LTER Publications

Tracking and Sharing

The LTER Network maintains a Zotero group library where we track publications (journal articles, reports, and theses) that have been made possible through LTER funding, collaborations, and activities. It does not include publications that preceded LTER funding at sites that now house LTER programs. The publications web page on the LTER Network website draws its data from the Zotero library. The LTER Network Office searches Web of Science monthly for all LTER grant numbers in the ackowledgements field and adds found publications to the library. We strongly encourage sites to update their publication lists at least annually (generally around the time of their annual report to NSF) beacuse our search strategy does not catch theses or publications where authors have not acknowledged your site by grant number.

As of September, 2025, this is the search we are using:

FG=8012093 OR FG=8012095 OR FG=8012165 OR FG=8012166 OR FG=8012313 OR FG=8114302 OR FG=8114822 OR FG=8514325 OR FG=8514326 OR FG=8514327 OR FG=8514328 OR FG=8514329 OR FG=8514330 OR FG=8612105 OR FG=8702328 OR FG=8702331 OR FG=8702333 OR FG=8702629 OR FG=8811764 OR FG=8811884 OR FG=8811906 OR FG=9011659 OR FG=9011660 OR FG=9011661 OR FG=9011662 OR FG=9011663 OR FG=9011664 OR FG=9011927 OR FG=9211768 OR FG=9211769 OR FG=9211771 OR FG=9211772 OR FG=9211773 OR FG=9211774 OR FG=9211775 OR FG=9211776 OR FG=9240261 OR FG=9411971 OR FG=9411972 OR FG=9411973 OR FG=9411974 OR FG=9411975 OR FG=9411976 OR FG=9632763 OR FG=9632851 OR FG=9632852 OR FG=9632853 OR FG=9632854 OR FG=9632921 OR FG=9705814 OR FG=9714833 OR FG=9714835 OR FG=9726921 OR FG=9810217 OR FG=9810218 OR FG=9810220 OR FG=9810221 OR FG=9810222 OR FG=9813061 OR FG=9910514 OR FG=9982105 OR FG=9982133 OR FG=0080381 OR FG=0080382 OR FG=0080412 OR FG=0080529 OR FG=0080538 OR FG=0080592 OR FG=0080609 OR FG=0217282 OR FG=0217533 OR FG=0217631 OR FG=0217774 OR FG=0218001 OR FG=0218039 OR FG=0218088 OR FG=0218210 OR FG=0417412 OR FG=0417616 OR FG=0423259 OR FG=0423385 OR FG=0423442 OR FG=0423476 OR FG=0423565 OR FG=0423595 OR FG=0423627 OR FG=0423662 OR FG=0423704 OR FG=0618210 OR FG=0620276 OR FG=0620409 OR FG=0620443 OR FG=0620482 OR FG=0620579 OR FG=0620652 OR FG=0620910 OR FG=0620959 OR FG=0621014 OR FG=0822700 OR FG=0823101 OR FG=0823293 OR FG=0823341 OR FG=0823380 OR FG=0823405 OR FG=0832755 OR FG=1026415 OR FG=1026607 OR FG=1026843 OR FG=1026851 OR FG=1026865 OR FG=1027188 OR FG=1027253 OR FG=1027319 OR FG=1027341 OR FG=1041742 OR FG=1058747 OR FG=1114804 OR FG=1115245 OR FG=1232294 OR FG=1232779 OR FG=1234162 OR FG=1235828 OR FG=1236905 OR FG=1237140 OR FG=1237491 OR FG=1237517 OR FG=1237733 OR FG=1238212 OR FG=1239764 OR FG=1344502 OR FG=1440297 OR FG=1440409 OR FG=1440435 OR FG=1440478 OR FG=1440484 OR FG=1440485 OR FG=1546686 OR FG=1633026 OR FG=1636476 OR FG=1637396 OR FG=1637522 OR FG=1637522 OR FG=1637590 OR FG=1637630 OR FG=1637632 OR FG=1637653 OR FG=1637661 OR FG=1637685 OR FG=1637686 OR FG=1637708 OR FG=1655499 OR FG=1655686 OR FG=1656026 OR FG=1656070 OR FG=1831937 OR FG=1831944 OR FG=1831952 OR FG=1832016 OR FG=1832042 OR FG=1832178 OR FG=1832194 OR FG=1832210 OR FG=1832221 OR FG=1832229 OR FG=1855277 OR FG=2023425 OR FG=2025166 OR FG=2025755 OR FG=2025849 OR FG=2025954 OR FG=2025982 OR FG=2026045 OR FG=2045382 OR FG=2220863 OR FG=2224354 OR FG=2224608 OR FG=2224726 OR FG=2224608 OR FG=2224712 OR FG=2224439 OR FG=2224662 OR FG=2224545 OR FG=2224776 OR FG=2224743 OR FG=2305814 OR FG=2322664 OR FG=2322676 OR FG=2322806 OR FG=2419138 OR FG=2425417 OR FG=2425290 OR FG=2425143 OR FG=2425143 OR FG=2425178 OR FG=2425396 OR FG=2425484 OR FG=2424122 OR FG=2425352

Journal articles, books, book chapters, maps, software, peer-reviewed conference papers (not posters or presentations), published reports, patents, Master’s and PhD theses.

  • Work that was simply inspired by proximity to LTER research. We are concerned that many of our lists include papers that are very tenuously related to LTER projects and this devalues the entire list. So please do not include papers that are not genuinely LTER-related. If the connection is genuine, but unlikely to be obvious to a casual observer, please include a note explaining the connection, in the “note” field.
  • Magazine and newspaper articles about LTER research. We have other methods for highlighting and sharing this information.
  • Research that preceded the funding of the LTER site. This is appropriate for you to maintain as reference material on your site websites, but should not be included as a product of the LTER program.
  • Personal communications. Again–great for your site record, but not needed for the Network record.
  • Abstracts for conference presentations or posters. These are legitimate products, but in the context of a 40-year program, they are relatively ephemeral, and make it look like we are inflating our numbers.
  • Unpublished work - this only creates more duplicates that need to be resolved.

Bibtex Updates

Zotero is becoming the most common system for maintaining a publication database at LTER sites, but if your site prefers EndNote or a custom database, you may provide your update in the form of a bibtex file. See instructions here.

Zotero Updates

  1. Set up a Zotero account and a group library. The Zotero Best Practices Guide serves as a useful orientation.
  2. Download and install the Zotero desktop client and the browser add-on for the browser of your choice.
  3. To facilitate sharing of publications that meet the criteria for inclusion in the Network bibliography, it’s helpful to add a “For-Network” collection. Collections operate like tags. There’s only one copy of the record – it just appears in multiple collections. So when you update it (with, say, added tags or a print publication date), it is updated in all the collections within your library where it exists.
  4. Import your publications to your desktop Zotero client. Add a tag (LTER-XXX, where XXX= your site’s 3-letter acronym) to indicate which site(s) are associated with the publication. If it is a cross-site collaborative publication, do your best to add the tags for related sites, as well as the “cross-site” tag. If it is an information management-related publication, add LTER-IM and if it is an education-related publication, add LTER-EDU. Do your best with these, but they don’t have to be perfect. The LNO will also attend to adding necessary tags.
  5. Always include a DOI for items when available. This can help identify duplicates when the LNO adds new items to a network-wide bibliography.
  6. Sync your desktop client with your online group library.
  7. Invite the LNO staff (lternco@gmail.com) to your group library.
  8. IMPORTANT: When you do a significant update to your library, let the LNO know and we’ll drag the new publications from your library to the Network library and sync them so they appear in the LTER Network bibliography. There is not currently a way to autosync group libraries (which is probably a wise thing).
  9. After updating, the LNO will search for and resolve duplicates. The merge process adds all the tags that were associated with either of the duplicate publications to the resulting combined publication. For example: if Andrews Forest, and Harvard Forest each upload the same publication, marked with their own tags (LTER-AND and LTER-HFR), the merged publication will have both tags. This is a quick process for a few publications, but even so, it adds up for hundreds. If you can share with us when your last update occurred, it will help to focus the search.

Notes on Item Types

Conference “papers” are a particular challenge. Juried conference papers (where a full paper results and is reviewed and published) should be added to Zotero as conference papers. Abstracts of meeting presentations (which don’t appear as papers) should be entered in Zotero under the “presentation” item type. NSF accepts presentations in annual project reports, but the LNO does not include them in the Network bibliography.

Find full details on the definition of item types and the required and optional fields on the biblio fields page.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

  • Q: Do you have the publications from our most recent annual report?
    • A: The LNO does not receive your annual reports to NSF. The LTER Network Office is not part of NSF and NSF has very strict rules about how they share information. The only way we would receive your annual report is if you send it to us.
  • Q: Where did you get those most recent papers?
    • A: The LNO has a Web of Science alert set up for all LTER grant numbers in funding acknowledgements. We get 30-50 hits per month on those (for all of LTER) and we add them to our Zotero library (tagged with the appropriate site) when they come in. That’s the source of the newer articles. This allows us to keep the Network bibliography reasonably current. Otherwise, we would always be a year or more out of date.
  • Q: I see articles without dates or with only partial titles.
    • A: Articles without dates probably were incomplete in the original file we received or they have only been published online (not yet in print) at the time we added them. When they come out in print, we generally receive a second alert, which we merge with the first.
  • Q: Our site uses internal accession numbers to track our publications. Where should that go?
    • A: Many other kinds of information can go in the “Extra” field in Zotero, including accession numbers. You may need to develop a specific export mapping if you maintain your site bibliography in a custom database.
  • Q: Is there a way to track data that is associated with a publication?
  • Q: I like the LTER Network search client. Can I create something similar for my own site?
  • Q: What’s the point of all this?
    • A: Beyond simply reporting the products of LTER research, combining the LTER Network bibliography allows us to ask and answer questions about how network-wide synthesis happens. At least two big analyses have come out of the LTER Network bibliography
    • Collaboration across Time and Space in the LTER Network. March 2020. Tian-Yuan Huang, Martha R Downs, Jun Ma, Bin Zhao. BioScience, Volume 70, Issue 4, Pages 353–364, doi: 10.1093/biosci/biaa014
    • Evolution of Collaboration within the US Long Term Ecological Research Network. December 2010. Jeffrey C. Johnson, Robert R. Christian, James W. Brunt, Caleb R. Hickman, Robert B. Waide. BioScience, Volume 60, Issue 11, Pages 931–940, doi: 10.1525/bio.2010.60.11.9

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Tim Whiteaker for developing the search client linked to Zotero; to Tommy Thelan, for customizing it for the LTER Network website; and to all the LTER information managers and administrators who have maintained the database over the years.

Thanks, too, to the many creators and maintainers of Zotero, which is developed as a project by the non-profit Corporation for Digital Scholarship. It was originally created at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.