Used citations & copy and paste

cfeuerherdt

I have noticed in writing my thesis and adding citations from Zotero that the longer the bibliography gets the slower it is to add a citation. Naturally I am more often than not referring to a citation that is already in my bibliography (ie has been used before). I am wondering whether it is possible for Zotero to show a 'shortlist' of citations already used in the document. This would, in my case, reduce the number of references from 500+ to 30-40. Obviously I would have the option to select from the full list should I need to reference a new work.

The other thing that bugs me is the inability to copy & paste references in OpenOffice. Copy & paste currently only pastes the text. This is a real limiting factor and reduces productivity. Why is it not possible to c&p reference or bookmarks?

Jon Rubin

On your first point: when I was writing my thesis I had separate sub-folders set up in Zotero for each chapter and another sub-folder for all the read but not cited references that I used when constructing the bibliography. So long as the relevant chapter sub-folder was selected in Zotero, this speeded things up noticeably. Would this work for you?
Regards, Jon.

cfeuerherdt

Jon,

It sounds like a viable work-around.

Craig

francesca

Thank-you for the tip Jon! It does help!

Nonetheless, Craig's suggestions are (both) still very good ones, and I hope that the developers will continue to address them.

iphigenia

(There is a discussion about the second point (copying and pasting references) at http://forums.zotero.org/discussion/5524/cut-and-paste-work-but-copy-and-paste-doesnt/ )