My Publications

The My Publications feature allows you to automatically create a bibliography of your research and share copies of your work on zotero.org. For an example, see https://www.zotero.org/bwiernik

To share an item with My Publications, drag it to the “My Publications” special collection under “My Library” in the Zotero desktop client app.

When you drag an item to the My Publications collection, the My Publications helper window will appear. From this window, you can choose whether to also share any notes or stored attachment files attached to the items. Links (e.g., to a copy of the article hosted on your personal website, an institutional or disciplinary repository, or the publisher website) will always be shared. If an item doesn't have an attached file or link, the bibliography shown on zotero.org will include a link drawn from the item's DOI or URL fields.

After choosing whether to share files and notes, you will next be asked to confirm that you are a creator of the work and (if applicable) that you have the rights to publicly distribute the included files. You should only use My Publications to share your own personal work (to share items more generally, use Zotero Groups.

You should only share files for which you have public distribution rights. If your work is published, check your contributor agreements from your publisher (see also the SHERPA/RoMEO archive of publisher copyright and self-archiving policies). In many cases, it is acceptable to share a pre-print or author manuscript version of your work, but you should verify before sharing with My Publications.

If you are sharing files, you will next be asked whether you want to permit your work to be shared further. Your choices are:

• All rights reserved: Retain all distribution rights over your work. Only publish your work on zotero.org and don't permit others to share files further.
• Creative Commons licenses: Share your work under a Creative Commons license. These licenses permit others to share your work so long as they attribute it to you, provide a link to the license, and indicate any changes made, potentially with limitations on modification and commercial uses. You will choose a specific license in the next window.
• Public domain: Release your work into the public domain. This waives all of your rights to the work under copyright law. Please read the Creative Commons CC0 FAQ before placing your work in the public domain and note that this action is irreversible, even if you later choose different terms or cease publishing the work.

Finally, if you choose to distribute your work under a Creative Commons license, you must choose the terms of the license to apply.

First, decide whether to allow adaptations or modifications to your work to be shared:

• No
• Yes, as long as others share alike (apply the same Creative Commons license to any derivative works)
• Yes

Second, decide whether to permit commercial uses of your work.

Based on these questions, Zotero will give a link to the appropriate Creative Commons license. This license will appear with the files you share with My Publications.

For additional information on Creative Commons licenses, see Considerations for licensors. Note that rights waived under a Creative Commons license cannot be revoked, even if you later choose different terms or cease publishing the work.