Reference managementBeginner
Reference Management and Paper Writing
A complete workflow from collecting literature, managing PDFs and reading notes to drafting the paper and inserting references.
ZoteroLibreOffice
1–2 hours 5 stepsView workflow
The most powerful free reference manager, with one-click capture, multi-device sync and a Word plugin.
Zotero is a full-featured open-source reference management tool that captures citation metadata from the browser in one click, downloads PDFs automatically, provides Word/LibreOffice citation plugins and includes CSL styles (thousands of journal styles). PDF attachments can be synced via Jianguoyun (坚果云) to work around the free storage limit.
Recommended plugins: Zotero Better Notes (notes), Zotero PDF Translate (translation), Zutilo
Use cases: collecting and organising literature, citing while writing papers, sharing literature within a research group
"Everyone doing research should use Zotero — the sooner you start, the more you benefit."
A complete workflow from collecting literature, managing PDFs and reading notes to drafting the paper and inserting references.
Turn scanned PDFs, old papers and archival materials into searchable, copyable and manageable literature files.
Organise scanned PDFs, downloaded papers and old materials into a Zotero library, and use OCR and a tagging system to improve search, reading and writing efficiency.
Systematically check the manuscript text, references, figures, tables, supplementary materials and PDF files before formal submission to reduce formatting errors and rework.