Zotero for handling bibliography

Background

I worked as a student volunteer for the SOUPS 2026 citation check. During the process, I learned a lot about how to manage citations. Dr. Vaniea already wrote a post about the situation. Additionally, managing your bibliography with Zotero following Dr. Malkin’s recommended style avoids most issues; however, there are a few minor things I want to highlight here.

Minor fixes

Accessed date

When saving a web page, Wikipedia article, etc., the access date is saved. Nonetheless, certain conference styles do not show the access date even if it is stored in Zotero. We can work around the style issue by adding that additional information into the note field. Specifically for the access date issue, go to Settings → Better BibTeX → Postscript and add the following code:

if (Translator.BetterBibTeX) {
  const notes = []

  const isWebpage = zotero.itemType === 'webpage'

  // Add access date only for Zotero Web Page items
  if (isWebpage && zotero.accessDate) {
    const accessed = zotero.accessDate.replace(/\s*T?\d+:\d+:\d+.*/, '')
    notes.push('Accessed: ' + accessed)
  }

  if (notes.length) {
    tex.add({ name: 'note', value: notes.join('. ') + '.' })
  }
}

You can add more item types to the check if you want the access date to appear on other reference types.

arXiv identifier/version number

More and more papers in our field are posted to arXiv before being submitted to a conference, especially those related to AI. However, arXiv papers may change drastically before submission (e.g., authors, author order, title, content), so it is important to show the arXiv identifier and version (e.g., arXiv:2207.08815[cs]) in the citation. Similarly, this information is saved by Zotero but might not be displayed, depending on the style.

Add this code to address the issue:

if (Translator.BetterBibTeX) {
  const notes = []

  const isPreprint = zotero.itemType === 'preprint'

  // Add arXiv identifier only for Zotero Preprint items
  if (isPreprint) {
    if (zotero.arXiv && zotero.arXiv.id) {
      notes.push('arXiv:' + zotero.arXiv.id)
    }
    else if (zotero.archiveID && zotero.archiveID.match(/^arXiv:/i)) {
      notes.push(zotero.archiveID)
    }
  }

  if (notes.length) {
    tex.add({ name: 'note', value: notes.join('. ') + '.' })
  }
}

Double-check entries saved from books or unfamiliar venues

As a human-centered security and privacy researcher, I usually cite papers from ACM and IEEE, which Zotero handles correctly most of the time. When saving books or conference/journal articles from a publisher or association you are not familiar with, double-check whether Zotero saved the correct information. Personally, I have encountered cases where Zotero saved only the first author’s information, missed the edition, and so on.