Sean Takats

Sean Takats

GMU Responds to Thomson Reuters Lawsuit

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The full press release can be found at the university’s media relations site, but the upshot is that George Mason University has formulated a strong response that includes dropping its EndNote license and retaining the Zotero project’s contested EndNote compatibility feature. This functionality allows users to read their own EndNote styles (.ens files) and has been reenabled in Zotero’s public testing program this week. At the same time, our crack team of developers continues its breakneck pace of providing exciting new features. The latest preview release of Zotero includes:

  • Free and automatic backup and synchronization of your library data on Zotero’s servers: for example, you can sync your PC at work with your Mac laptop and your Linux desktop at home
  • Automatic synchronization of your attachment files: store your PDFs, Word documents, and data sets on any WebDAV server (e.g. iDisk, Jungle Disk, Sakai, or other commercial or university-provided web storage)
  • Rich-text notes editor: create and edit notes that retain all of the formatting detail of your original sources
  • A new style manager: add and delete CSLs and legacy style formats, with over 1100 styles now available for download
  • Automatic association of PDF metadata: simply drag and drop all of those PDFs cluttering your harddrive into Zotero, and it will do the work of assigning proper metadata
  • Automatic detection and support for proxy servers: using your library’s gated resources while off-campus has never been easier

This raft of new features provides the foundation for Zotero’s forthcoming collaborative research functionality, which users will begin to test in November.

As co-director of the Zotero project along with Dan Cohen, I am delighted by the overwhelmingly positive response that we have received from Zotero’s users and the press over the past several weeks, and we look forward to the project’s next phase of innovation.

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