Import list of reference in Word

karim.chellaoui

Hello,

I'm working on a literature review and would like to import several references in Word all at once in a table(one line per reference). Is there a way to achieve this?

Thanks !

LiborA

If you do not need it linked to the Zotero, you can drag and drop selected references to the MS Excel and then copy this table to your Word. But these references will be copied as a plain text.

adamsmith

If you want formatted references in a text, you could also just copy&paste a bibliography to Word (using right-click --> create bibliography) and then use the text-->table conversion in Word.
Same problem though in that they won't be linked to Zotero -- generally, lots of linked references in a single table often turn out to be problematic. Word doesn't handle fields in tables very well.

karim.chellaoui

Thanks for your answers. It's unfortunate I can't have the links to Zotero because I'd like to have short references directly generated and filling the table(the full citation occupies a lot of space and publications aren't easily identifiable), and listing up full references in a bibliography.

bwiernik

I'm not sure exactly what you mean. Can you describe exactly what you want with an an example?

karim.chellaoui

I'd like to have a table looking like this:
Reference |Column1|column2|...
Author1,Date1| xxx |xxxxxx|...
Author2,Date2| yyy |zzzz |...


And insert later in the document the bibliography with the full references
* ArticleTitle1,Author1,Date1,Journal,...
* ArticleTitle2,Author2,Date2,Journal,...

This would also save me some space in the document since publications often have to go through several screening/appraisal stages.

bwiernik

And what style are you using?

karim.chellaoui

Elsevier:
(Delaunay, 2015)
Delaunay, C. (2015). Registries in orthopaedics. Orthopaedics & Traumatology: Surgery & Research, 101(1, Supplement), S69–S75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.otsr.2014.06.029

bwiernik

I’d recommend inserting these as regular citations using the word processor plugin. You can insert them in the form Author (Year) by using Suppress Author in the Add Citation window. This would be the way to get the reference list at the end to automatically update. There isn’t a way to insert multiple citations into different table cells at one time that will also have an automatically updating reference list.

If you like, you can modify the .csl style file to use the Author (Year) format instead of (Author, Year). That would save having to use Suppress Author, but you would need to edit the tables and manuscript text in separate documents. I can walk you through those changes if you like.

If you don’t mind manually updating the reference list, there are some ways to use Excel and a custom CSL style to speed up the citation inserting process.

Out of curiosity, is this for a systematic review or meta-analysis?

karim.chellaoui

Well i'm not so concerned by the style tbh. It's for a systematic review indeed.
I'm currently facing a list of +500 references in a single review and adding them up one by one using the word processor plugin would simply take too much time.

bwiernik

With that many sources, I wouldn’t use the Word plugin. Add a CODED tag to all of the references in your review. If you add or remove a source, adjust the tag accordingly.

Then, filter your library on this tag, select all, right-click and Create Bibliography from Selection. Choose a style with a Short Bibliogrpahy format (I am away from the computer, but can post a link to one later today or tomorrow). Paste this list in Word, select them all, and use Word’s covert text to table function. Then continue to add your other data. (You can also just simply paste into Excel and enter your other data there. This is what I would recommend to make the data easier to consume for readers.)

Then, Create Bibliogrpahy again in Zotero and use the Elsevier APA style that the journal requests.

This method requires manually exporting the Bibliogrpahy, but is much faster than inserting one by one into Word using the plugin. The CODED tag makes it easy to track the items that need to be in the Bibliogrpahy. If you later need to add or remove an item, you just delete the existing one and re-export it from Zotero.

bwiernik

Here is the style I use when making systematic review source tables in this way.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/bwiernik/styles/199e37b1615d2ae17c0ce764d0848103cb59de78/systematic-review-tables.csl

karim.chellaoui

Thanks for your answer, I will try your style. I'm not tied to any journal requirements so I'm quite free there, it's more about readability.
How do you deal with multiple tags then? My screening process consists of several questions.

bwiernik

Do you mean showing the process by which you excluded each article? I use a general REJECTED tag to indicate the item was rejected, then add a second tags starting with an asterisk (e.g., *No Sample Size) to indicate why. I reject sources sequentially, so I only have one * tag for each item. Then, filter on both REJECTED and each * tag in sequence, exporting its citations.

Also, I recommend working with each systematic review project in a separate Group Library, that way your tags don’t get mixed up between projects.

karim.chellaoui

Thanks, this is useful!

mark

Just to note bwiernik's workflow here would make an excellent blog posting or documentation page. I'm sure many people would be happy to hear of a good way to use Zotero for a systematic review and this sounds like a well thought out method.

bwiernik

I'm working on a preprint/journal article on that topic. If you search for my name and either "systematic review" or "meta-analysis", there are about a dozen posts I've made over the years talking about my workflow.

If there are any specific questions about various steps in the process you'd like me to address, please let me know!