Zotero is a free product that helps you organize your research and create citations. You use a browser plug-in to save the data to the desktop client, and you can access most of the information in the client while offline. Zotero also connects to Microsoft Word to help you format citations both in-text and in the bibliography.
Research Rabbit is a free AI-driven product that helps you locate more sources on your topic and connects to Zotero. You can either import your Zotero collection into Research Rabbit to find related sources or you can build collections in Research Rabbit and sync them to Zotero.
Here are a few videos that show how to use the basic features of each.
Once you've set up your free Zotero account and downloaded the desktop client and browser plugin. You're ready to start using Zotero to save and organize your research.
Once you've found a source online, you can save the information directly to Zotero using the plugin icon to the right of the link while the client is open on your desktop.
You can preselect a folder or subfolder to save to in the client before clicking on the plugin icon.
When it's saving, a pop-up window will display in your browser to tell you where your source is being saved as well as whether or not a copy of the full text was downloaded.
You can double check the information that was saved to your desktop Zotero client by clicking on the source title.
If the full text is not available when you save the source to Zotero, you can request it through interlibrary loan (see tab devoted to this above). Once you receive the article and can download it, you are able to attach it to the citation in Zotero to easily find it later.
You can sync your Research Rabbit and Zotero accounts for a more seamless research process. After you login to both accounts, select the option in Research Rabbit that says, "Import Zotero Collection."
Then choose which Zotero collection you'd like to import (if you have more than one saved in Zotero).
Once the import is complete, you'll see your sources displayed in Research Rabbit next to some helpful options to help you on your research journey. Options include exploring other related papers, including similar work, earlier and later work. Or, you could explore what else these authors have written or suggested authors that might have connections to your collection of saved sources.
Clicking on a title in your collection allows you to see more information specific to that source. It also allows you to write comments to yourself about the source. These display below the source in your collection. Notes will be brought over from Zotero when imported, and notes made in Research Rabbit can by synced back to Zotero.
You can also see a visible representation of how a collection is related through citations by viewing the network graph.
