in this video I'm going to show you exactly how to use zero to save yourself hours days or maybe even weeks worth of work formatting your references and citations I'm going to walk you through the entire process from registering and installing zero through to managing your Sato library and of course using it within a word processor such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word so let's do it hey Derek yet from grad coach to kick things off let's take a quick look at how this tutorial will be structured first I'm going to explain what exactly zero is and why it's such an incredibly useful tool to have in your academic writing Arsenal from there I'll take you through the registration and installation process after which I'll walk you through the actual zero Library interface and explain each section so that you can get maximum value from the software once we've laid that Foundation we'll look at the various ways in which you can add resources to zetero and then manage your ref reference library like a pro last but not least we'll look at how to use zero within a word processor such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word to make inserting your citations and building your reference list super super simple if you prefer to skip past any of these sections you can find the time stamps in the description and so without further delay let's jump into it so let's start by quickly addressing the question what exactly is zero and why should you even use it well simply put Tero is a powerful little tool that makes the task of referencing a lot easier and more accurate essentially you just load up the reference information into zetero once and then zetero will make sure that all of your intext citations as well as your reference list are perfectly perfectly formatted according to your University's required referencing system simply put zaro takes care of the time consuming and error prone task of formatting citations and references which of course saves you loads of time and also makes sure that it is done 100% accurately something which is pretty much impossible to do if you manage your references manually best of all zetero is completely free to use up to a data storage limit of 300 megab which if you're just storing reference data will be more than enough it's worth noting that satero is a competitive of sort to mlay which also offers much of the same functionality and a bit more if you are still shopping around for a referencing solution we've got a tutorial video covering mlay as well and you can find the link to that in the description so let's start by getting you set up with zetero the first thing that you'll need to do is download the actual zetero software which is available for Windows Mac and Linux I'll be using the Mac version in this video but the functionality and layout are much the same across the board to download Z just head over to zero.org or.com they both take you to the same place and hit the download button you can then install zero and open it up when you open zero for the first time it will automatically load up this web page if for any reason it doesn't you can find the link in the description below this video as the page suggests the next thing you'll need to do is add the zero connector to your browser for example Chrome or Firefox but what exactly is the zetero connector well simply put the connector is a really handy little browser plug-in that allows you to quickly add web-based resources to your zetero library for example news articles Journal articles or just general web pages I'll show you exactly how to use the connector a little later in this video but for now you just need to add it to your browser last but not least you'll want to register a free zetero account this isn't mandatory but I would really recommend recommended as it ensures that all of your reference data is backed up to the cloud which is really handy when you spill coffee all over your laptop the zetero account also allows you to synchronize your zetero library across multiple devices which is super useful if you're working on more than one device to register just head back to the start page again we'll include that link below in case you missed it and enter your details keep this login information close because we're going to explain how to use it a little later in this video all right so now that we've got all the puzzle pieces in place let's take a quick look at the zetero interface so that you can understand what each section does and how to get the most out of zetero the home base of zetero is What's called the library and it's what you'll see whenever you open the zero application this area is where you will input and manage all of your reference data as you can see we already have some resources visible here while your will of course be blank at first but don't worry I'll show you exactly how to add resources to your library a little later so if we look at the main menu on the left you'll see that this area provides a few ways to organize and filter your reference library most commonly you'll use the my library option which will show all of your resources but you can also create custom Collections and you can add your own Publications and so on of course I'll show you how to do all of this in the next section continuing down you'll see this area which contains a set of tags in short you can tag any resource with whatever tag you choose and then use this section to filter the library down to only those resources that have the specific tag this functionality is really useful for tagging key variables constructs contexts or anything else that you can think of lastly let's move over to the right side of the zetero interface this section displays the the reference data for whichever resource you've selected in the library this will typically include the title the author the date the publication and a whole lot of other attributes depending on the type of resource again we'll dig into this in the next section all right so that's just a quick overview of the library interface to give you a big picture view of what everything looks like and now that we've got that out of the way let's look at how to actually use zero the first thing that you'll need to do is to syn synchronize your zero application with your zero account which you created a little bit earlier obviously if you decide not to create a zero account you can just skip the step but as I mentioned it's definitely a good idea to register for an account to synchronize your Zera app just select the main menu followed by settings and then sync then just enter your details there and you'll be all set you only need to do this once with that sorted the next task is to add your reference data to mlay this is the least exciting part for most students but the good news is that zero offers quite a few different options to fast trck this process naturally given that you're using zetero to save yourself time you want to try spend as little time as possible adding reference data into zero so I'm going to show you all of the options that are available and then you can decide what works best for you the first way to add reference information to zero is by manually entering the information this is the most time consuming option certainly the least popular option but I want to talk about it first so that you can see exactly what information zaro captures so the way that you do this is to click the little green plus button up top followed by the resource TP for example a journal article or a book chapter you can also go down to the more option to find a whole lot of other resource types now it's important to mention here that you must select the correct type of resource as most referencing systems for example Harvard or APA will present the reference list that's the list at the end of your document differently depending on the resource type in other words if you capture this information incorrectly your reference list won't come out the right way so if we select the journal article option yeah you can see that zero then allows you to manually enter in all the key information such as the author the date the title and so on the exact field s that will be available here will vary depending on the type of resource that you select for example the options for a journal article will be different from the options for a patent now if you're looking at this and feeling a little bit overwhelmed by all of the fields that can be filled in don't worry it's not necessary to fill in every single field but you do need to include whichever Fields will show up in the reference list which again will depend on your chosen referencing system for example APA or or Harvard so that covers the first option for adding reference data to zetero which is of course manual entry as you can see this is the slowest and most labor intensive option so you'll probably want to avoid this route as much as possible but I wanted to run through it first just so you can see what all zetero captures the next option for adding data to zetero is to upload or link the actual article PDF this is most useful for academic Journal articles as theera will often automatically import all or at least most of the reference data from the PDF itself which of course saves you a lot of time to do this again you'll click the little green plus button but then you'll either choose link to file or store a copy of the file both of these options achieve the same thing in terms of automatically importing the data but the store a copy option also stores the PDF within zero itself for or easy access whereas the link to file option just provides a link to wherever you save the file on your computer so if we go ahead and add a PDF you can see that zetero first loads the plain file name and then a moment or two later it auto populates all the reference data this is of course a huge timesaver so if you have PDF copies of your resources definitely give this option a try that said it's always a good idea to double check the imported data just to make sure it's 100% correct sometimes zero won't pick up every data point so you want to just check that to be sure the third option for loading reference data into zero is possibly the simplest and fastest and that is to use an identifier such as a DOI or an ISBN again this only applies to journal articles and books but it is a super efficient way to add resources so you'll definitely want to make use of it whenever possible to use use this method simply click on the little magic wand button and then paste in the identifier satero accepts quite a wide range of identifiers including ibns dois and pmids and you can usually find this information very easily when looking at any academic database you can then just copy paste the identifier into satero and as you can see it automatically feeds all of the relevant info directly into zero saving you a huge amount of time again a word of caution yeah I always do double check the data just to make sure that it's 100% correct all right onto the final option which is to use the zetero connector which if you remember is the little browser plug-in that we installed a bit earlier as I mentioned the zetero connector is super useful for grabbing reference information from web pages or any web- based resources to use the connector simply visit the web page for the resource that you're interested in for example a news article or a journal article within an academic database and then click the zero icon up in the top right the reference info will then automatically populate within your zetero library but as always be sure to just double check that and fill in any missing information so that covers the main options in terms of getting reference data into your zero library of course if you are currently using a different reference management software and you want to move over to zetero you can also import your full Library using a few different formats including bibtex and RIS as well as mlay online libraries to do that just click my library then file and then import all right so now that we've loaded the reference data into zero let's talk about how you can use the terot to manage your library effectively and you might be thinking well why do I need to manage my library but trust me these references do add up quickly and it's easy to lose track of which article said what so so this is an important bit of functionality for you to wrap your head around first let's look at collections collections are essentially folders which means that you can use them to group resources into certain themes or methodologies or variables or whatever makes sense for you to create a collection just right click on my library and select new collection you can then just drag and drop the relevant resources into whichever collection makes sense for you it's worth pointing out that regardless of of whether you put your resources into collections all of the resources will always be visible in the my library section so don't worry about not being able to remember which collection You Dropped a resource into it's also worth noting that you can create subcollections by right clicking on any given collection and then selecting new subcollection within the left sidebar you'll notice that there also some other options my Publications is a place for you to house your own past work for example example any research papers or dissertations that you wrote in the past duplicate items simply lists any resources that were mistakenly added twice or duplicated in some way and it also allows you to easily merge those items and lastly the unfiled item section simply displays any resources that you haven't placed into a collection moving down to the bottom corner of the zero interface you'll find the tags section clicking on any of these tags will filter the library down to show only the articles with those tags to use this feature you'll need to First tag your resources according to whatever structure suits you to do that simply select the resource that you want to tag then select the tags button up in the top right and add a tag or multiple tags as necessary moving back up to the top bar the final navigation tool that you'll want to make use of is the search function which you can access by just clicking the little magnifying glass as you can see zetero provides you with some pretty fine grain search functionality here you can search using quite a few different parameters and you can also save your searches so you'll definitely want to make use of this especially if you have a larger collection now it's worth mentioning that while the search function as well as tags and collections are all pretty useful ways to organize and navigate your reference data they are somewhat limited if you are working with a larger collection of references for something like a literature review it's generally best to use a literature catalog spreadsheet to keep track of all your resources by using a custom spreadsheet you can create as many different attributes as you like and you can easily filter and sort according to a specific attribute or a combination of attributes for example if you want to find studies within a certain context that also use a very specific methodology if you'd like we do have a free literature catalog spreadsheet that you can download and cust customize as you wish and you can find the link to that in the description now let's move on to the actual resources themselves you'll notice that if you click on any given resource zero will show you all of the captured information in the right sidebar you can edit any piece of information by just clicking on the respective field and all of the info will be saved automatically if you look at the top of the sidebar you'll see a notes option in this area you can make notes that are specific to each resource this can be really useful for jotting down the key takeaways of each article in relation to your research aims or questions or just making any other notes that you want to keep handy zetero does allow quite a bit of customization here in terms of formatting so do play around with this it's also worth mentioning that whenever you create a note it will be added to the drop- down section of the resource over year returning to the top of the right sidebar you'll see an option called Tags which we've already covered and then the last option you'll see is something called related the related function allows you to link any given resource to other resources so that you can quickly look up related papers this can be handy for keeping track of how papers connect to each other but it is admittedly a bit basic if you really want to explore relationships and connections between papers a spreadsheet based literature catalog is still likely the best option remember you can grab a free copy of our catalog spreadsheet using the link in the description one final bit of functionality that I want to highlight is Zero's built-in PDF viewer if you look at the final column in the main window you'll see that many resources have a little PDF icon next to them which indicates that the PDF is either linked to or uploaded into the zero Library if you double click that icon the PDF will load up within zetero which can be really useful what's more is that you can make little notes and comments in the PDF itself and you can also highlight specific pieces of information using the buttons up top this means that zero can act as your home base for not just reference information but the actual articles as well keeping everything neatly organized in one place all right so now that we have looked at how to add and manage your reference data within zetero it's time to get to the most important part which is of course using zero within your actual word processor this is where the magic rarely happens so let's have a look for this tutorial I'm using Google Docs as my word processor as it integrates really seamlessly with the Chrome browser plug-in but the process will be much the same if you're using Microsoft Word if you'd like me to do a tutorial specifically for Microsoft Word please do let me know in the comments so let's take a quick look at the interface once you've got the zetero connector plugin in installed you'll notice that you now have a new menu option within Google Docs and that menu is titled zetero this menu provides you with pretty much everything you need to manage both your citations that's Intex citations and your reference list within Google ducs so first let's add some intext citations to do this simply place your cursor at the point that you want to add the citation and then select the zetero menu followed by the add or edit citation option the first time that you do this Sato will pop up and it will ask you which referencing system you want to use for example APA or Harvard and then Google Docs will also ask you if you want to Grant permission to zero to edit your document which of course will be necessary just follow the prompts and you'll return to a page that looks like this this red bar is where you're going to search for and select the resource that you want to site you can search by title of the resource or by the author whichever works for you when once you find the relevant resource simply select it and press enter and then Zera will insert the citation into your document if you want to insert multiple citations for one sentence then just keep searching and selecting in the prior step before pressing enter alternatively you can click on the citation itself and then select edit with sataro and add a few more citations it's worth noting that you can also change the appearance of this little zero Red Bar to show a list of citations rather than having to search for them to do this go to add or edit citations as usual and then click the drop- down menu and select classic view as you can see this gives you a view that looks a bit more like the actual zetero interface so feel free to use that if you prefer once you've added all of your intext citations it is of course time to create your reference list or what zero calls a bibliography to create a reference list or bibliography all you need to do is place your Cod so where you want to place the actual list and then select add or edit bibliography from the Zero menu zero will then automatically create and insert a full reference list into your document perfectly formatted according to the referencing style that you selected earlier this bit of functionality alone will save you a huge amount of time and it will also ensure that your reference list is 100% accurate of course that's provided that you inputed the data 100% correctly the only thing that you may still need to do is to set the line spacing based on your institution's requirement for example APA and MLA both require double line spacing if you are using APA or MLA be sure to check out our tutorial videos for those formats as always links in the description if for some reason you find that you have to change the referencing format after the fact you can just select the document preferences option from the Sato menu and then select the relevant option Sato provides built-in support for all of the most popular formats but if you requires something else you can find plenty more options by heading back to the zero desktop application opening the settings heading to the site Tab and selecting get additional Styles alternatively if your university has its own style and can provide you with a CSL file you can import that by clicking the little plus button over here head back to our document one more thing to be aware of is that you will need to refresh your reference list whenever you add new citations to your document or edit any reference data within the satero application itself for example if you generated your reference list and then went back and added a few more intext citations you need to refresh that reference list to make sure that it's 100% up to date to do that just head up to the Zara menu and hit refresh all right so once you you have finalized your document and are done with all things referencing related you may consider unlinking your references doing this will turn all of your citations as well as your reference list into plain text and it will completely disconnect your document from your zetero library this is useful if you're planning to send your document off to a proof reader or to any other third party and you want to make sure that there are no compatibility issues or that there's no risk of the link breaking between your document and your zetero library to do this simply head over to the zetero menu once again and select the unlink citations option but if you do do this please make sure that it's the very very last thing that you do as you won't be able to rebuild your reference list once you've unlined your references if you got value from this tutorial I'd really really appreciate if you hit that like button so that more students can find this resource if you want to learn more about academic writing and research be sure to subscribe to the grad coach Channel and also be sure to check out the grad coach blog where you can find tons of free resources tools and guides to fast trck your academic writing so until next time good [Music] luck