Zotero has an Item Type for Software [click the green+ icon]. Filling in the fields for that type should produce a proper citation with most styles.
What bibliographic style are you required to use?
Title: Zotero Programmer: ? see developers link below Version: [see your version under Zotero / About Zotero] (7.0.0-beta.28 in my case or 7.0.0-beta.28+3a43a98f1 more specifically) Date (if you need this for your style you can probably use the current year unless you don't update your version when new ones are offered) System (in my case Mac 13.4.1 (c) ) Place: Vienna, VA USA [Vienna, Virginia] Company: Corporation for Digital Scholarship Prog. Language: (someone may have a suggestion but i ignore this field) ISBN: ignore URL: https://www.zotero.org/ Rights: ( I have used "open access" but there may be a more specific statement)
Takats, S., Stillman, D., Cheslack-Postava, F., Bagdonas, M., Jellinek, A., Najdek, T., Petrov, D., Rentka, M., & Venčkauskas, A. (2023). Zotero (6.0.26) [Windows 10]. Corporation for Digital Scholarship. https://www.zotero.org/
This is just one man's opinion (based upon how we have done things in the public health field) but I would list Dan Stillman as first author (as he is lead software developer) and Takats as last author indicating that he is the department head.
If you're going to list programmers, that's definitely right, but given how Zotero is developed, listing a corporate author rather than individuals makes more sense, i.e. "(Corporation for Digital Scholarship, 2023)" as the in-text citation and then accordingly for the bibliography. Where researchers write academic software, it's indeed important to credit them by name since citations are an important measure of impact for them. But all of the people listed except Sean are professional software developers/engineers so that's less relevant here and crediting the current development team is also questionable given past contributions -- several of them substantial and/or foundational by others.
I would use this reference in APA 7: Corporation for Digital Scholarship. (2023). Zotero (6.0.26) [Software]. https://www.zotero.org/ (Original work published 2006)
With the corporate author entered as the author, “6.0.26” entered as the version, “Software” entered in either Programming Language or Format (though I think you can omit and APA.CSL will add that automatically), and “Original date: 2006” entered in Extra
Please provide an official bibtex version of this, directly on the website(at https://www.zotero.org/support/credits_and_acknowledgments), I find it strange that everyone would have to enter that information manually for a sofware aiming at making citing things (including software) easy.
Even better, the zotero codebase on GitHub should get a Citation.cff file, and should be archived on zenodo to get a doi and be easily citable (using zotero magic wand), no?
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What bibliographic style are you required to use?
Title: Zotero
Programmer: ? see developers link below
Version: [see your version under Zotero / About Zotero] (7.0.0-beta.28 in my case or 7.0.0-beta.28+3a43a98f1 more specifically)
Date (if you need this for your style you can probably use the current year unless you don't update your version when new ones are offered)
System (in my case Mac 13.4.1 (c) )
Place: Vienna, VA USA [Vienna, Virginia]
Company: Corporation for Digital Scholarship
Prog. Language: (someone may have a suggestion but i ignore this field)
ISBN: ignore
URL: https://www.zotero.org/
Rights: ( I have used "open access" but there may be a more specific statement)
Developers and others:
https://www.zotero.org/support/credits_and_acknowledgments
edit:
This was discussed many years ago (in 2010):
https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/12773/bibliographic-reference-info-for-zotero-itself#latest
The final result:
Takats, S., Stillman, D., Cheslack-Postava, F., Bagdonas, M., Jellinek, A., Najdek, T., Petrov, D., Rentka, M., & Venčkauskas, A. (2023). Zotero (6.0.26) [Windows 10]. Corporation for Digital Scholarship. https://www.zotero.org/
Where researchers write academic software, it's indeed important to credit them by name since citations are an important measure of impact for them. But all of the people listed except Sean are professional software developers/engineers so that's less relevant here and crediting the current development team is also questionable given past contributions -- several of them substantial and/or foundational by others.
Corporation for Digital Scholarship. (2023). Zotero (6.0.26) [Software]. https://www.zotero.org/ (Original work published 2006)
With the corporate author entered as the author, “6.0.26” entered as the version, “Software” entered in either Programming Language or Format (though I think you can omit and APA.CSL will add that automatically), and “Original date: 2006” entered in Extra
Even better, the zotero codebase on GitHub should get a Citation.cff file, and should be archived on zenodo to get a doi and be easily citable (using zotero magic wand), no?