Zotero 7
Group libraries
The online version of Zotero allows you to share references with other researchers, colleagues, classmates, and Internet users through group libraries. Groups are separate libraries from your personal library, which can be contributed to or accessed by different people, depending on the settings you choose.
Group libraries are ideal for collaborative projects with multiple researchers, especially if they come from several institutions or private industry.
Important! As a general rule, it is not allowed to save several articles (in PDF format) from the same publisher on a server accessible to multiple members of a research group. Our licenses do not allow it. Also, you must not share PDFs of articles from the Library's subscriptions with people outside of the Polytechnique Montréal community.
To find out if you can save PDFs to your Zotero library, please read the terms of use for the article in Sofia or in the bibliographic databases.
To ensure compliance, it is recommended that you do not store files in the group library (see steps at the bottom of this page).
Creating a group
Follow the below steps :
Zotero.org → Log in → Groups → Create a New Group
- Enter a title under Choose a name for your group ;
- Choose one of the following three types of groups :
- Public, Open Membership : Share references openly with the entire Zotero Community.
- Public, Closed Membership : The references are public, but only authorized users can join the group.
- Private Membership : ideal option for a research project within a teams.
- Click on Create Group.
- Click on Members Settings.
- Click on Send More Invitations and add the email addresses or Zotero usernames of other members to invite them to the group.
Update Roles allows users to define the access rights of each member.
It is possible to limit a person to read-only by setting a Member status in Member Settings, then choosing Library Edition: Only group admins under Library Settings.
PDF Articles and group libraries
To avoid sharing PDFs of articles from library subscriptions with people outside of Polytechnique Montréal, it is strongly recommended that you do not store files in the group library.
To do this, click on Library Settings, File Editing, then select No group file storage.
Adding to the group library
To add to the group library, simply drag and drop references from your personal library, or import references directly into the group library by selecting it before importing. To see how to import references into Zotero, see the Importation tab.
Respecting the library's licenses
The following video (French only) offers tips on how to ethically use the new unlimited storage service with Zotero Web. When using the Library's electronic resources, the Polytechnique Montréal community must respect licensing agreements.
- Unpaywall add-onUnpaywall is a useful add-on that can be freely installed on a web browser in order to find an open access version of a scientific article.
