Research and Citations

Your research lives in the Research room (⌥⌘2). The column shows Research & Notes — your notes, clipped pages, Sources, the Inbox and the character study pages — and the page shows the note you choose, in the same editor as Write. Research keeps its own place: switch to Write and back and the note is still open. A note moved into the Manuscript becomes a scene (see Arrangements).

Clip a web page

Choose Clip Web Page… (File menu on Mac, ⌃⌘K; the ⋯ or + menu on iPad and iPhone), enter the page's address and choose Clip. Five Rooms loads the page and saves the article's text as a document in Research & Notes: beside the note or folder selected in Research, otherwise in the Inbox. It then opens in Research.

The clip keeps:

  • The article, without menus, sharing buttons, comments or advertisements. Headings become bold paragraphs and lists keep their bullets. Links stay links, to their full addresses.
  • Its source: author, title, site, date and address, shown in the inspector's Source section, ready to cite.
  • Two attachments: a reader-view copy of the article that opens in any browser, and a PDF snapshot of the page as it looked. Choose one in the inspector to open it.

Pages behind a sign-in clip only what anyone can see. For those, share the page from Safari instead.

From Safari

In Safari, choose Share ▸ Five Rooms. With Clip the article on, the clip is made from the page as Safari shows it, so pages you've signed in to clip in full. Anything you select on the page, or type in the share sheet, becomes the clip's notes. The clip goes in the Inbox the next time Five Rooms opens.

Source details

Any research document can have a source: a book, an article, a chapter or a web page. In the inspector's Source section, choose Add Source Details… (or Edit…). Write each author on a line of their own, as "Surname, Given" when the surname isn't the last word. Group authors ("BBC News") are cited whole. The sheet shows the footnote and bibliography entry as they'll read.

Cite in a footnote

Put the caret where the note belongs and choose Cite in the format bar. On a narrow page, hold Note and choose Cite a Source…. Choose a source, give a page if there is one, and choose Insert. The footnote holds the citation in Chicago style: in full the first time the document cites that source, shortened after that. You can edit it like any footnote.

Copy Bibliography, at the foot of the same list, copies every source in the project as a bibliography, sorted by author.

Import citations

Bring your reading list in from a citation manager. Export it from Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote or JabRef as BibTeX, RIS or CSL JSON, then, with the project open, choose File ▸ Import ▸ Citations (BibTeX, RIS, CSL JSON)… (on iPad and iPhone, Import in the Library's menu). Each reference becomes a note in Research & Notes ▸ Sources, with its details filled in, its abstract as the synopsis and its keywords as tags — so Cite offers it and the bibliography lists it. A reference the project already has (the same DOI or ISBN, web address, or title and author) is left alone, so you can import again after your library grows.

On the Mac, File ▸ Import ▸ From Zotero… reads the library of the Zotero running on your computer directly. Zotero 7 keeps that door shut until you open it: in Zotero, choose Settings ▸ Advanced and allow other applications on this computer to communicate with Zotero. Nothing is sent to Zotero but the request, and nothing leaves your computer.