Thread by @MushtaqBilalPhD

How to organize and summarize research papers with Zotero and Scholarcy:

You can learn this workflow in 15 minutes.

1. Open your Zotero desktop app and click on "File" and select "New Collection."

Choose a name for your collection. Keep the collection open.

2. If you haven't already, you'd need to install the Zotero Connector.

Go to Chrome web store and look for "Zotero Connector."

Add it to your Chrome and then pin it.

The Connector is available for Edge, Firefox, and Safari.

3. Look up papers relevant to your project in Google Scholar.

Click on the Zoteor Connector in the top-right corner and it will open an "Item Selector."

Select the papers you find useful and click on "OK."

Selected papers will be added to the collection you just created.

4. You can also look up papers in your university's online library or a database like PubMed.

Then add papers to your collection using Zotero Connector.

5. Go your Zotero collection and you will see the papers have been added.

Zotero will retrieve open access PDFs and add them to the collection.

If Zotero doesn't retrieve, you can add a PDF yourself. Simply drag and drop the PDF.

6. Double-click on a paper to open it in Zotero. You can read the paper and take notes on it if you want to.

7. To summarize paper, go to scholarcy[.]com and sign up for an account.

Scholarcy offers both free and paid plans.

8. Once you've logged in to Scholarcy, click on "Profile" and scroll down a bit.

Click on "Connect Zoteor account" and then click on "Accept Defaults."

Now your Zotero is connected with Scholarcy.

9. Click on "Create library" in the top-right corner and choose a name for your library.

10. Click on the library you just created and select "Click to import."

Click on "Cloud storage" and select "Zotero."

Select "Collections" on the top and Scholarcy will show you all your Zotero collections.

Select the relevant collection.

11. Select the papers you want to import to Scholarcy and click on "Import."

Scholarcy will take a few seconds to process the imported papers.

If a paper doesn't get imported, you can simply drag and drop its PDF in your Scholarcy library.

12. Once the papers have been processed, click on a paper and Scholarcy will give you its summary.

You can navigate to different sections using the tabs in the left sidebar.

13. You can change reading levels of summaries by clicking on "Enhacne."

Scholarcy has different reading levels: general reader, highschool student, undergraduate, researcher, and bullet point lover.

You can also ask it to focus on a specific point by selecting "Focused on..."

14. Within the summaries, Scholarcy will hyperlink difficult words and terms to Wikipedia articles.

This feature will save you a lot of time.

15. Once you've read a few papers, open a Word file and start writing.

To insert a citation, place the cursor where you want it to be. Click on the Zotero tab and select "Add/Edit Citation."

Enter the name of the author you want to cite.

Zotero will prepare the citation. Hit Enter and it'll be added.

16. Once you are done drafting, place the cusor where you want to add bibliopgrahy.

Then click on "Add/Edit Bibliography."

Zotero will add the bibliograhy in your selected style.

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