CurTask vs Zotero: from reference manager to finished literature review

This page is for students and researchers who use Zotero, or are choosing a reference manager, and wonder whether one tool could also carry them through the analysis and the writing. Zotero is well known as a free, open-source reference manager with a browser connector, group libraries and word-processor plugins for thousands of citation styles. CurTask starts in the same place, your papers, and keeps going: it reads them, helps you analyse them and lets you write the review beside them, in one project.

At a glance

One project instead of a reference manager plus four other files

A typical review built around Zotero also has a spreadsheet for the matrix, a document of notes, perhaps a qualitative analysis program and a word processor. Each holds part of what you know about the same paper. In CurTask a project has three lenses over one set of papers: Library to collect and read, Analysis to extract, code and synthesise, Writing to draft. Your Global Library keeps one copy of every paper, and each project draws its papers from it, so nothing is copied between programs and nothing drifts out of step.

Not every paper comes with a PDF. CurTask saves it anyway with its details, marks it "No PDF", and lets you add the PDF later from the paper's drawer; the AI analyses only papers that have their PDF, so nothing is charged for the others. Your library also stays yours: on every plan, "Download all my data" gives you one ZIP of everything in open formats, your files as uploaded.

A literature matrix that shows its evidence

In CurTask you describe a column in plain words, for example "sample and context", and see the credit estimate before anything runs. The AI then fills that column for every paper, and each value keeps the page number and a verbatim quote that was checked to exist on that page. Where no supporting passage is found, the cell says "No source found" rather than guessing. AI values stay marked Suggested until you accept, edit or restore them, so the researcher stays the author. You can export the matrix to CSV whenever your supervisor asks for the spreadsheet.

Because of baggage, a paper's analyses travel with it. Add the same paper to a second project and what was already learned about it comes along, at 0 credits.

Analysis that goes beyond tags

Tags and annotations are useful for finding things again. CurTask adds a qualitative coding workspace: select a passage, apply a code from your codebook and a coloured strip appears beside the text. You can write memos on coded passages and reuse codes from your other projects; coding by hand is on every plan, including Free. On paid plans the AI codes every paper of a project at the push of a button, and you accept or dismiss each suggestion. On the Synthesis Map you group codes into themes (paid plans can ask the AI to sort them into categories and themes), mark which papers agree with, contradict or extend each other, and send a theme to your draft with its passages.

Writing with the source one click away

The Writing lens is a modular editor: sections you can reorder in binder, corkboard and outline views. Cite with @ as you type in one of eight styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Nature, AMA and ACS), and the bibliography follows. Each citation can carry its page, and the evidence line takes you from the citation back to the passage in the PDF. Optional marks show the sentences that have no citation yet. The writing sidebar builds on the analysis you have accepted and shows what contradicts or supports the paragraph you are on, in up to three cards with contradictions first, each with its page and verified quote. When you are ready, compile to Word, PDF, Markdown or HTML. Everything saves by itself, even offline.

Made for research in Malaysia

CurTask reads scanned PDFs in English and Malay, keeps the full text and makes the files much smaller. The interface is in English and Bahasa Melayu. Your papers, notes and writing are stored on servers in Malaysia, private to you, and never used to train AI. Plans are priced in ringgit, with a Student plan for university students.

When Zotero might suit you

If what you need is a free, open-source reference manager that captures items from the browser, shares group libraries and cites directly inside Word, LibreOffice or Google Docs, Zotero does that very well and has a large, helpful community.

Using both

Many researchers keep Zotero for collecting and use CurTask for the review itself. To bring papers over, drag the PDF files from your Zotero storage into CurTask: duplicates are recognised, and details are filled from each paper's DOI for you to check. CurTask does not import Zotero libraries or RIS/BibTeX files, so the PDFs are the bridge; going the other way, your data download includes your references as RIS and BibTeX. A Save to CurTask browser extension for Chrome, Edge and Brave is coming soon; until it arrives, Zotero's Connector stays the quicker way to collect papers from the web.

Try CurTask on the free plan with your next set of papers and see the matrix fill, quote by quote.