Zotero for systematic reviews means using the free, open-source reference manager to capture every record from your database searches, organise them, remove duplicates, and hand a clean library to a screening tool. Zotero is not a dedicated screening platform, so it does not blind two reviewers or record conflicts, but for the search-and-tidy stages that come before screening it is a capable, no-cost option that imports from every major database, stores attached full-text files, and exports in the formats screening tools expect.
Where Zotero fits in the review pipeline
A systematic review runs a search across several databases, then needs all of those records in one place before anyone reads a title. Zotero is well suited to that gathering and housekeeping role. You import each database export into a single library, deduplicate, and then export the merged set onward. It sits cleanly between the systematic literature search and the point where screening begins, and it keeps the original exports attached so your record counts stay auditable. Treating Zotero as the reference layer rather than the screening layer is the key to using it well.
Importing records from databases
Zotero accepts the standard interchange formats every bibliographic database produces, including RIS and other tagged exports, so you can pull results out of one database and import them with a couple of clicks. The browser connector adds another route: from a search results page it can save the visible records, with metadata and, where available, the attached file, straight into a chosen collection. For a reproducible review the safer habit is to export the full result set from each database as a file and import that, because a saved file is a fixed record of what the search returned on a given date, which is part of properly building and documenting a search strategy. Whichever route you use, keep the export from each source in its own collection at first so you can trace where every record came from.
Organising with collections, tags, and saved searches
Zotero organises references with collections, which behave like folders, and tags, which behave like labels a record can carry several of at once. A practical setup for a review is one collection per database for the raw imports, a combined collection for the deduplicated set, and tags to mark records you want to flag during a first informal pass, for example “possible include” or “background only”. Saved searches let you build dynamic views, such as every record tagged a certain way or added after a certain date, which is handy when late records arrive through removing duplicate search results on a second batch. One caution: Zotero collections and tags are not a substitute for the blinded, two-reviewer decisions a real screen requires, so use them for organisation, not for recording formal eligibility verdicts.
Deduplication in Zotero
Zotero has a built-in duplicate detection view that groups records it believes are the same item, matching on fields such as title, digital object identifier, and authors, and lets you merge each group while choosing which version’s metadata to keep. It is genuinely useful for the obvious cases, but it is conservative and can miss near duplicates where punctuation, accents, or a truncated title differ across two database exports. The reliable habit is to run Zotero’s automated merge first, then scan the remaining records by hand for the pairs it did not catch, since wrongly deleting a unique study at this stage is invisible later. The principles behind that manual pass are covered in our guide on deduplicating search results, and they apply to any reference manager.
Exporting to a screening tool
Once the library is deduplicated, Zotero exports the whole set or a chosen collection to RIS or other standard formats that screening platforms accept, so the records flow into the tool where your reviewers will actually work. This is the natural hand-off point, because dedicated platforms add the things Zotero cannot do: blinded dual screening, conflict tracking, and a record of who decided what. Our overview of systematic review screening tools explains those features, and the same exported file that leaves Zotero is what seeds the title and abstract screening stage.
Strengths and limits for large reviews
Zotero’s strengths are cost and openness. It is free, the desktop application runs offline, and the format support means it talks to almost everything. For small and mid-sized reviews it can carry the whole reference workload comfortably. The limits show up at scale. Zotero gives every account a fixed allowance of free online storage for attached files, and a large review with thousands of full-text files will exceed it, at which point you either pay for more storage, attach files through your own cloud storage, or keep the files locally rather than synced. Syncing very large libraries across devices can also feel slow. And because Zotero is a reference manager, not a review system, it has no built-in way to enforce two independent reviewers or to resolve their disagreements, so any serious review still moves the records into a dedicated screening tool for the decision-making itself. Used for what it is good at, the gathering, organising, and cleaning of references, Zotero is an excellent free foundation. If you are weighing it against the alternatives, our comparison of the main citation managers sets it beside its closest rivals, and our companion guide to using Mendeley in a review workflow covers the option many former Mendeley Desktop users moved between.