In my view, Zotero is currently the best reference manager available, and it’s also completely open source!

I had one niggling problem though with version 2.1.10 (latest stable at the time of this writing): When I would export (or Quick Copy) references in IEEE style, it would abbreviate the author list with “First Author, et al.” if there were seven (7) or more authors. When I’m building a bibliography list, this is of course never the right thing to do.

Here’s the simple workaround for this problem:

  • Go to Preferences | Advanced and click on the “Show Data Directory” button.
  • Edit styles/ieee.csl with your favourite text editor.
  • Look for the line starting with <bibliography et-al-min=”7″ … and change the 7 to a higher number, 100 for example.
Let me know in the comments if this helped!