Speaker 1: We all know that if you are writing a thesis and you are not good at citation, you may be committing plagiarism. Welcome back to PhD Coffee Time. This is the online community for you as PhD student to get motivation, peer support, and practical tips during your PhD. Today, I'd like to share with you what I like about Zotero and how I use it. And if you are struggling with thesis writing, I highly recommend you to set up your SMART goal with me in this video of SMART goal academic writing. When I started PhD, my university paid for a paid software called EndNote. I'd like to share a little bit about my transitioning story from using EndNote to this software, Zotero. That was also the value of Coffee Break. Back in America, we used to hold coffee meeting with postdoc community. I tried to organize a coffee meeting with my colleagues and you know postdoc are busy people. So nobody showed up except this one postdoc. And we got into this conversation on how he organized his citation tool. And it was my Coffee Break that helped so much for my future writing and it saved me a lot of time. For those who are new to a citation software, you need to check it out. Because when you are citing a paper on your academic writing, you always have to read the guideline for authorship. First, understand every reference you put in your thesis, you need to follow the same citation style. Depending on which discipline you are in your research, it may have a different requirement. This library website by University of Pittsburgh, they have done a good job summarizing how it would look like for like APA style. Different materials and different type of references like a book, an e-book, an article, website, they all require a different way of referencing. To avoid plagiarism, it's important that all the statement you made, if this is not a common sense sentence, you must have a citation with it. It is perhaps the most challenging job when I started writing scientific articles. Because it's hard to move forward with writing if you are not good at citing references. If you need to revise and submit to another journal, the benefit of having a citation software is it lets you change one style to the other by author date format to number format in just one click. And it's also called the cite while you write function. When you are writing your paragraph and you want to cite a paper, you can just add the citation on the spot. You're not going to copy other's idea without acknowledging them. That is a big no-no. So back to citation tool. Let me share this story. I was doing postdoc research. My citation list has already gone up to 1,000 because I never opened a new library for each writing. And somehow I stick in the same research field for a long time. After perhaps six years, I have accumulated more than 1,000 paper in my EndNote library. And that causes a frustration. Whenever I wanted to cite a paper, it cost three seconds. And the citation will eventually get cited. But sometimes it will just crush my whole computer. That is the moment I realized EndNote has a limit. I tested the speed between Zotero and EndNote. It is a lot faster. I exported all my library in EndNote on the same day when I was introduced to Zotero. And I imported it to my Zotero software. I downloaded it on the spot. I tried adding a citation to a Word document. It didn't take a second. It was fast. So Zotero is a free software. And for those who have seen all my other videos, you will know I'm a big fan of free software. Because you can travel and start a new position without the worry that you may not have a compatible software in the new institution. So let me take you to the website for downloading Zotero. You can Google search Zotero and download. You will get to this page. It comes with a connector for Chrome. And if you use Chrome as your internet browser for searching science articles, you could have one button that directly puts your reference into Zotero. Because in EndNote, I remember in the past, I need to download and then I need to open that file to EndNote. And import it. So there are like three to five buttons that I need to click for every input. In Zotero, with the software on your computer and the add-in, you only need to click once. And that saves a lot of time. Now let me take you behind to my computer screen to look at how Zotero looks like. On the left side, the full library contains all of the references. You could create folders. It's going to make your organization easier. Folder can represent the research topic or different chapters of your thesis, different paper. Any paper you import to Zotero under your folder are going to automatically show up in your library list. So your library will grow as your folder grows. To set up the environment to write and cite paper, At the same time, I recommend this word processor plug-in. When you're writing, it will have a new tab for citation. And you can just search your references like that. Hit enter and you will cite the paper with the references in place. I think it's a really powerful and streamlined way that you could just import your reference from the browser, go to your Word file, and just hit citation button without worrying about all this reference formatting in the first place. Even using the paid version of EndNote, I have to stress the fact that none of these software citation tools are perfect. For example, I am a biologist. So all of my paper includes italicized species names, CO2 with a 2 with subscript. And a lot of time they might be all capped for no reason. Any student submitting a thesis when they export the software referencing, they are just a framework for you to save time putting this information out. And you're always, always required to go through them one by one and check that you don't have a silly typo just because the software didn't import the right format. There is no computer references that is going to be perfect because it depends on how the source of your importing looks like. Sometimes they are formatted in a strange way that you still need to manually check and visualize every error by yourself. This is the interface of Zotero on a new computer. When you are working in the office of a university library, you have to start writing in a new environment. This is the place that you can synchronize your library from your home computer with your login ID and password. And you can see it syncs my library in a few minutes. And everything is there and I can start writing with all the references just like I have in my home computer. To start using a different citation software is to understand how your information is stored. All your references can be downloaded, exported, and imported again to any citation software using the format of RIS or BibTeX. Here is a file button and you can see the option of import and export. You can export your current library from Zotero. For example, if you decided to go to Mandalay, this is the place to do it. So to conclude the video, I'd like to direct you to this table comparing all of these different reference citation software, EndNote, Mandalay, and Zotero. And they are from this library website. I will put the link in the description box. From reading this table, you will be able to streamline your decision tree on which one you will select. As a summary, I see that Zotero has a limitation with number of preloaded citation styles. But it looks like there are downloadable thousands of versions that could be upgraded if you need certain styles. EndNote is the strongest among different versions and flexibility of citation styles as you need it and they are already in the package. Now Mandalay is very similar to Zotero and they are both available on the online sharing platform. So you can synchronize your reference manager across computers. But with this table, it also alarmed me with the fact that Mandalay has a lot more storage space than Zotero. I haven't personally used Mandalay. This is not meant to be a thorough review. But I think this is a great comparison chart that will inform you better with your decision. With that, I leave you to think about how you would like to cite in your research writing. And I hope this Zotero introduction is helpful for you to consider all the possible tools out there to help your research. If you enjoy what I shared today, please make sure to hit the subscribe button. And thank you for checking in and I will see you the next time. Thank you.