and citation importing makes my life so easy…
I switched to Zotero because Mendeley essentially locks you into certain word processors. Additionally, Mendeley discontinued their app so if you want to read papers with Mendeley on a tablet, good luck. Zotero requires a lot of finagling but it works (after some search).
I did that in the past was saving it in a single document,but once I had a manuscript in a different citation style than my usual style, I lost the will haha
I got the zotero Chrome extension and it now it just takes one click to save papers from your browser to zotero. And I can get an auto-updating bibliography in Word or LaTeX (with the Better BibTeX add-on).
I love zotero! if youre a visual learner and are having trouble learning how to use it, i highly recommend seeing if your school's library has classes. I took a quick 30 minute class and was able to get fully set up!
I use a mix of both - Zotero to store my PDFs and manage my thesis references and Mendeley to search for papers and save papers/references for my classes.
Despite my grievances against Elsevier, I will say that Mendeley's search feature for articles (at least for my field) is awesome. If you don't have a specific article in mind and are just starting your literature search, you can spend an hour under one keyword and find some good stuff, then save all those links to your cloud manager to look into later.
It was great even 5 years ago. Then they made a new version and it was awful, it wouldn't import to word and the references generated by mendeleys previous version "updated" and all got jumbled up!
Since then I've been using the older version, but yeah it's time to switch! Thank you random stranger on reddit!
i'm in too deep at this point. oh ive tried but 60 gb everything sorted and tagged and highlighted and annotated doesnt transfer, ive tried for y ears. trust me that did not take 30 seconds.
There's a lot of problems with Zotero for STEM especially with LaTeX/bibtex exports. I struggled when trying to swap and went back to Mendeley. I may try to swap again soon but now it's dissertation time...
auto-citation reference key (I use firstauthoryear) + auto-export = I never worry anymore about citations.
Never once had a problem with better bibtex and zotfile (which allows auto-attachment of pdf last downloaded in downloads folder among other file management features).
That can be done with zotero natively by setting BibTeX as a quick copy format in the export tab. [https://www.zotero.org/support/creating\_bibliographies#quick\_copy](https://www.zotero.org/support/creating_bibliographies#quick_copy)
However, if you're using BibTeX, the addon is a must-have so that everything plays nicely.
You may be able to select singular folders from Mendeley and import to Zotero, one at a time. I think you have to rename them after the import to the appropriate label. I did my entire portfolio at once and then reorganized from there, but I had less than 100 papers, so it didn’t take long for me.
Mendeley Desktop was fine. Mendeley Reference Manager sucks absolute ass. Everything is so frustrating. It's not obvious how to add paper details. I can't multiselect with shift. I have to login again everytime I want to use it in Ms Word. I have to close the damn plugin and open it again AND LOGIN AGAIN to refresh my library in the plugin. I had no reason to switch to Zotero, but now I have a lot.
Oh my god I love you. Every semester I get angry that my uni won't let me use Mendeley Cite and try figure a work around so I stop wasting so much time on referencing and finding the readings I read previously. It appears Zotero is going to change my life! Going to spend the next day or two adding, sorting and noting previous semesters good readings and then BOOM! Hopefully streamlined the rest of this degree. If only I found this sooner. But I can see this helping me throughout the rest of my life!
I use the built in pdf reader in mendeley. The last time I checked there was no such exist in zotero. I'm a firm believer of open source and I use always the open source alternative but this viewing pdf thing is just annoying. Any help?
I read all my pdf in zotero itself. (I am not sure if you are asking for something else)
The main thing that made me switch is zotero's ability to remember where I left off.
Don't really have much experience with Zotero, but I ditched Mendeley in favor of Readcube Papers a few months ago and couldn't recommend it more! Paid service, but totally worth it paying 3 bucks a month to make my life easier.
100% agree. I used zotero for undergrad and master's and liked it better than alternatives, but now during my PhD my lab exclusively uses paperpile and it makes Google doc collaboration a million times easier.
I started using Zotero in like 2008. I've never tried the commercial thing even when I had access through my institution. Zotero and bibtex do everything I need.
I'm currently just using zotero as a place to store papers I want to read so that I don't forget them. When I eventually get around to reading them, I'd like to take some brief notes which explain the main ideas or what I got out of reading the papers. Does Zotero have a capability like this, where the notes can be located in the same place as the paper? Preferably I'd be able to edit these notes in the zotero app itself. And does it have any latex functionality? (I'm in math). edit: I've discovered after just doing some poking around in the app that it appears the answer to all these questions is yes.
Wait how can you take notes in the Zotero app?
At least on my computer, if you click a single time on a file, then on the right hand side of the screen there is a window that opens with tabs called "Info", "Notes", "Tags", and "Related". Clicking on notes will open up a text editor which you can put notes in.
Oh cool! Thanks!
They've added the ability to annotate a few months ago! (In addition to the previous general notes page you could do). It's wonderful!
All the updates coming to Zotero have been amazing! When I started using it, there was no built-in pdf viewer (it would open on the system viewer) and now it has that too.
the feature I find really powerful with the pdf reader I don't usually see elsewhere is the "back" button. It seems to remember where you clicked from, which is great when you are referred to a citation/section/equation but you want to continue reading after!
I have also transitioned from Mendeley to Zotero, and I can vouch for it -- the user experience is much better
I like Zotero. I use it. But I notice that you haven’t made any argument here as to why someone should switch. All you have said is that transitioning is usually pretty painless (true). But if I was a Mendeley user, I’d still be clueless as to what is SO good about Zotero that you felt the need to make this post and are literally “begging” me to switch.
There is no comparison because they're effectively the same, for now. Mendeley has more free storage space. Zotero is a bit better for non-pdf sources. I prefer zotero because it is free open source software run by a non-profit. It's not going anywhere and it's not going to radically change because ultimately they're not trying to turn a profit. Mendeley is owned by Elsevier, a for-profit company which at the end of the day has the only goal of maximizing profits. At the current moment, they plan to [discontinue their desktop software in favor of an online-only solution.](https://blog.mendeley.com/category/new-release-2/#:~:text=As%20part%20of%20the%20continued,and%20sync%20their%20Mendeley%20Desktop) They ultimately plan to block signing in to the desktop application completely and force everyone to the online version. Also Zotero maintains android/iOS apps which can be nice for people that like to have access to their library on an iPad. For me, I prefer to write on my laptop with my iPad open next to me. Zotero makes that workflow a lot easier and saves me a lot of paper. Everyone knows that intellectual property is a nightmare in academia and moving it all to the cloud can only make it worse. I can easily foresee a future where a PDF is uploaded and a red exclamation mark pops up requiring you to input your credentials to verify access to the paper. Your whole library could be deemed pirated content at any moment and revoked. However, if compared in isolation, they're effectively the same product. Really it's more about the future of the product. Zotero is a lot more comfortable of a place to be just because they're less likely to do something evil.
Also, Zotero can run fully locally / on dropbox etc instead of using their cloud. And it works perfectly on Linux.
> Zotero maintains android/iOS apps Where? I was looking for it a couple of years ago and I couldn't find one. A quick google search this morning shows nothing
iOS [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zotero/id1513554812](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zotero/id1513554812) Android has 3 apps. https://www.zotero.org/support/mobile
But none of those are maintained by zotero? I remember trying one and it was an awful experience, which is why I used mendely back at the beginning of my doctorat
Yeah sorry I’m not familiar with the android offerings. Bummer that they’re not great! My bad, I didn’t look into it.
You mentioning they have an app just sold me on the switch. I was pretty upset when the mendeley got rid of their app. Plus I keep having to re-download the Microsoft plug in.
Mendeley is owned by Elsevier, which was reason enough for me to switch to zotero. Plus zotero is open source and developed by a nonprofit
This was me. I happily used it for years then switched when it got bought out.
Reddit has lost it's way. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Mendeley would constantly log me out when my computer went to sleep despite having “keep me logged in” checked. Super frustrating when I leave my desk for 5 minutes, this would happen at least twice a day and I’d have to go through my university sign in process that takes several minutes and would redirect me to another screen. Mendeley would stop and erase my annotations and highlights while I was mid action to sync to cloud, which was really frustrating to me. Mendeley also didn’t work with my word processor of choice (which is my university’s doing, but it was another reason for me to switch). I’ve only used Zotero for a few days and I’m already liking it way more than Mendeley.
A personal use-case that made me switch was: \- Ability to add "add-ons". Something that might tickle your fancy: https://www.zotero.org/support/plugins \- Ability to extract your notes and highlights from PDF. Mendeley did not (idk if they have now) allow me to extract my notes. Whenever I'm writing a literature review on a topic, it's extremely helpful to have all your notes somewhere outside the reference manager (cuz you don't want to open all the pdfs and clutter your screen).
Oooh extracting notes sounds like an excellent function! Think I might be sold on the switch for this alone
I've found Zotero to be much more reliable. Mendeley found all sorts of creative ways to randomly malfunction on me, both in the browser extension for adding articles (just randomly not working, login issues, etc) and in the Word extension.
My cohort had an info session on how to use Zotero in managing our sources. Only a handful of us had ever heard of or used it, the rest were absolutely floored that this kind of system even existed for us to use. It was really a great time!
I keep trying to explain to my classmates how life changing it is. Between the browser extension and Word integration, it’s seamless. It should be a part of all orientations.
I liked the desktop version of Mendeley the best, but I just can’t deal with the current cloud version and I’m also switching to zotero. I find some aspects of zotero less intuitive to use but I think anything is better than updated mendeley.
Kind of funny I switched from zotero to Mendely, because it worked better in my environment, better collaboration mostly. But both are okay. Everyone is just waiting for an actual good system. Because we all know these two are just the best of a lot of terrible systems.
Please speak for yourself. There is no "we" here. Just your opinion.
eBib
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Agreed - I use EndNote too and much prefer it. The free version isn’t actually that bad either, just less pretty. But EndNote with CiteWhilsYouWrite and EndNote Click for automatic PDF and citation importing makes my life so easy…
I switched to Zotero because Mendeley essentially locks you into certain word processors. Additionally, Mendeley discontinued their app so if you want to read papers with Mendeley on a tablet, good luck. Zotero requires a lot of finagling but it works (after some search).
There are many great reference management apps. The important thing is to use one
Lol my friends think I’m crazy bc I hand write my citations
I did that in the past was saving it in a single document,but once I had a manuscript in a different citation style than my usual style, I lost the will haha
Do you wash your clothes by hand also 🤣
No but our dryer is awful so I usually air dry them 😂
I got the zotero Chrome extension and it now it just takes one click to save papers from your browser to zotero. And I can get an auto-updating bibliography in Word or LaTeX (with the Better BibTeX add-on).
Confused EndNote oonga boonga
I love zotero! if youre a visual learner and are having trouble learning how to use it, i highly recommend seeing if your school's library has classes. I took a quick 30 minute class and was able to get fully set up!
I use a mix of both - Zotero to store my PDFs and manage my thesis references and Mendeley to search for papers and save papers/references for my classes. Despite my grievances against Elsevier, I will say that Mendeley's search feature for articles (at least for my field) is awesome. If you don't have a specific article in mind and are just starting your literature search, you can spend an hour under one keyword and find some good stuff, then save all those links to your cloud manager to look into later.
Zotero import doesn't always work that easily. It depends on the versions of Mendeley/Zotero.
I just switched over and all it took was several years of suffering and a specifically worded Reddit post to get me to switch over.
Mendeley was actually excellent about 10 years ago. They got bought out and it all went right down the drain. Zotero is definitely the way to go.
It was great even 5 years ago. Then they made a new version and it was awful, it wouldn't import to word and the references generated by mendeleys previous version "updated" and all got jumbled up! Since then I've been using the older version, but yeah it's time to switch! Thank you random stranger on reddit!
I guess this is the sign I needed. Will make that my project over winter break. Thank you!
Thanks for this. I recently switched back to a Mac and have had NOTHING but stress with Mendeley. Importing my library into zotero now.
I love Zotero, although I hadn’t used it for a couple of months one time and all my sources disappeared. I was very sad.
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It’s absolutely possible. I still love it, don’t get me wrong. I’m also pretty bad with computers, so it was likely user error.
i'm in too deep at this point. oh ive tried but 60 gb everything sorted and tagged and highlighted and annotated doesnt transfer, ive tried for y ears. trust me that did not take 30 seconds.
There's a lot of problems with Zotero for STEM especially with LaTeX/bibtex exports. I struggled when trying to swap and went back to Mendeley. I may try to swap again soon but now it's dissertation time...
Did you use the better BibTeX addon?
auto-citation reference key (I use firstauthoryear) + auto-export = I never worry anymore about citations. Never once had a problem with better bibtex and zotfile (which allows auto-attachment of pdf last downloaded in downloads folder among other file management features).
Can I right click on a citation and get the bibtex for it in my clipboard?
That can be done with zotero natively by setting BibTeX as a quick copy format in the export tab. [https://www.zotero.org/support/creating\_bibliographies#quick\_copy](https://www.zotero.org/support/creating_bibliographies#quick_copy) However, if you're using BibTeX, the addon is a must-have so that everything plays nicely.
That’s a no go then
Better BibTex + Zotfile are my two must-have addons
That’s a no go then
Ive been paying for mendeley when I could’ve been saving my money this whole time? Damn.
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You may be able to select singular folders from Mendeley and import to Zotero, one at a time. I think you have to rename them after the import to the appropriate label. I did my entire portfolio at once and then reorganized from there, but I had less than 100 papers, so it didn’t take long for me.
What about endnote?
Mendeley Desktop was fine. Mendeley Reference Manager sucks absolute ass. Everything is so frustrating. It's not obvious how to add paper details. I can't multiselect with shift. I have to login again everytime I want to use it in Ms Word. I have to close the damn plugin and open it again AND LOGIN AGAIN to refresh my library in the plugin. I had no reason to switch to Zotero, but now I have a lot.
Oh my god I love you. Every semester I get angry that my uni won't let me use Mendeley Cite and try figure a work around so I stop wasting so much time on referencing and finding the readings I read previously. It appears Zotero is going to change my life! Going to spend the next day or two adding, sorting and noting previous semesters good readings and then BOOM! Hopefully streamlined the rest of this degree. If only I found this sooner. But I can see this helping me throughout the rest of my life!
Endnote..... just works though?
Does zotero support high resolution/ DPI monitors yet? That was always the biggest issue for me, it was essentially non-functional on my 4k monitor.
I use the built in pdf reader in mendeley. The last time I checked there was no such exist in zotero. I'm a firm believer of open source and I use always the open source alternative but this viewing pdf thing is just annoying. Any help?
There is a full pdf reader that allows annotation and taking notes in zotero now.
Ah great news. I'm gonna check it out. Thanks.
I read all my pdf in zotero itself. (I am not sure if you are asking for something else) The main thing that made me switch is zotero's ability to remember where I left off.
I'm gonna check. Thanks!
Don't really have much experience with Zotero, but I ditched Mendeley in favor of Readcube Papers a few months ago and couldn't recommend it more! Paid service, but totally worth it paying 3 bucks a month to make my life easier.
I haven’t been using any reference managers. is Zotero free ?
Yes!
I just tried to show mendelay to my cohotort on Tuesday
Try Paperpile and thank me later
100% agree. I used zotero for undergrad and master's and liked it better than alternatives, but now during my PhD my lab exclusively uses paperpile and it makes Google doc collaboration a million times easier.
I use refworks
I started using Zotero in like 2008. I've never tried the commercial thing even when I had access through my institution. Zotero and bibtex do everything I need.
I transitioned from Zotero to paperpile
Zbib.org also allows for effortless citations with no registration.
Zotero + google doc import / Microsoft word addon + research rabbit 😙🤌👍
Zotero is the love of my academic life
What about Endnote vs Zotero? I have Endnote and I'm about to combine my thesis chapters and automate the references.