CHEM221/222: Organic Chemistry: Citing

ACS is a citation style developed by the American Chemical Society for use by scholars and students in Chemistry.

Zotero is a bibliographic information management system that is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.  

Think of making a playlist of songs on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, etc. but for all the resources and articles 

Setting Up an Account 

1. Go to www.zotero.org and click the big, red DOWNLOAD button 
2. Download Zotero 6 for Mac, Windows, or Linux (depending on your operating system). 
   1. Run the program 
3. Next, Install Chrome Connector
   1. Add extension to Chrome 
   2. If you have apple products, makes sure you download “Google Chrome” browser instead of using Safari. 
4. Open the Zotero Program 
5. Click the link to “sync” your information, and you will be prompted to login 
   1. Please create a new account 

Need to Know 

Zotero automatically senses research on the web. By clicking the Zotero icon (by the URL) you can automatically save journal articles, books, or snapshots of a webpages with offline storage. You can also organize and sort your information with folders, tags, and keywords. In most cases, the Chrome extension should pick up on everything an article has to offer (title, author, publication date, etc.), but in some cases it may lack that information and you will have to manually input that information yourself.  

Zotero also allows you to create references and bibliographies in Microsoft Word and Google Docs. If you decide to use Google Docs, remember to add the Zotero extension (again) because it is different from the Chrome extension. 

Organizing Zotero 

1. Above “My Library”, click the new folder icon 
2. Create a label for the topic or assignment  
3. Once the folder is created, click on “My Library” and drag your source(s) to the folder
4. Zotero can be searched by titles, authors, folders, notes, and tags 

Importing Citations 

1. Select the source you want to cite in your paper 
   1. Note: you can select single, multiple entries, or an entire folder for future citing 
2. Right click on the item 
3. Click “Create Bibliography for Selected Item” or “Create Bibliography for Collection” if a folder 4. From the drop box, select your citation style.  
   1. Keep “Output Mode” as Bibliography 
4. For pasting the citation(s) directly into an existing document, select “Copy to Clipboard” 
5. Go to your existing document and paste (by right click paste or Ctrl + V) 
6. To save the citation as a different file, select “Save as RTF” 
   1. Note: While Zotero is mostly accurate in citation formatting, it’s always beneficial to double-check the formatting.