Zotero

Zotero is a research assistant browser extension and application that helps scholars collect, organize, cite, and share research materials. The tool automatically detects and captures bibliographic information from academic websites, PDFs, and databases, creating properly formatted citations and references with minimal manual intervention. The extension's core strength lies in its ability to recognize research content on webpages and extract complete metadata with a single click, saving researchers significant time compared to manual citation entry. Zotero can extract information from journal articles, books, news stories, and other sources, adapting its capture process to the specific content type. Zotero's organization features allow researchers to structure materials with collections, tags, related items, and notes that maintain connections between sources and research thoughts. The application generates citations in thousands of styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) that can be inserted directly into word processors through plugins for Microsoft Word and Google Docs. The free version includes all core functionality with limited cloud storage for synchronized libraries, while premium plans increase storage capacity for researchers working with large collections of PDFs and other research materials. The browser extension works with Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari browsers.