Citation Tools

No - you can use any email to sign-up for a Mendeley or Zotero account. For students, we recommend using a personal email address so you do not have to change it after you graduate. 

It is a personal preference! We recommend either -- both Mendeley and Zotero are great free tools that offer similar features. The largest differences are:

• Mendeley Reference Manager sometimes has technical issues with MacOS due to not updating to new operating system versions. It works, but you may encounter random error messages in the Word plugin.  Zotero frequently updates to new operating systems for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

• Mendeley offers a mobile app that is compatible with both Android and iOS phones and tablets, which provides flexibility. Zotero has an iOS app and its Android app is currently in beta.

• Both Zotero and Mendeley offer PDF annotating features including notetaking and highlighting of stored PDFs.

• Zotero is the only citation tool that currently integrates with Google Docs.

Mendeley and Zotero both have web-based features and desktop versions, but for different purposes. 

• Online accounts - Sign-up for either tool from their website:

  • Mendeley.com is your online library and is primarily used to import and organize citations from various resources. 

  • Zotero.org is primarily used to create groups and share citations from your library. It does have a web library that syncs to your desktop account, but importing directly into your desktop version is recommended. 

• Desktop accounts: 

  • Mendeley Reference Manager provides additional features not available in Mendeley.com. It syncs with your online account to create custom bibliographies and offers a plugin for Microsoft Word or LibreOffice to auto-format in-text citations & reference lists.  NOTE: you must use a personal Microsoft account for the Word add-on as Microsoft 365 for Education is currently not supported. 

  • Zotero is primarily a desktop program. It works best when using the browser extension or bookmarklet to import citations directly to your desktop version. Zotero auto-installs the plugin for Microsoft Word to allow you to format in-text citations & bibliographies.

Both Mendeley and Zotero use a browser extension or bookmarklet to import citations into the program and are compatible with all major browsers:

• Mendeley Web Importer

• Zotero Connector

You can also search for articles on Mendeley.com, as it acts as a social media-like platform to share research articles. 

Both Mendeley and Zotero offer integrated Microsoft Word or Google Docs (Zotero only) plugins. 

• Mendeley - Install Mendeley Cite - a recently released Microsoft Word add-on (included when you download Mendeley Reference Manager)

• Zotero - Zotero auto-installs the plugin in both Microsoft Word and Google Docs.  In Word, a separate Zotero tab will appear in your horizontal navigation.

In both programs, use your cursor to indicate where you would like to insert an in-text citation, select your citation style, and insert. Just note that you need to have previously imported your citations into Mendeley or Zotero in order to insert citations using the Word/Google Docs plugin. 

No - there is currently no way for multiple Mendeley/Zotero accounts to insert citations into the same Word or Google Doc. It is recommended you designate one person in your team to handle the citations and they will insert the citations into the document. You can create a shared library of citations with collaborators with either program, but when you install the Word/Google plugin, it is associated with your personal Mendeley/Zotero account, and crossing accounts when sharing a document can cause issues. 

Like all tools, you may encounter issues from time to time. If an error message appears in either Mendeley or Zotero, your screen freezes, or any other issues arise:

• Save your document

• Close or logout of Mendeley/Zotero/Word/Google Docs

• Restart your browser and/or computer

• Sometimes you may also need to uninstall and reinstall the Word plugin if that is presenting the issue. 

Don't hesitate to reach out to us! We are happy to help troubleshoot any problems you encounter!