Plain-text citations to Zotero citations, in your own document

A report written without a reference manager, converted from another format, or received from someone who uses a different one has its citations as text: “(Smith, 2020; Jones et al. 2019, p. 4)”, “Smith (2020)”, “[3]”. This page finds them, looks each one up in your Zotero library and puts a live Zotero citation in its place, so that the document behaves as if the citations had been inserted with Zotero from the start: you can change the citation style, update the references, and let Zotero build the bibliography.

Your document is not rebuilt. It is opened, the citations are replaced where they stand, and each replacement is recorded as a tracked change: the old text struck through, the Zotero citation inserted, both by the author you name. Everything else — formatting, comments, images, other people’s tracked changes — is left as it was. Nothing is uploaded: the document and the database are read by this page, in your browser.

Working through a document

1. Open the .docx, and zotero.sqlite from your Zotero data directory. If Zotero is running, add zotero.sqlite-wal from the same folder: Zotero keeps its most recent changes there, and this page replays them.
2. Press Analyse. Each reference in the document comes out as one of these:
   • matched — one item fits the authors and the year clearly better than any other, or its title is in the document’s own reference list entry; it goes straight to Resolved;
   • choose — several items fit equally well (the same authors twice in a year, say); pick one;
   • year differs — the authors fit an item a year or two off; confirm it or not;
   • possible — only looser fits, of any year, to offer;
   • not found — search the library and pick an item yourself, or leave it as text.
   A choice holds for every place the same reference is cited. A match can be unlinked if it is wrong.
3. Press Save document. You get name_zotero.docx; your original is not changed. Report as CSV lists every reference, where it stands and what it resolved to.
4. Open the document in Word. Review the changes (Review → Show Markup → Specific People lets you see only this page’s), then accept them.
5. In Word’s Zotero tab press Refresh. Zotero asks for a citation style the first time, formats every citation, and Add/Edit Bibliography builds the reference list.

Accept before you refresh. Zotero’s own advice is not to work with its citations while they sit in tracked changes: it turns Track Changes off while it edits citations, and tracked citations can confuse it. Once accepted, the citations are ordinary Zotero fields.

What is found

Author–year citations in parentheses, with any number of references separated by semicolons or commas — “(Smith, 2020; Jones et al. 2019, p. 4)”, “(Andersson 2010, Berglund and Lindborg 2017)”; further years of the same authors — “(Smith 2019, 2020a, b)”; undated and forthcoming works — “(SKB, n.d.)”, “(Jones, in press)”, “(Nilsson u.å.)”; organisations — “(Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB 2010)”, “(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2022)”. Narrative citations — “Smith (2020)”, “Öhman et al. (2014)”, “Smith & Jones (2020, s. 12)” — and a narrative author followed by more references — “Lane (2014, 20; cf. Bildtgård 2010)”. Numbered citations — “[3]”, “[2–4, 7]” — tied to the numbered reference list. A table cell that holds nothing but a citation. Citations inside a parenthesis of prose, as in “(see Annex D of Publication 100 (ICRP, 2006))”, are found on their own.

The forms of SKB’s reports too. A report number — “(SKB TR-11-01)”, “SKB (R-09-20)”, “(SKB TR-10-52, Section 3.2)”, “(SKBdoc 1175208)” — is looked up in the items’ Report Number; in running text, “SKB TR-11-01” keeps “SKB” as text and the number becomes the citation. A designation — “(SSMFS 2008:37)”, “SSMFS (2008:21)”, “(SFS 1984:3; SOU 2010:6)”, “(SS-EN 1936:1999)” — is looked up in the items’ number and title; the number after the colon names the regulation, so it is not read as a page. A work cited by a number that no item carries is only offered, never linked: another SSMFS of 2008 is not SSMFS 2008:37. A name entered under “References with abbreviated names” — “(Data report, Section 6.1)” — is found through its entry. Initials after a name, “Vallery C (2001)”, choose between two authors of one surname, and “Aquilonius (ed) (2010)” is read with its editor’s mark.

The reference list is found under its heading (“References”, “Referenser”, “Litteratur” and their like in other languages) or as a long run of entries, and it ends at the next heading of its level, so citations in appendices after it are found too. Each citation is tied to its entry, and an item whose title appears in the entry is taken over its namesakes; an entry’s own report number (“SKB, 2011. … SKB TR-11-01, Svensk Kärnbränslehantering AB.”) settles which item “(SKB 2011)” means. An abbreviated name or a designation mentioned in running text — “the Data report”, “SSMFS 2008:21” — is left as text, and its entry is not counted as uncited.

What is written

Each citation becomes one Zotero citation with one item per reference, the page, chapter or section as its locator. Nothing in the parenthesis is lost: words that are not a reference — “see”, “cf.”, or a whole clause — become the prefix or suffix of the reference beside them, so Zotero prints them too. A narrative citation keeps the author’s name as text and only the parenthesis becomes a Zotero citation with the author omitted, as Zotero’s own Omit Author does it.

A citation is written only when every reference in it is resolved. A replacement is also refused — and listed with the reason under Resolved — when the text runs into a footnote reference, a comment, a picture, a hyperlink or another Word field, a content control, moved text, or a citation that is already a Zotero field. Citations in footnotes and endnotes are converted as well; text boxes are not read. EndNote and Mendeley citations can be converted to Zotero ones.

Each Zotero citation carries the item’s URI, which is how Zotero finds the item on refresh: http://zotero.org/users/…/items/… for your own library, http://zotero.org/groups/…/items/… for a group library. It also carries the item’s data in CSL-JSON, so the citation still formats for someone who does not have the item.