Zotero is a freeware which can be downloaded at Zotero.org .

Zotero is free.

Zotero runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux systems.

Yes. If you register with Zotero, you can open your Library in a browser and edit it. There are also various apps for Android and iOS. The Android apps, however, are from third-party developers.

training materials. Additional guides, detailed instructions, and documentation for Zotero, are available in the Zotero Documentation.

No, it is not required to register. 

A free account with Zotero enables you to synchronise your personal library with the cloud and to access your library anywhere using the Zotero web application. A Zotero account is required to work on group projects. You do not need to use your university email account to register with Zotero.

Bibliographic references are transferred correctly to the greatest possible extent. Knowledge items are imported in the form of ‘Notes’.

Tasks are also imported as ‘Notes’, but without information about which task belongs to what, because Zotero does not yet have its own task planning system. In Citavi, under the Task tab, you can export a task list and transfer the tasks into a calendar or enter them by hand as Notes in Zotero.

Problems may arise with norms and court decisions (see below “Sources and Citations”).

instructions (in German) are available online.

What can I do, if I forgot to transfer my project before our license ended?

You cannot access your project in the cloud, unless you procure a personal Citavi license using your university email address.

Locally stored projects can still be transferred. The Citavi backup file that is created manually as described in the transfer instructions (“Umzugsanleitung”) is also generated automatically by Citavi at defined intervals. You can find the files in your Citavi-6 folder (usually under “Eigene Dokumente/Citavi 6”). Then open the sub-file Backup , then find and open the folder with the name of the project that you want to transfer. Then you can continue by following the instructions beginning at point 2.

7-Zip. After you have installed this program, right-click on the backup file and select ‘unpack’ under the menu option “7-Zip”.

You must unpack the file in the Backup file; use the 7-Zip program (see above).

In your Backup folder, you will find a “Citavi Project Backup” file, but to import properly, you need a “Citavi Project” file. This is created when you unpack the Backup file.

All further steps can be read in our instructions (in German).

Important: After 31 July 2022, it is no longer possible to access Citavi projects in the cloud! Please save these files before this date locally or transfer them into your new license.

As a private individual (students), you can purchase a Citavi license with a length of 12 months for 73 euros. Then you can continue to work on locally saved projects.

Zotero provides each user 300MB of cloud storage free of charge this space is only required to synchronise attached documents and is not affected by the metadata Zotero records. Usually, this is adequate for student projects. Additional storage can be purchased from Zotero.

Alternatively, you can integrate other cloud storage using WebDAV. 

Additional storage can be purchased on the Zotero website. Alternatively, storage from other cloud services can be integrated using WebDAV. A list of compatible web storage providers and instructions are available in the Zotero documentation. FAUbox can also be integrated into the system.

How can I extend the cloud memory of my group library?

Zotero . Important: The additional memory must be purchased by the group owner!

instructions.

register with Zotero; this does not cost anything. After you log in, under “Groups” you can create a new group or find a group that has already been created. The person who creates the group can define the administration rights for the members and invite others to the group. All members of a group can save, administer, and annotate references in the project.

Yes, but the workflow is a little different than in Citavi. The Zotero WordAddIn is automatically installed with the desktop version of Zotero. As with Citavi, you can add references and a reference list can be automatically generated.

Important: The WordAddIn only works in an installed desktop version of Zotero, not with the Web Library.

Yes and no. The cleanest and trouble-free solution is to re-set all source references. We suggest you copy the document; delete all reference information in that copy; and use the Zotero plugin to re-enter the references. Use the original document to guide you. 

Alternatively, you can simply use Zotero to add any further references, either in-text citations (author year reference) or using footnotes. Please be sure to create a back-up copy of your Word document, before using this process as well. However, it is important to know that you must add all of the titles that were entered only in Citavi; do this by using “Add/Edit Bibliography” in Zotero. With numerical citation styles, however, this does not work and you must re-enter all of the reference information.

Yes. But the process is a little different than in Citavi. To generate Notes from the annotations, you need to highlight the text you want to comment on and then create a Note from the annotation.

The “Müller-Stil” (BW), the “SW-Stil”, and the “AC-Stil” are available for download on the library’s website.

Anthologies and monographs are included in the “book” document type in Zotero. For these types of materials, the field “Author” should be changed to “Editor” (the little arrow next to the Author field). Items from anthologies should be entered as “Book Section”. The title of the anthology should be entered in the “Book Title” field. In addition, the book and book section can be associated with each other under the tab “Related”.

Enter sections from anthologies as “book sections”. To ensure your reference list is correctly generated, it is absolutely necessary to enter anthology sections correctly: Editors under Authors and the anthology title in the “Book Title” field.

Items can be manually assigned to an anthology under the tab “Related”. It is, of course, also possible to assign an anthology to an item under this tab. These assignments are only intended to aid the user, they do not affect the citations or bibliographic entries.

In the manual entry interface in the Zotero desktop application, there is no web page option for Document Type. However, when you add any new item, you can change the Item Type to “Web Page”. The Zotero Connector does record internet pages correctly.

Zotero also offers the Item Type, “Standard”. This is how norms and standards should be entered into the program. Unfortunately, the Zotero Connector does not work with Nautos. However, if you do not want to enter the standard manually, you can search for it with the publisher Beuth and use the Connector on that website.

Unfortunately, the court decisions that were saved in Citavi were not correctly transferred to the document type “Case” in Zotero. However, this can be corrected manually. It is faster to open the respective case in the originally used database (e.g. BeckOnline, Juris) and to save it using the Zotero-Connector into Zotero.