Feedback on Zotero as the main citation software for a company
Quick facts: company of about 350-400 researchers, looking to make Zotero the main citation software as opposed to EndNotes.
Main opposition: fear that lack of "formal" support will make it hard to manage
My question, I am the helpdesk manager, how robust is the user forum for Zotero and can I get any feedback from folks who have made this transition?
Hope I am not violating any forum protocols, and thank you in advance for you responses.
Joe Busch
Main opposition: fear that lack of "formal" support will make it hard to manage
My question, I am the helpdesk manager, how robust is the user forum for Zotero and can I get any feedback from folks who have made this transition?
Hope I am not violating any forum protocols, and thank you in advance for you responses.
Joe Busch
In terms of responsiveness, most forum posts are responded to within a day (I can say that I personally check the forums at least once a day to try to respond to questions).
I'm primarily an active user of Zotero. I transitioned to Zotero about 5 years ago from Endnote, and I am always been immensely impressed with the responsiveness of the developers and the community. This was a big part of why I became involved, as well. I've transitioned my entire lab and many of my collaborators' labs over to Zotero. The ease of Zotero's groups for sharing items among team members has been incredible.
Overall, I don't think that support will be a major obstacle for successfully implementing Zotero in your organization. Zotero has also worked with organizations before regarding institutional storage plans and other collaborations with large organizations.
In addition to that, I've consulted with a mid-sized biomed startup who uses Zotero for all their literature. It's also used for International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, and in use at several other international organizations including the IAEA, the International Labor Organization, and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, so definitely suitable for large organizations.
Also, the open source nature comes with unique benefits. One of which is that if you are in desperate of a feature, you could possibly write your own solution, or fund an existing add-in developer to add the solution to their toolkit. Please note I am saying add-in developer, not the core Zotero development team.