
Zotero: Personal Research Assistant - supdatecron
https://www.zotero.org/
======
autocorr
Zotero is simply a wonderful tool and I'm very grateful to the developers for
it. As an academic, it is the only GUI program besides Firefox that I consider
essential on one of my computers. Some of the features I enjoy:

* free software

* Linux and multi-platform support

* browser extension "that just works" for ingesting items and magic lookup tool for DOIs and arXiv IDs (and I hardly ever have problems with the metadata)

* shared group libraries for collaboration with students

* offline only as well as sync

* the ability to add notes, tags, and relational links between items.

After reading about Luhmann's Zettelkasten[1] system, I've also had a great
productivity boost by implementing a similar scheme in Zotero. After reading
an article, I write up a summary of my ideas and thoughts and attach it to the
article as a literature note. I then keep a primary repository of notes in a
flat folder with links between them and the literature notes as my makeshift
Zettelkasten. While not as stream-lined as some special purpose note taking
tools, Zotero can do a pretty decent job at this while also having all the
advantages of it's bibliographic system, file syncing, etc.

Something I wish it had for this purpose was an "auto-complete" for other
entries and a graphical tree viewer of relations. However, these aren't so bad
not to have, part of the genius of Luhmann's original paper card notes system
seems to have been the critical thinking required to determine which handful
(1 to 3) of notes are most related and the serendipitous discovery process
from having to manually walk the note files when you need to find something.

~~~
souterrain
I love Zotero for my academic work, but I'm contemplating using it more for
less formal research as well.

As Luhmann did, I'm trying to more frequently write summaries of articles—both
actual academic articles and things like blog posts, news articles, even
recipes. I prefer to handwrite these notes.

For web links, I was thinking of using pinboard's caching feature which
assigns a url like
[https://pinboard.in/cached/01234567890a/](https://pinboard.in/cached/01234567890a/)
and recording down the 48-bit identifier.

Alas, what happens when my online service of choice fails? So, maybe the
Zotero citation key?

I'm wondering what others' experiences are with hybrid written/digital
research workflows, and cross-referencing. Anyone have a "personal DOI" that
works really well?

~~~
easygenes
First thought for easy digitization of hand written notes is an iPad with
pencil by your workstation. A BKM for integrating that into your Zotero
workflow isn’t obvious though.

~~~
Naracion
Does BKM stand for bookmark manager or something else? I tried searching for
"BKM" but didn't come up with many (relevant looking) hits.

~~~
easygenes
Best known method: "bkm acronym" came up with it as first result.

------
dotdi
Also chiming in to say I used Zotero for my Master's thesis and I was happy
with it.

With some plugins (I don't remember exactly) I had a very nice pipeline of
"find paper on the interntet" -> Zotero -> automatically updated .bib ->
trigger rebuild of Latex document to PDF -> automatic reload in PDF viewer.

The UI is somewhat dated but the functionality is great. Nowadays I would
probably choose Citationsy, maybe only because I find the UI more
aesthetically pleasing.

~~~
sidpatil
> The UI is somewhat dated but the functionality is great.

I like Zotero precisely _because_ of its UI. It's efficient, and reminds me of
the Firefox bookmarks manager.

In fact, I wish I could replace or merge Firefox's bookmark manager with
Zotero, so I'd get the best of both worlds.

~~~
jmiserez
Zotero is/was a XUL application, and the whole application used to (also) be a
Firefox plugin. So the similarities are not unexpected.

~~~
retorquere
Is, for now. The parts of FF that Zotero relied on are being phased out
(listed on the Mozilla docs site as "Archive of obsolete content"), so a
transition to Electron is planned, and as part of that transition plan, parts
are already being rewritten from XUL into React/HTML.

------
abdullahkhalids
My workflow is:

1\. Come across paper pdf on the web.

2\. Use Zotero firefox plugin to import it into Zotero. Zotero is able get
citation data, and automatically exports it to a bib file.

3\. Use emacs helm, which reads the bib file, to cite papers in my documents.

I would have really loved to have this workflow during my Phd, but I was doing
everything manually back then. My only complaint is this recent silent change
in Zotero, where the exported bib file has entries in alphabetical order,
rather than in last-added order. With the last-added order, when I popped open
emacs helm, the last added paper would be on top. Now I have to search for it.

~~~
tmalsburg2
Hi, helm-bibtex author here. Helm-bibtex has support for importing citations
directly from CrossRef: Fire up helm-bitbex, type search terms (e.g., title of
paper), select CrossRef option, select paper from search results and press "c"
to copy BibTeX entry, "q" to close, then paste entry into your .bib file.

~~~
abdullahkhalids
Thanks for the response. I am aware of that functionality. I, however, usually
find papers using the browser (either searching google scholar or on
arxiv/scirate). Zotero, then lets me click one button (most of the time), and
the entry is available to be cited using a nice citekey (firstauthorYear), and
the pdf is placed in my pdf folder with the right filename.

With all due respect to the excellent work you do (many thanks for that), my
workflow does not require any manual work most of the time.

~~~
tmalsburg2
I guess you have to manually export your bibliography, but, still, that's a
pretty streamlined workflow. There's definitely room for improvements within
Emacs.

~~~
BostonEnginerd
The BetterBibTeX plugin for zotero automatically keeps the BibTeX file in sync
with the database.

------
mncharity
Zotero phones home with perhaps more information than you expect.[1]

By default, there's a persistent connection whenever Zotero is running, a
request when you visit a site with a translator (eg NYTimes) the first time
since a browser start, when you download a PDF, etc.

I enjoyed using it, but their approach to privacy felt creepy. That [1] is
somewhat improved... but only somewhat.

[1]
[https://www.zotero.org/support/privacy#disabling_automatic_r...](https://www.zotero.org/support/privacy#disabling_automatic_requests)

~~~
dstillman
(Disclosure: Zotero developer)

Criticizing Zotero for privacy, of all things, is a bit bizarre. Zotero is an
open-source project from a nonprofit organization with no financial interest
in people's research data. It's designed as a local tool specifically to give
people complete control over their data, and it's developed in the open. Most
similar tools are proprietary programs owned by major publishers or analytics
companies with voracious appetites for data.

The page you linked to explains the reasons for every single network
connection that Zotero makes and how to disable it. Every one enables a
specific Zotero feature — push-based auto-sync, fast translator updates as
sites change to minimize save failures, open-access PDF retrieval. When we
implemented retraction notifications, we even did it using k-anonymity to
avoid sending up library data from people who don't use syncing.

We're always happy to discuss design decisions in our forums, but I'd argue
pretty strongly that privacy is one of the main reasons one should use Zotero,
not the other way around.

~~~
karmelapple
Zotero's privacy features even extend to where data is stored: you can bring
your own WebDAV server [1] and have Zotero store data there.

[1]
[https://www.zotero.org/support/sync#webdav](https://www.zotero.org/support/sync#webdav)

~~~
Reelin
You do realize that (unless something changed recently) all your metadata is
still on their servers? Last time I checked, a Docker image of the sync server
was in the works though.

------
bigbossman
The problem with this (and Mendeley, Papers, Bibtex, etc.) is that each
paper/thought is isolated. Roam Research
([http://roamresearch.com/](http://roamresearch.com/)) is my new jam.

~~~
getpolarized
We're shipping a new version of Polar
([https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/)) this weekend that is
sort of closer to the roam/zettelkasten idea of managing notes.

Here's a video explaining the new functionality:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M6jNlairGc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M6jNlairGc)

Basically all the documents you read can have tags. So you can manage all your
documents via whatever tag you want.

You can then read those documents in Polar directly and highlight parts of
text that are interesting.

These highlights, notes, comments, and flashcards that you create can also
have tags.

We call these annotations. We then have an annotation manager which you can
manage by tag so you can pivot everything around the tags you're working with.

This version is pushed to the web version of Polar now and the new desktop
version will make it out this weekend.

We're also working on a new Polar 2.0 which will support Android and tablets
and have better pen support too so you can work directly in a tablet rather
than a desktop/laptop.

We're also working on a dark mode but first need to get 2.0 out the door.

~~~
fudged71
Would it be possible to export annotations into a markdown+wikilink syntax to
import into Roam?

I love the idea of Polar for document management, and Roam for knowledge
management, so I'd love to find a way to use both

~~~
getpolarized
We're thinking of adding an generic sync functionality into Polar so that you
could keep external connections to thinks like Anki, Evernote, Roam, etc.

The biggest challenge is deletions though so I'm still trying to work out the
ideal sync framework.

~~~
fudged71
That would be so great!! I think a plain export would be useful to someone at
somepoint though, in addition to sync :)

------
tobias2014
I've used Mendeley Desktop for some time, which I believe is very similar in
functionality (but proprietary, yes Elsevier!):
[https://www.mendeley.com/download-desktop-
new/](https://www.mendeley.com/download-desktop-new/)

Furthermore I think [http://www.docear.org/](http://www.docear.org/) deserves
to be mentioned as another free open-source solution with some interesting
mind-mapping functionality:
[http://www.docear.org/software/screenshots/](http://www.docear.org/software/screenshots/)

~~~
djaque
I actually specifically chose Zotero over Mendeley because Mendeley is owned
by Elsevier. Their company has always been a toxic influence on publishing.

Recently they even added a new dark pattern so that when you click the
"download PDF" button on their articles it opens up a web app reader loaded
with tracking instead of just giving you a PDF. You then have to spend time
and click through about three menus to really download the PDF.

It's to the point that I avoid articles published by Elsevier if possible.
Easier in my field than others I'm sure.

~~~
Bedon292
I agree that Elsevier is toxic, and wish they didn't own Mendeley.
Unfortunately, at least the last time I compared them, Mendeley was way better
than Zotero for my personal use and just couldn't use Zotero. The cloud sync
and sharing, the lit search, and all were just so much more compelling. I do
think its been long enough I might poke at Zotero again and see if its caught
up.

------
jszymborski
So another great thing about Zotero is that you can share public
bibligraphies. I've taken to making a little QR code at the end of my
presentations that links to my bibliography (since no one actually reads the
bibs on your last 4 slides).

Here's an example from a talk I gave on Variational Autoencoders:
[https://www.zotero.org/groups/2350257/jszym_presentations/co...](https://www.zotero.org/groups/2350257/jszym_presentations/collections/GI7553H2)

------
mcshicks
I started using zotero after reading about it in the nytimes, I guess it's
about 11 years ago. I'm pretty sure it's this article, because its the same
date as the first book I added.
[https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/defeating-b...](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/defeating-
bedlam/?searchResultPosition=1)

I mostly just used it for keeping lists of books with tags (to read, which
library has them, on my kindle etc) and some notes. The bibliography report is
nice. I know its is targeted toward research, but it really is good for people
who just like to read books if for nothing else to remember what they have
read!

I think the really nice thing about it is how easy it is to add books. When I
was using a kindle a lot, just add it from amazon. Recently I've been reading
a lot more books from archive.org, and again its really easy to add it, just
one click.

------
Flockster
The killer feature of zotero is, that it is customizeable with different
plugins. One very neat one is the integration with scihub. So you just paste
in the DOI and it automaticly downloads the paper and adds all the metadata.

~~~
ethanwillis
Pretty sure I'm the author of the plugin you're talking about :)

I did a few updates recently, but I welcome any additions/PRs anyone wants to
send.

~~~
rollinDyno
Can you please link to your plugin?

~~~
ethanwillis
[https://github.com/ethanwillis/zotero-
scihub/](https://github.com/ethanwillis/zotero-scihub/) Here you go!

------
frodo3212
Wouldn't have made it through my doctorate without Zotero. The plugins and MS
Word integration made paper writing (almost) enjoyable! Instead of wasting
hours on formatting my bibliography/citations, Zotero did the same work in
about 2 minutes. Kudos to the folks who maintain this incredible resource, and
a big personal thank you!

~~~
bredren
Zotero's been around a while, I remember using it and its plugins many many
years ago. Glad to see it is still kicking.

------
reichardt
One of the killer features is the multi-platform support, including web
browsers, in combination with synchronization across devices and the Google
Docs plugin. Makes working on a paper across multiple devices super easy.

~~~
xattt
Mendeley has this feature too. Their current desktop uses Qt.

One of the other things going for Mendeley is seamless sync between an iPad
and a desktop. Their cloud limit is 2GB free storage.

Though Zotero has Zotfile, it’s a hassle to set up tablet sync with an iOS
device.

------
memming
I don't use Zotero any more, but from the receiving end, the BibTeX it exports
is terrible. Lots of non-ascii chars, bizarre nested curly braces, wrong
capitalization detection, etc. I dislike collaborating with colleagues who use
Zotero because it takes so much time to clean up their BibTeX entries.

~~~
sytelus
This. The paper I want to cite, I actually make an effort to go to its
author's website and grab bib from there. That's the only definitive source of
how the author _wants_ to be cited. Grabbing bib from automated tools has
created bib hell that we rely upon Google Scholar to clean up via fuzzy
matching which screws up things quite often.

~~~
retorquere
That works if it's the author itself, and the author has at least a passing
familiarity with BibTeX. Much of the bibtex that you can download from journal
cites is itself pretty botched up.

------
Cenk
Zotero was also the first reference manger to use CSL, the Citation Style
Language [1], now adopted by many other apps including Mendeley and
Citationsy.

[1] [https://citationstyles.org](https://citationstyles.org)

~~~
ansible
From the link:

> _9500 free CSL citation styles._

Should I ask how it has come to be that there are 9500 citation styles? Or
will it make me angry and depressed at the lack of cooperation and widely
accepted standards?

~~~
ajot
I believe most of them are the same, but with a different name. So, for my
convenience, I don't need to think what citation style a journal uses, I just
go and download the citation style with its name, even if I have the same
style installed for another journal.

~~~
retorquere
And most of such styles are so-called "substyles" \-- if the master style they
derive of changes, so do they.

------
boyband6666
I have used Zotero for my [part time] PhD and found it a great tool (I
submitted last week). Whilst I love it, its a bit cranky, and it's a shame it
doesn't have things that would clearly elevate it to the level of (or beyond)
others like endnote and the elephant in the room of Mendeley: \- doesn't play
nice with cloud storage - seems you should be able to just pick your cloud
provider and let it sync up. Instead if you try and use cloud storage it'll
most likely corrupt your library \- because of the above unless using their
storage, it's hard to make work accross multiple computers (and never even
tried on my ipad, which is a shame) \- can't export a reference pack \-
interface is dated. I don't mind, but suspect it is intimidating to less
technical folk and a bit of a barrier to entry (Mendeley is much more
accessible) \- does require plugins and fiddling to get the most out of it,
some of which seems unnecessary (why are they not in the main program?

Still, I've no regrets in choosing it in 2013, and think it's a fantastic
piece of software. Hopefully it keeps on developing, and becomes the de facto
standard :-)

~~~
radus
Sync your metadata with Zotero but the files in the cloud - you just need to
make sure your settings are compatible between machines (storage locations
etc).

~~~
boyband6666
That's what I do, but it took a while to get there.

Since I would say 80% of people have some level of cloud storage now
(University, employer, personal), there should be a simple setting to pick
one, and the location. Make it easy for people and win users!

------
generatorguy
I've been using [http://www.qiqqa.com/](http://www.qiqqa.com/) for 8 years and
it does a fantastic job of organizing my PDFs and managing citations. It can
do cloud based shared libraries as well.

for me the killer feature is that it makes all the PDFs full text searchable
so it is like my own personal google where the links never break and the
content is all relevant.

Highly recommend!

~~~
SubiculumCode
So does Zotero.

~~~
generatorguy
great! good to have an alternative to qiqqa in case it disappears, although it
looks like qiqqa has killed their cloud libraries and gone open source. I
found qiqqa after google desktop was EOLed.

I have been quick to recommend Qiqqa whenever it seems like it might be a
useful tool but I never really saw those comments get much traction - maybe
because everyone was already using zotero?

------
Woetoewoetoe
When you import a work into your bib, always check if it got the right data!
Sometimes it categorizes something as the wrong type of file, or it wil even
implement the data of a whole other article. This can make it impossible for
you to find the data back when you actually need it.

~~~
meej
One good habit is to never import using the browser plugins until the page is
fully loaded. Otherwise, papers often get imported as web pages with no PDF
attachments.

------
dang
A thread from 2018:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606929)

A little bit from 2008:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=319975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=319975)

Related from last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18977461](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18977461)

(Links are for the curious. Reposts are fine after a year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html))

------
djaque
Easily one of the most useful programs I've installed for work.

Best feature is the web browser add-on. Can open up a few dozen articles
during a literature search and dump all of them into Zotero for reading later.

------
SubiculumCode
I use Zotero for my research everyday, and I am a paying subscriber for their
storage. I love it, and it is getting better. I recently discovered a new
feature: I received a notification that one of the articles I had in my
library had been retracted! That is pretty cool! The Word/Libre integration is
solid.

When I saw Zotero at the top of HN, I suddenly wondered if they published a
new tool. So I'm kind disappointed...but still love any attention they can
get.

------
andrewSC
If you like Zotero, Dataverse[0][1][2] might be appealing as well!

[0] [https://dataverse.org/](https://dataverse.org/) [1]
[https://dataverse.org/software-features](https://dataverse.org/software-
features) [2]
[https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse](https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse)

------
fjfaase
Does it also have support for managing scans/photographs? I have about 10
Gbyte of images with respect to a research project about art works. The images
also contain scans of materials. I would like to extract facts from these
documents and maintain a link between those links and the scans. This means
being able to annotate a part of an image, which for example is a text with an
illustration or a mentioning of a certain art work.

~~~
jabl
The same people doing zotero have another project
[https://tropy.org/](https://tropy.org/) which might be what you're looking
for? (Disclaimer: I haven't used tropy personally)

------
jccalhoun
I have used Zotero for years. I can't imagine writing a paper without it. I
know some academics still do all their citations by hand. Fuck that shit. I
can't imagine doing that - especially when journals often have their own
citation style and if you get rejected by one and submit to another you may
have to change all the citation formats.

------
mfsch
I’ve recently started a little project for my own reference manager. Since I
end up writing papers in Latex, I want my bib file(s) to be the ground truth
and I’m slightly obsessive about things like consistent capitalization and
author names. I’d rather not fight my reference manager to eventually produce
the bib file I want if I can just create that bib file in the first place.

Everything I want from a reference manager can be done in a relatively simple
command line tool with an interface similar to beets. Only the extraction of
DOIs from PDFs looks like it will have to be a bit hacky, but if `ref im
article.pdf` works for 90% of articles and asks me to provide the DOI for the
other 10%, that’s good enough for me.

------
gmac
I wrote a Zotero extension many years ago when doing my PhD[1]. Unfortunately,
recent changes have broken it, I can't figure out what's wrong (XUL is not
exactly well-documented these days), and the developers aren't responsive[2].
:(

[1] [http://mackerron.com/zot2bib/](http://mackerron.com/zot2bib/)

[2] [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/zotero-
dev/a1IPUJ2m_...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/zotero-
dev/a1IPUJ2m_3s)

------
superlopuh
I've started using Calibre for these purposes, saving papers from arXiv to it,
and can definitely recommend. It takes a bit of manual effort to add tags to
the papers, but once you have a bit of a collection going they autocomplete.
The only downside is lack of read/reading/unread status, but I've hacked
around it by rating papers and books I'm currently reading one star. I'd love
to have an easier method for importing the papers, but not enough to actually
have tried to write the script yet.

------
DamnInteresting
I started using Zotero a few months ago when a major Firefox update rendered
the Scrapbook extension non-functional. It's nice to be able to take quick
snapshots from Chrome or Firefox and save them to the local document
repository. I found this guide helpful in getting things set up:

[https://daily.jstor.org/how-to-use-zotero-and-scrivener-
for-...](https://daily.jstor.org/how-to-use-zotero-and-scrivener-for-research-
driven-writing/)

~~~
tetris11
For the cloud side, there was a nice tool for linking a Google Drive full of
PDFs with entries in your Zotero database, bypassing the cloud storage limits.

[https://github.com/mtekman/ZoteroGoogleDrive-PDFLinker-
Cloud](https://github.com/mtekman/ZoteroGoogleDrive-PDFLinker-Cloud)

------
mrks_
Does anybody use this for non-academic purposes? I've been looking for
something similar to use as a personal knowledge base, but zotero may be a bit
much for that use case.

~~~
djaque
It ended up being the perfect solution for storing manuals and other random
information for me.

It's lightweight enough to not get in my way but still syncs everywhere and is
searchable. There's even a third party app I can use on my phone if I need
quick access to PDFs.

------
osrec
I had a quick look at Zotero's github but couldn't quite work out how they
render their desktop UI - is this an electron-style app or a browser extension
of some sort?

~~~
gmac
It's XUL. It used to be a Firefox extension, before Firefox changed how those
work.

------
stared
Just curious, what is Zotero's business model (as open-source software for
academicians)?

It's most direct competition, Mendeley, has always been closed-source, and
then got acquired by Elsevier.

To make it clear: I love that Zotero is open-source. And I am happy it is
growing (I remember the early versions, well over a decade ago, when I was
writing my Master's thesis). I am just curious if they are based mostly on the
storage payments, grants, or voluntary work.

~~~
dstillman
Early versions were grant funded, but the project has been fully supported by
storage subscriptions — including institutional subscriptions — for years.
(Lots of invaluable volunteer work as well, but there's a paid dev team.)

~~~
forgotMyAccName
I'd be interested to learn more about Zotero's history and whole space. Do you
mind if I reach out to you with more questions? Email's on my profile :)

------
metreo
I've used this for years, it's one of the first applications I add to a new
build. Keeps all of my reading synced including backup copies of the material.

------
ntnsndr
Big thank you to the Zotero team (@dstillman) for your ongoing work,
particularly the much improved web interface. One of my favorite features is
to easily share a URL of a Collection with someone interested in the subject.

My setup: writing in Emacs with markdown, export with pandoc, which grabs
Zotero's .bib file made with the Better BibTex plugin. Works really smoothly,
though takes a little tinkering to get it set up on a fresh rig.

------
kingbirdy
Does anyone know of a comparable tool for legal research (or plugin(s) that
add this functionality to Zotero)? A good friend is in law school right now
and has really been wanting a good citation manager, but when I pointed him to
Zotero it ended up being lacking due to the absence of a standardized
reference number and citation info that scientific papers have.

~~~
ar-jan
Juris-M, a friendly fork of Zotero supporting legal referencing
([https://juris-m.github.io/](https://juris-m.github.io/)).

------
faitswulff
While Zotero is great, I'm a bit confused as to why this is #1 on hackernews
right now? Is this a new version of Zotero?

------
zneveu
I use this all the time, it's a great way to collect papers about different
topics and easily add them to writeups. The option to keep a bibtex
bibliography updated in real time is especially helpful. All it takes to add a
new source is a single click on Firefox and then just cite in latex/docs/word.

------
catchmeifyoucan
I used Zotero and their Chrome Extension when I was reading research papers.
It automatically formatted citations, allowed me to add annotations and also
locally saved any PDFs so I can access it quickly. You can also send different
types of links such as videos, PDFs articles directly to Zotero.

I'd highly recommend it!

------
HamSession
Used Zotero with Firefox plugin and word plugin. Used to use Mendeley, but
like the open source nature of Zotero.

------
boromi
Anyone else here who only uses Jabref?

~~~
gtpedrosa
I've tried Mendeley, Zotero and Jabref and stuck with Jabref for my masters
thesis. Couldn't recommend it enough, even though haven't given Zotero a
serious try.

Synced bibtex and pdfs folder in linux and windows with dropbox, worked like a
charm.The best part was configuring it based on this blog post
([http://griechenzicken.blogspot.com/2011/10/configuring-
jabre...](http://griechenzicken.blogspot.com/2011/10/configuring-jabref-on-
different.htm)) and making pdf links work on both machines. I wrote a blog
post about why Jabref, but unfortunately it is in portuguese
([https://gtpedrosa.github.io/blog/gerenciador-de-
refer%C3%AAn...](https://gtpedrosa.github.io/blog/gerenciador-de-
refer%C3%AAncias-bibliogr%C3%A1ficas-jabref/)).

------
pkilgore
I used this to research and write what was essentially my thesis graduation
requirement from law school in 2012. Good tool, I'm happy more people are
finding out about it.

It's up there with calibre in terms of "meh" UI but just excellent
functionality.

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KaoruAoiShiho
Ahh darn I was hoping this would be an AI thing that collects and highlights
research for you.

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sytelus
I'm using diigo for the same purpose. It seems to have similar features and
more, especially easy tagging instead of having to deal with folders. Diigo
also allows annotation, offline copies, search within text, export whole
collection etc.

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mooneater
The magic import is great, but I wish it understood links from more sources,
including [https://www.semanticscholar.org/](https://www.semanticscholar.org/)

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fatihbaltaci
I'm using Zotero with Yandex WebDav and it's pretty amazing. But there is no
official iPad/mobile application. Are you planning to release a mobile
application?

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Kratisto
A college professor taught me about Zotero during my last semester. Awesome
tool, but I wish I learned about it years before. I try and teach every
student I meet about it.

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andreshb
No way I could have written so many papers in so little time in my undergrad
Poli Sci major. (2005-2009)College without this would have been a bigger
nightmare.

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ohbleek
Zotero is a game changer. Citations have become the easiest part of writing
and the tagging feature is incredibly useful when doing a systematic review.

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elcomet
I've been using Zotero for a few years and I really like it.

I'm using my own nextcloud storage to get more than the 300Mb free storage on
zotero cloud.

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colonelchlorine
Loved Zotero in my undergrad at UWaterloo for nano degree. This was over 10
years ago, so it's good to see it's still popular.

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RMPR
I use it to write my master thesis, for my not so conventional setup, (using
markdown and pandoc) I find that it integrates nicely.

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HorizonXP
I used to use this almost 10+ years ago to organize my research during my
masters. Love Zotero, glad to see it's still around!

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ghego1
Happy to see Zotero here, I use it on a daily basis and I couldn't love it
more. Thanks to the developers!

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loughnane
Was looking at this just yesterday. Anyone have success self-hosting this?

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marcel-me
Does anybody have a good workflow syncing Kindle notes with Zotero?

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etaioinshrdlu
It's shocking how many Git repos are used to build this project. It seems
unnecessary. Personally I find the ability to make atomic commits across
different parts of a project very handy. Don't understand the drive to break
it into so many parts.

~~~
dstillman
Mostly historical. Zotero began as a Firefox extension, with separate Firefox
extensions for the word processor plugins, and later added a standalone app
that used the same codebase. Since Firefox discontinued support for XUL
extensions, there's only a standalone app and the lightweight browser
extensions now, but we haven't gotten around to merging the various build
repos. We know it can be a pain to build, though, so streamlining this is
planned.

But it's also just a huge ecosystem with parts that are used and developed
independently. E.g., "translators" for save/import/export are used in both
Zotero and in the Node-based translation-server (used by Wikipedia and
others), and we can give commit access to those separately from the core code.

(Disclosure: Zotero developer)

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richclominson
This is so cool! Any plans for working on an iPhone/iPad app?

~~~
MengerSponge
For a version 1,2,3, etc., it doesn't need to display annotations or notes.
Just a local browser for my library with tags would make my life far better.

ps- fellow iPad user: check out Liquid Text. It's the bee's knees:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akEMuL4_9sk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akEMuL4_9sk)

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bitcuration
It'd be interesting if someone can compare it to Evernote.

~~~
jccalhoun
I don't think it is similar at all. I haven't used evernote but it is for
notes and things right? This is just for citations.

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beckingz
This would have been extremely helpful when writing my book.

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itqwertz
Is there a WordPress plug-in?

