Zotero
Free reference manager that collects sources from your browser and builds bibliographies in Word or LibreOffice.
Our verdict
Zotero is the same program on Linux that it is on Windows, made by the same nonprofit, so there is nothing to relearn. Sign in and your whole library, folders, notes and tags appear as you left them.
Getting it is the one slightly awkward part. Zotero publishes a download on its own site that you unpack yourself, and there is a Flathub listing that most people will find easier, although that one is packaged by volunteers rather than by Zotero. Either way you also want the Zotero Connector add-on in Firefox or Chrome, because that is what saves a paper or a web page into your library with one click.
The free account gives you 300 MB of storage for attached files. Your references themselves are small, so that is plenty for a reading list, but a few hundred PDFs will push you over and a storage plan is charged yearly.
What's good
- Made by a nonprofit, with the same program on Windows, Mac and Linux
- Saves references and PDFs from a web page with one click through a browser add-on
- Plugs into LibreOffice and Word so citations and the bibliography update themselves
- Your library syncs to your other computers at no cost
What to know first
- Only 300 MB of file storage is free, and keeping a lot of PDFs in sync costs money each year
- The Flathub build is put together by the community rather than by Zotero
- The browser add-on has to be installed separately after the program
The details
- Cost
- Free with paid extras
- Open source
- Yes (AGPL-3.0)
- How you install it
- App store (Flatpak), .deb installer
Windows apps it can replace
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