One of my short-term goals (understood as “short” as in the next 3 years, approximately) is to do a PhD related to the Internet. To do this, as if teaching at the UAB, giving lectures, running a company and being a mother of 3 children were not enough, I am currently studying a master’s degree in Information Society and I have chosen the branch of the master’s degree dedicated to research so that I can start the PhD next year.
As a result of the work I have to do for my master's degree, I have been forced to use a bibliographical reference manager. For those who don't know what this is, a reference manager is a program that automatically stores the information that refers to articles, books, posts, etc. and facilitates its subsequent insertion in citations when we are writing a text. It also automatically creates the bibliography and standardizes its format.
There are many types of bibliographic managers, both free and paid software, desktop or online, and many of them can be integrated into Word and the internet browser you use. (You will find more information about these programs in this post from Abysnet)
After trying a few of them, I have opted for Zotero (www.zotero.org).
This program is online, it is integrated into Firefox to automatically record the references that we obtain from the Internet (it is not integrated into Explorer), and it is integrated into Word, to automatically cite all the references that we have entered into our database, and to create the bibliography to which the document we are working on refers.
Zotero also has a social network based on sharing bibliography related to specific topics.
As for now I'm going to focus on research The advantages of incorporating traditional commerce online, as well as the key success factors for these businesses when they decide to have a presence on the Internet, I have created a group dedicated to sharing bibliography that refers to this field of research.
The group is open and anyone can join it. At the moment I am alone (I created it yesterday), but if you are interested in researching this topic, you can join my group by clicking here (eCommerce & Digital Marketing) and contribute to creating a good bibliographic base.
On the other hand, if anyone else is using Zotero and would like to share tips, tricks, etc. with us, I'd be happy to do so. Right now, for example, I'm trying to figure out how to write blog post articles so that Zotero automatically recognizes them and can add them to its database with a single click (… I'll look into WordPress plugins to see if I can find one that works for me. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated).
Post note: I have already found a plugin for WordPress that converts posts into easily interpretable data for reference managers such as Zotero. You can download it here: WordPress Plugin
We talk to each other.
8 responses
Hi Montse, I came across your blog from the Zotero community, looking for classmates who studied at UOC.
I am a student of Humanities, which I try to combine with my job in a bank.
…but a hundred light years away from your hyperactivity and multitasking. …
About Zotero. I've been using it for a couple of years, although I didn't sync with the web, but instead worked locally, integrated with Mozilla and OpenOffice (as you'll see, I don't like paying licenses if I can).
It works very well. I find it increasingly useful. I also use it to save notes and extracts from some of the books I read for my degree in case I need information from them in the future.
I usually use it in searches with Google Scholar, exporting the citations in EndNote and Zotero recognizes it and imports the data.
It is one of the essential tools for academic work. In fact, I think I will make a donation soon.
Greetings and congratulations on your blog and your projects.
Hi Jose, thanks for the comment.
Now that I've been using Zotero for a while, I also realize that it is especially useful for capturing files and integrating them into the word processor, and later including references and bibliographies. The online community and shared files, to be honest, are not used much... perhaps working in research groups, they are more useful. But working on your own, no.
Regarding what you said about Google Scholar, you are right in that it is very practical for incorporating the files.
To make it easier to add references to Zotero and any other reference manager, WordPress has a plugin that you install on your blog and makes your blog posts and pages Zoterio-friendly. I wish more people would use it and it would be much easier to add bibliographies to our databases.
A hug.
In Word? I don't see it, do I need to install something for the tab to appear?
Mari-Carmen, once the plugin is installed, a new tab called “Add-ons” appears in Word, which is where all the bibliographic management functions are.
On this page you will find more information about the plugin and about the download http://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_installation
A hug.
Cleo: Thank you very much for leaving the comment. A big hug and I hope you have a good time in Chile (Easter or business trip?)
Mari-Carmen: I didn’t know Connotea, I’ll have to take a closer look at it… although I’ve now started working with Zotero. Before, I had worked with Refworks because it was the one that everyone recommended, and the one that I could use out of the “paid” ones thanks to the university license. But with the university license I couldn’t integrate it into Word, so that lost some of the fun. In the end I opted for Zotero and for now I like how easy it is to incorporate references (CTR+ALT+Z from any web page that has content identified with standard fields and that’s it) and then cite them in documents (in Word a new tab appears and allows you to include the citations from your database).
Isaac: Wow! It's true that we talk about similar topics. I'll have to keep following you to stay up to date. Thank you very much.
Montserrat, just a few lines to congratulate you on your blog. As you can see, we deal with similar topics…and curiously, we have had the blog almost since the same year. I read you. 😉
Thanks for the tip. I knew about the website but I had no references from anyone who had used it. Have you tried Connotea? Which others do you know?
These questions come to me because I am currently preparing a PhD course and I am teaching them “research methodology”. One of the points I want to touch on is that of bibliography managers. My students can use RefWorks because they bought it at the university, but I wanted to show them other alternatives, in particular those that are online and free to use.
Thanks for the post!
MC
Good morning Montse!
Very good post, both pieces of information are quite useful and at least in my case applicable.
Thank you very much for sharing them.
Greetings from Santiago, Chile.
Cleo Vargas