Mendeley To Zotero

30 Dec 2021

I quit Mendeley today, after 5 years of use, because there are serious problems with duplicated files, lack of support for mobile platforms, small cloud drive and poor syncing quality. Solving these problems has been distracting me from focusing on reading, so that I decide to try out some alternatives and leave Mendeley.

After reviewing many alternatives I decided to try Zotero, an open-source software that should be able to connect with google drive, so I don’t have to pay for cloud storage one more time.

I’ve realized some advantages of Zotero already in this first minute of use, for example this standalone note functionality. I can just write a single piece of note here with a paper open beside.

There might be more to discover in Zotero. Let’s see if this Zotero is a better tool.

1. Setup Zotero + Google Drive

A. Batch import from files

Edit -> Preference

preference

Uncheck file sync

file sync off

Set base folder to google drive folder

base folder

Copy .pdf files to google drive folder

gd folder

Create linked attachments in Zotero

link to fiel

Import all the files

import all

Zotero will automatically analyze the metadata of .pdf files and put them into parent items

analyzed items

From now on, we have transferred all the references from Mendeley to Zotero.

B. Daily use

If we only want to add one reference to our library when browsing the Internet, we can in principle do the same things as in the batch import guide: download the .pdf file to google drive folder and then add linked files. However, there are easier ways to do it. That is to use the chrome extension Zotero Connector. We first add the extension to Chrome by clicking the button on Zotero’s official website.

download connector

Then we can access the extension at the upper right corner of Chrome. For example, we want to add a reference Frangipane, G., Vizsnyiczai, G., Maggi, C., Savo, R., Sciortino, A., Gigan, S., et al. (2019). Invariance properties of bacterial random walks in complex structures. Nat. Commun. 10:2442.. We first go to the website of the paper, then click the Zotero Connector extension.

chrome extension example

The following window will show us the files to be downloaded. In this case, it’s a full text pdf and a snapshot of the website where I download the paper. I can also specify where to put this paper, so that we can skip the undefined folder.

zotero connector

Now in the Papers folder, we can find the item we just created, with exactly the same attachments we just saw in the Chrome extension: a full text pdf and a snapshot.

Where are the files saved locally though? If we right click on the attachment and click show file, we can see that this paper is put in the google drive Zotero folder, just as we expect.

gd folder connector

Notice that this is not the default behavior… This is achieved by a Zotero third-party plugin ZotFile. After installation, we can modify the settings of ZotFile at Tools -> ZotFile preferences

zotfile pref