Creating Citations & Bibliographis

chrisg550
Hi,
The instructions in the documentation for creating bibliographies do not work, at least on my computer. Does anyone have instructions that work?

Thanks
  • fcheslack
    edited September 7, 2023
    You can generally assume that the documentation is correct and works for most people. If you think the documentation is wrong you should link to what specific instructions you're talking about.

    https://www.zotero.org/support/reporting_problems
    https://www.zotero.org/support/word_processor_plugin_troubleshooting
  • adamsmith
    (and, what exactly you're trying -- there's a whole bunch of ways to create bibliographies)
  • chrisg550
    Thank you for the feedback. To be specific, the following instructions, from "Creating Biliographies" in the documentation on line, do not work on my computer:

    1. If you just want to quickly add references to a paper, email, or blog post, Zotero's Quick Copy is the easiest way to go. Simply select items in the center column and drag them into any text field. Zotero will automatically create a formatted bibliography for you. To copy citations instead of references, hold down Shift at the start of the drag. - Selected items will not drag.

    2. To create a bibliography or a citations list in Zotero, highlight one or more references and then right-click (or control-click on Macs) to select “Create Bibliography from Selected Item(s)…”. - Right-click does nothing.

    I was simply wondering if there were other instructions I could try to see if they work on my PC.

    Thanks.
  • adamsmith
    Are you in the Zotero Desktop software? That's what those instructions apply to. If so, what options do you see when you right-click items in the middle panel
  • chrisg550
    Yes, I am using the desktop version of Zotero. Right-clicking the middle column yields a menu with the options to resize, split vertically or horizontally, zoom in or out, zoom to page width or height, next page, previous page.

  • adamsmith
    That's the right-click menu for the PDF reader. You want to be in the leftmost tab, where the list of your items is in the middle panel. That's where you can select any number of items (using shift+click or ctrl+click) and then get the standard right-click menu.
  • tim820
    edited September 11, 2023
    Those right click options you're seeing are in the zotero PDF reader. You need to be in the main library view to see all your items in the middle pane, and select which ones you want to add to a quick bibliography (ie without using the word processor plugin). Having done that, follow the instructions you quoted above. Try your #2 first. For Output Method, select Copy to the Clipboard. Then just paste the bibliography into your word processor document.


  • chrisg550
    I must missing something. In the item or library view I see the different articles listed. I can select one or more articles & I get the correct menu with right-click, but there is no way that I can see to select individual references within the articles.
  • chrisg550
    Moreover, if I proceed with "Create bibliogrpahy from item," it generates only one reference and not necessarily from the selected article.
  • tim820
    edited September 11, 2023
    The bibliography referred to the documentation is one that you want to create yourself, from a subset of your library's items (and then place it in a word processor document you are writing). It is not the reference list/bibliography from a single paper you are reading. Journal publishers provide no easy way to extract that list of all the individual cited references from their papers (although several Zotero plugin developers have been working on ways of doing that).

    Create Bibliography from Item creates a bibliography with whatever items from your library you have selected in it. If you only have one selected, you'll get a bibliography with one item in it.
  • adamsmith
    You create bibliographies from items in your library, not from the references list of items in your library -- not sure why you're expecting that?

    The standard workflow for Zotero is
    1. Collect literature (typically using the browser add-on)
    2. Organize literature (collections, tags, etc.)
    3. Cite, either using Create Bibliography or the word processor add-ons.

    You'd never cite references within sources you have collected (there are some add-ons that can help you extract references from articles in your library, but that's a rather different topic)
  • chrisg550
    My mistake, I thought one could create a bibliography from references within each article. The reason I would expect that, in answer to your question, is that it is common practice to build prospective bibliogrpahies from references cited in articles. The articles themselves are not the only sources for research. It is true you would not cite references from articles you had yet to read but you would collect such references in a bibliogrpahy to be used for future research.

    You indicated there were add-ons that could help with that. Which one specifically?
  • damnation
    See https://www.zotero.org/support/adding_items_to_zotero

    You want to install the Zotero Connector. You can do so here: https://www.zotero.org/download/connectors
  • adamsmith
    They're asking about reference extraction add-ons like. I think @tim820 has actually tested them out, so I'll let him respond
  • tim820
    edited September 12, 2023
    @chrisg550 as you say a common way to build up your reference library is to look at the references cited in a paper you are reading, and add the important ones to your library. Unfortunately as I alluded to, journal publishers have traditionally made ready access to that reference list information in their PDF papers very difficult if not impossible (not unlike their paywalling of the papers; whose content publishers didn't pay for in the first place). So that reference list data has not been widely available in the online open databases that Zotero routinely looks up for many similar purposes.

    As a result of various pressures on them, more publishers have started to relent and add reference lists to the basic metadata they submit to online databases. Some plugin developers have developed tools to extract those reference lists, either by retrieving them from online databases like Crossref, and/or by reading a PDF paper's reference list text directly and then attempting to parse it into the individual references. See for example the zetero-reference plugin (now with English instructions) ...
    https://github.com/MuiseDestiny/zotero-reference

    If you then want to download the PDF for a reference in the list, that plugin will attempt to take you to the journal paper's web page, where you can download the PDF if you have access rights (via the Zotero Connector in your browser). It's not a perfect process, but it's quite effective.

    But most people still do the task you're talking about by simple selecting and copying the text in the PDF paper's reference list for the cited reference they want to read, pasting that text into the search box in their browser, selecting the best option to locate that paper (eg journal web page), and finally downloading the paper automatically into Zotero from there (via the Zotero connector).
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