Create a manually ordered reading list on Zotero?

peteradkins
I have recently switched from Mendeley to Zotero and absolutely love it for ordering my references.

I am working on a new article and I want to create a list of articles and books to revisit / read on the subject for the literature reviewer. I have created a new folder and dragged the relevant references into it, but I want to order them according to how I am going to prioritise reading them. It follows no logic other than my judgment of what is most important in the field. However, there is no way I can see of manually ordering the references in the folder to follow my own preference.

Am I overlooking this, or is it not possible in Zotero at the moment?
  • adamsmith
    That's correct, that's not possible. Zotero isn't useful for outlining.
  • peteradkins
    Thank you. Can anyone suggest software or apps that would be best for this?
  • janbaykara
    edited December 25, 2025
    Hello! As a merry xmas eve gift, here is a new plugin, Zotero Syllabus, which helps you arrange collections of items into structured reading lists (as in university modules).

    Would be glad to discuss on this forum thread: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/128688/zotero-syllabus-a-plugin-for-managing-your-uni-course-reading-lists?new=1
  • Faidtastic
    I found this post while Googling for similar; I've got a list of items to review about a topic, and am going to manually order my reading based on relevance I assess from title and abstract. I'm not surprised to find this doesn't exist, but I thought I'd suggest my intended workaround: There are a lot of item info types in Zotero that aren't typically used, including one like "Extra." My intent is to use this field to simply number the items 01 - 40, and then select this column as one that the library pane shows, allowing me to sort by that value. I imagine you no longer need this solution, but perhaps someone else will stumble upon this like I have and find the idea useful. (Remember to double-check your references lists if you use Zotero plugins to be sure none of your "internal notes" like this numbering system transfer through! They probably won't in most citation styles, but you never know . . .)
Sign In or Register to comment.