The vast majority of the time, the Zotero Connector is your best option for adding a source to Zotero. Occasionally, you may want to use one of the alternate methods below:
- Manual Entry - If you want to fill in all the information about a source by yourself, for example, if you have a print book in front of you rather than a website
- PDF Upload - If you have a scholarly article PDF saved on your computer, Zotero may be able to extract the metadata from the PDF itself
- RIS File - This is pretty much never the best option
Adding Sources Manually
In some cases, you may want to input the information manually. To do this:
- Click the green plus sign
- Select the kind of source that you're entering (for example, book, journal article, webpage, etc)
- Fill out all relevant information (at a minimum, author, title, and year of publication--other information will depend on the kind of source)
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Adding a Source by Uploading a PDF
Basic Steps
- Download the PDF you want to import into Zotero.
- Open Zotero Desktop App
- You can import in one of two ways:
- Click the green plus sign in the toolbar & select "Link To File." Select the PDF file
- Click and drag the PDF file into Zotero.
- Doublecheck that the information imported correctly. In the example below, all the important information was imported correctly, but Zotero had issues with some of the formatting in the title.
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Adding Sources with an RIS file
Scholarly databases allow you to export a file with all the citation information, in a format that Zotero can read.
1. In the database, use the cite or export tool, and select the RIS option. The file will be downloaded to your computer
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2. In Zotero, click the green plus sign and link to file. Select the .ris file that you downloaded. Double-click the .ris file within Zotero when it appears, and click ok in the pop-up. It will import the citation information. (You can now delete the .ris file)
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