A neat Zotero trick

Did you know that you can import metadata from existing PDF files into Zotero?  This is a quick and easy way to create citations from a big folder of PDFs.  Of course, Endnote X4 can do this (one folder at a time), but who knew that Zotero could do it too?  Not me.  Until today!

1)  Drag and drop your PDF file into your Zotero library.  You should see the PDF file show up in your library.

2)  Right click on your PDF file.  Click on 'Retrieve metadata from PDF'.  If your PDF file has a DOI number or other identifying information, Zotero should be able to create citation information that correlates with the file.  Nifty, huh?

More information on this trick can be found here: http://www.zotero.org/support/retrieve_pdf_metadata

and here's a pretty exhaustive article (and test) of this feature in Zotero, Mendeley and Wizfolio.

--Ellysa, documenting this so that I will remember it for posterity.