Zotero to MS Word workflow

iancg
Hi everyone! First of all, thank you to all the Zotero developers for such a wonderful platform.

My current workflow when reviewing literature is to read the PDF in Zotero's native reader -> highlight text -> manually copy phrases or rephrase them -> paste or type in MS Word -> add citation in MS Word.

Is there a more efficient workflow to do this?

I tried to add highlights to a Zotero note then copy-paste (+/- rephrasing or editing) to MS Word, but after pasting to MS Word, the citation is just in plain text form rather than a Zotero citation link.
  • adamsmith
    Use the "Insert Note" button in the Zotero Word add-on to get quotes with live citations from Zotero into Word
  • iancg
    Thanks Adam! The citation (using APA) in Zotero notes includes the page number and gets copied over to MS Word once I use the Add Note function. Is there a way to remove the page number from the citation in MS Word? Or not including the page number in Zotero Notes in the first place?
  • adamsmith
    No -- why wouldn't you want the page number though? That'd be required in most author-date styles for literal citations.
  • iancg
    Unfortunately our institution does not like the page to be included, just the (Author, Date) style.
  • dstillman
    edited November 24, 2022
    These are real Zotero citations, so you can click Add/Edit Citation on each one and remove it via the citation dialog, but it might be easier for you to just customize the style to not include page numbers.
  • adamsmith
    We can tell you how to edit the APA style -- but are you sure about this? Removing page numbers from direct citations directly contradicts the APA manual (and would generally be considered poor practice across most disciplines)
  • iancg
    I'll bring it up with our faculty again, but leaving page numbers out seem to be their preference.
  • neilpatel
    Hey iancg, did you find a way around this? Also was it possible to have the citations have the page numbers listed in the bibliography BUT NOT in the in-text citation?
  • adamsmith
    To be clear -- this is absolutely possible to do in a citation style and if you tell us which one you're using we can tell you how. Making citations less precise is just a terrible idea from a scholarly perspective, so where people have agency over this, I'd like to discourage it.
  • neilpatel
    edited February 16, 2023
    My approach to writing papers is copying the text and grouping papers with similar ideas in the notes. Then I rewrite my understanding with the citations right there. The issue during submission is that while the journals might expect page numbers for each citation 'during review', they do not want/expect it to be displayed when published. In short, they do not want the page numbers in the "in-text" citation, although it may be integrated into the bibliography below (depending on citation style). Since my writing involves using the notes' citations, it saves me the time to insert them again later. Thus, although I do not intend to remove the citation information altogether, I wish to remove it "from display" in the in-text part.

    I am totally fine if the page number is there as a "comment (like in HTML, comments are not displayed, but exist)" in the citation style, but I just want them hidden to ease my writing and submission.

    I currently have no specific citation style in mind since I recently transitioned to Zotero from Mendeley; however, since Zotero offers this functionality, I wanted to use it to make the academic writing process easier.

    I would appreciate a walkthrough if there is a general way to do this in any citation style. This is similar to "inserting references using Zotero" since Zotero, during insertion, inserts the paper for a citation and not the page number.
  • adamsmith
    In the broadest terms, you want to delete
    <text variable="locator"/> from the style, but that can occur in slightly different forms and also include a label (something like
    <group delimiter=" ">
    <label variable="loactor" form="short"/>
    <text variable="locator"/>
    </group>

    General instructions https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/citation_styles/style_editing_step-by-step
  • neilpatel
    I gather that this change can be done by going into Zotero --> Settings --> Cite --> Styles and in "Style Editor." I wanted to ask 'which style' I should be changing for the "Notes" or "Annotations" feature in Zotero, since when I use *any* style to insert references normally, they *do not* include the page numbers (obviously since I just add the manuscript randomly).

    Attaching a video for better understanding. Since it is longer than 60 seconds, I could not upload it to Imgur. My apologies.

    https://anonfiles.com/KeQ74bY5y5

    Here you can see that, although the 'manually' added reference and the reference added through 'Add Note' option used the same style, the former includes the page number while the latter does not. I want to figure out where I should be going to make the edits so that the 'Add note' option does not include the page number too. I saw the link you shared for general instructions, but I could not figure it out. My apologies again if I have a limited understanding since I am not a tech person.
  • adamsmith
    The notes will always display the page info and there's no way to remove that.

    The information will also always be included in the *metadata* when you add a citation to Word by using the Add Note button.

    However, whether the page number will then be *displayed* depends on the citation style you're using in that document, so that's the one you want to modify.
  • neilpatel
    Okay, got you Adam! Lemme go over it once and check it out. Thank you for your support.
  • neilpatel
    I tried to go over your steps, but I noted that it did not show me the Disease-a-month style in the Style editor list itself. Am I doing something wrong?

    Find the steps here: https://imgur.com/a/nP7bs9M
  • adamsmith
    Disease-a-Month is just a link to the American Medical Association style, so that's what you actually want to edit.
  • neilpatel
    Thank you Adam! I appreciate the help. It's working well.
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