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RefWorks Guide

Learn how to use the basic features of RefWorks to manage your citations

Due to unsustainably increasing subscription costs and a decreasing number of users, the library is cancelling our subscription to RefWorks. The cancellation is effective September 30, 2019, with a grace period available until November 1st to transfer your RefWorks library to another citation manager.

This page will help you migrate your RefWorks data into Zotero.

Migrating from RefWorks to Zotero

1. From your RefWorks account, click SHARE in the top menu bar.
Refworks Share References

2. Select EXPORT REFERENCES.
Refworks Export References

3. Choose to export all references in the document and export in BibTeX format.

    • Unfortunately, batch export does not preserve your folder structure, so if you want to preserve your folders from RefWorks, you will need export and import one folder at a time.

4. Click EXPORT and choose to save the file. Your exports will download and will be placed in your downloads folder.
Refworks Export Save File

1. Open your new citation manager (in this case, Zotero) and go to File > Import. A dialogue box will come up and ask where you want to import from. Select A FILE (which should be the only option).
Zotero Import

2. Select NEXT and you will be brought to your downloads folder. Select the correct document (it will be labeled export.bib) and click OPEN. Follow the dialogue box and your imported citations will be placed in a new folder called “export.” From there, you can rename and manipulate your imported documents any way you like. Folder names do not carry over from RefWorks, so you’ll need to rename your folders once they are in Zotero.