References

Your library as a formatted bibliography, in any CSL style, with saved sheets per chapter.

References turns the library you built in Sources into formatted citations, so once you pick a style from the full CSL catalogue, which covers effectively every style any journal or university has ever specified, your sources render as a bibliography you can copy or export. The part to learn is reference sheets, which are named subsets of your library, each with its own style if it needs one, so you can keep one per chapter, one per paper under review, and one for the reading list you sent your supervisor. It is a small tab that removes a genuinely miserable part of writing.

All sources

The default view, showing everything in your library formatted in the project’s citation style.

Each entry offers copy the formatted reference, copy BibTeX or open the source, and setting the project style once applies it everywhere, while changing it re-renders the whole bibliography immediately, which is what you want the week a journal rejects you and the next one on your list uses a different house style.

A reference that looks wrong gets fixed in the source’s own record rather than here, because References formats what it is handed, so open the source and correct its Details, as described in Reading a source.

Reference sheets

A sheet is a named subset of your library.

Create one, then select references from All sources and save them into it, and a sheet can carry its own style or inherit the project’s, with right-clicking the style control setting it to inherit.

Use this feature, because a doctoral bibliography is never one list. Keep a sheet per chapter so the chapter bibliography is one copy away, keep a sheet for the paper under review in that journal’s style while your thesis stays in your university’s, and keep a sheet for a supervisor’s reading list. Remove from this sheet takes an entry out without touching your library, and an empty sheet tells you what to do with “Select references from All sources and save them here.”

Exporting

Export a sheet or the whole bibliography into your writing tool, and with the BibTeX copy on every entry nothing gets trapped here, so work that came in from Zotero goes back out to Zotero.

Citing while you write

You rarely need this tab for a single citation, since there are two faster routes:

• In Notes, type @ to cite a source inline as you write.
• On any source’s page, Cite this hands you the formatted reference, the in-text citation and the BibTeX, each with a copy button, and lets you switch style for that one lookup without touching your project default.

Come to References for the list, meaning assembling, restyling and exporting a whole bibliography.

Setting your default style

Your personal default lives in Workspace settings under Profile while the project style gets set here, and getting both right early saves you re-reading a bibliography you have already checked.

If you do not know which style your department wants, ask before you have four hundred sources, because changing it here takes one click while only you can catch the ten places where you typed a citation by hand.

Next: The Map.