A reference manager is a software package that allows scientific authors to collect, organise, and use bibliographic references or citations. The Lens uses COinS metadata to facilitate integration with reference managers such as Zotero and Mendeley.
How to Use
Zotero Integration

To use this functionality, you must first install the Zotero Connector in your browser. The Zotero Connector can transfer both patent documents and scholarly works from The Lens directly into your Zotero account or library.
Patents
- To save patent documents into Zotero, COinS data has been added to the Patent Summary, Citations, Family Info, Legal Info and Notes pages.
- To save a patent document into Zotero, navigate to one of the aforementioned pages.
- You should notice that your Zotero Connector icon changes to a light bulb, this is Zotero’s icon for a patent document.
- Simply click the light bulb icon and the document will be saved into your Zotero library.
Scholarly
- To save scholarly works into Zotero, COinS data has been added to all of the scholarly work pages.
- To save a scholarly work into Zotero, navigate to one of the scholarly work pages.
- You should notice that your Zotero Connector icon changes to something else, depending on the type of scholarly work you’re viewing.
- Zotero uses different icons for Journal Articles, Books, Conference Papers, Theses, etc.
- Simply click the icon and the document will be saved into your Zotero library.
Mendeley Integration

You can use the Mendeley Web Importer to import scholarly articles from The Lens into your Mendeley Library. The Mendeley Web Importer only works for Journals and Books, it will not work for works such as Dissertations, Datasets or Clinical Trials. The Mendeley Web Importer does not work well with single page applications, so you will find that after you’ve used it once, if you navigate to a different page in The Lens, the Mendeley Web Importer doesn’t update it’s content. In this case, you can refresh the page in The Lens, and then click the Mendeley Web Importer button again to refresh the items in it’s list.