After careful consideration of usage trends and rising costs, Collins Library will be cancelling its subscription to RefWorks effective as of December 31, 2025.  Collins Library will continue to support the campus community in the use of Zotero, a free knowledge management tool with a reliable history of development and robust functionality.  

If you are a current RefWorks user, you will need to download your RefWorks files by December 31, 2025.  We encourage you to create a Zotero account so that you can upload your RefWorks files directly into Zotero and continue working with them.  Please follow the steps below, or schedule an appointment with a Collins librarian, who can walk you through the process.  

Current RefWorks users will be receiving a series of email reminders about this transition.  Students who are currently using RefWorks for their fall semester projects should continue to use RefWorks, but plan to download their RefWorks files as a final step before going on winter break.

Please download your RefWorks files by December 31, 2025.

If you do not have your RefWorks sources organized into different folders or projects, you will be able to download your entire RefWorks library as a single file.

If you do use Refworks folders or projects to organize your citations, and you want to preserve this structure in Zotero, we recommend only migrating one folder at a time, rather than migrating all your citations at once. 

1. After signing in to Refworks, select the references you want to migrate:
   • Select a folder by clicking on it, or
   • Select individual references by clicking their checkboxes, or
   • Select all references by going to "All References" and leaving all boxes unchecked.
2. Under the Share menu, choose Export References.
3. In the pop-up box, set Format as RIS Format. (BibTeX generally also works, but RIS most fully captures all of the metadata. )
4. Click Export. RefWorks will download a file of citations (often named export.ris) to your Downloads folder or wherever your browser stores downloaded files.

1. If you haven't already downloaded Zotero onto your computer, do so now. Then open Zotero. 
2. Click File > Import.
3. Zotero will ask what you want to import from. Usually A file is the only option, but if you have other options, choose the file option. If there are multiple file options, choose RIS.
4. Navigate to the file created by Refworks during the export process (usually export.ris) and select it.
5. Zotero import options:
   • Place imported collections and items into new collection -- we recommend leaving this checked, especially if you are migrating one folder at a time.
   • Copy files to the Zotero storage folder.
6. Click Next and wait for the Zotero import process to finish. Then click Finish.

If you've selected the new collection option, Zotero will put all the imported references into a new folder named for the filename of the RIS file. (If your file was named export.ris, look for a new folder in your library called Export.) Rename this collection/folder if you are exporting one folder at a time. 

If you have additional folders to migrate, delete the export.ris file, then go back to Refworks and export the next folder of citations. Select the new export.ris file and import into Zotero.  Repeat this process until all folders have been exported from RefWorks and imported to Zotero.