Zotero, an open-source research and citation manager

Description: Zotero is an open-source research and citation manager for organising, citing, and sharing research materials. With Zotero, users can save references from web pages, PDFs, and other documents and sort them into collections for easy retrieval and citation. It also supports various media files, such as videos or audios. Zotero allows for collaborative research through common projects. It is free to use and offers additional storage through subscription plans. Users are required to sign up for an account to sync their library across multiple devices and collaborate with others. Zotero offers browser, desktop, and application versions. It was developed by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and is now operated by the non-profit Corporation for Digital Scholarship.

Evaluation: Zotero is a useful tool for conducting research, together with storing, organising, and sharing results. For teachers, it can save time for sorting out teaching materials and additional academic resources, while students can use it to organise project materials. However, it is primarily used by researchers as a research and citation manager. Zotero offers a range of features and requires familiarisation with the software and average IT skills.

Cost: Free + paid additional storage plans.

Respect for privacy Privacy evaluations indicate how a tool handles personal data collection, storage, and sharing, including GDPR compliance and security measures, among others. The ICT-REV team provides them for informational purposes, reflecting our best understanding at the time of review, but assumes no legal responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of these evaluations and encourages users to conduct their own assessments: High. Zotero collects different types of data, including user-provided information (e.g., name and email for account creation), library data (when users synchronise their library with Zotero servers), and attachment files for file syncing. Additionally, it logs IP addresses and browser information for security and diagnostic purposes. This serves various purposes, such as user account management yet neither marketing nor advertising. Zotero may share some personal data with third-party services for the running of the service, but it neither rents nor shares it. Concerning security, Zotero is designed as a local program when used in its desktop and application versions, so by default, data is stored on users’ devices. However, when synchronisation or file syncing is enabled, then it is stored on the tool's servers. Zotero mentions taking security seriously and employing measures to protect user data. It provides users with the ability to disable various automatic communications and preferences. Users can also delete their accounts, although specific details about data modification or access requests are not provided in the policy. Zotero does not state compliance with the GDPR. See more here.

Type Of Interaction: Group/pair work - classmates, Individual work,

Content: You supply,

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