17 ms·

Zotero 6

768 points by Schiphol 5y ago

account-5 5y ago
I love zotero. Amazing software, indispensable. Want an easy way to integrate with pandoc and Zim-Wiki, I'm sure there's a way but I've not found it yet. Either way this software is massively underrated. EDIT What's with the official iOS app and no Android?
- criddell 5y ago
  > no Android? iOS is probably their most important platform. If there are enough users, I'd guess Android and Mobian apps will be forthcoming.
  - copperx 5y ago
    There might not be a need -- Apple dominates in academia.
    - account-5 5y ago
      Really? In what way? That's a shame.
- BostonEnginerd 5y ago
  You can use the BetterBibtex plugin to export the references to a bib or json file which can be ingested by Pandoc. There's an option to have it re-export the file every time you make a change to the library. Citations work pretty well. You can customize the output with different CSL files [1]. [1] https://citationstyles.org/ https://citationstyles.org/
patrick451 5y ago
I tried both zotero and mendelay as a grad student. They both had pretty poor bibtex support, which made them more annoying than worth while. I ended up much happier with helm-bibtex for emacs. If you're already writing papers in latex with emacs (which is _really_ nice), it's well worth a look.
noodlesUK 5y ago
Zotero is one of those pieces of open source software that has really improved my life. I first discovered it as a teenager and it revolutionised writing papers and managing sources. Sadly I don’t find myself using it that much in my job. I always got a kick out of introducing it to my friends in the humanities and blowing their minds. I have no idea how anyone writes papers without zotero or another similar tool. Keep up the good work.
- Forgeties79 5y ago
  Honestly I haven’t thought about it since undergrad (history major), I didn’t realize it was still kicking. I might have to fire it back up!
  - asdff 5y ago
    You can even use it as a general knowledge repository since you can save anything on zotero pretty much, not just journal articles.
    - jrochkind1 5y ago
      Mostly just PDFs? Or are there good ways to save non-PDF content?
      - jarvist 5y ago
        The web plugin actually falls back to 'web page with snapshot' if it can't detect a journal paper, which in many ways is better than trying to drag around big PDF binaries.
        jrochkind1 5y ago
        Thanks! I've used zotero only minimally, mostly to support users of my software who use zotero, rather than using it myself for my own purposes. Is the "web plugin" something built into zotero, or an extra plugin to install? Calling it "plugin" makes it sound like something extra to install, but not finding it easily googling. Help me out?
jszymborski 5y ago
Truly amazing! I wonder if the iOS app in development will have all these note-taking features and work on iPad. If so, Zotero completely blows all of the competition out of the water at a price you can't really beat.
- epiecs 5y ago
  It does. It even has webdav sync for the past few months. Just subscribe to their testflight app and you can test the beta right now :)
- smcnally 5y ago
  There’s a release available in the store[0]. It’s been working well. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zotero/id1513554812 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zotero/id1513554812
Freak_NL 5y ago
Not just for scholarly reference management: Zotero is a great tool to keep track of the books you have if your personal library exceeds one or two Billies in volume. For books printed after 1970 the ISBN alone is enough to have it fetch the most relevant metadata for any book published anywhere from online catalogues. I find Zotero particularly useful when going to a book-fair; it is easy to export a list of titles and authors of books you own so you can easily reference it to see which books from a particular author or series you already have.
- exhilaration 5y ago
  one or two Billies in volume Possibly the most universal of all units of measurements. For the uninitiated: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/billy-bookcase-white-00263850/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/billy-bookcase-white-00263850/
  - cholmon 5y ago
    I've never heard "billy" used like this before now, thanks for the clarification.
    - exhilaration 5y ago
      It transcends nation, culture, and language. In the future, we will measure the distance between the stars in billies.
      - david_draco 5y ago
        and insects in millibillies
        SantalBlush 5y ago
        and mountains in hillbillies
  - copperx 5y ago
aDfbrtVt 5y ago
The notes functionality along with the new iOS beta is amazing. Makes marking up papers on an iPad very convenient. I would encourage every who uses Zotero to sign up for a paid storage plan to help support development.
oofbey 5y ago
Anybody using this know if it works well for iPad + pencil for scribbling notes on published research papers?
- aDfbrtVt 5y ago
  The Apple Pencil support is still pretty rough, but it's been getting better every update version. I've been using it for the last couple of months.
- mbreese 5y ago
  I haven’t used their new iOS app, but it’s a welcome addition. In the past you had to sync your Zotero library with another app for PDF annotation that was synced (papership). It was never something I’d call robust or seamless and the papership app has felt like abandonware. I’m looking forward to trying the new app today.
- xattt 5y ago
  The iOS app doesn’t come up as the first result in the App Store. Not sure if it’s because Zotero isn’t popular enough yet. Regardless, here is the direct link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zotero/id1513554812 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zotero/id1513554812
tomrod 5y ago
Easily one of my favorite software solutions. I've tried EndNote. It's awful. Zotero is awesome!
liketochill 5y ago
I’m still using qiqqa for my open source pdf search engine but the qiqqa team has moved on. Qiqqa has been a secret weapon for me in pulling up relevant paragraphs from research papers, ebooks, and standards that I have previously saved but not fully read.
- jcuenod 5y ago
  I made my own (specifically for my Zotero pdf library): https://github.com/search?q=user%3Ajcuenod+pdf https://github.com/search?q=user%3Ajcuenod+pdf https://jcuenod.github.io/bibletech/2021/07/26/full-text-search-for-pdfs/ https://jcuenod.github.io/bibletech/2021/07/26/full-text-sea...
jabl 5y ago
Is it still based on the XUL platform?
- hoistbypetard 5y ago
  The Linux tarball still looks like XULRunner to me.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mijoharas 5y ago
Is anyone else getting horrible stuttering when scrolling that page? (I happen to be on mobile with a bad connection right now, but it's so bad it makes the page almost unreadable)
- WHA8m 5y ago
  I've been visiting said website on my iOS and hadn't had any issues. Maybe re-check your side on some problem
sam537 5y ago
This just made my day.
jart 5y ago
I love the name. As soon as I saw this link at the top of HN, the Totoro theme started playing in my head. https://youtu.be/p1KVuFStqEM https://youtu.be/p1KVuFStqEM
- copperx 5y ago
  I didn't know Zotero was a character in the movie! I'll have to rewatch it.
TheCabin 5y ago
I used Zotero quite a bit in the past, the thing that ultimately drove me away is that when synchronizing you couldn't easily access the PDFs just via the filesystem. I use a nextcloud and also wanted to access PDFs from devices without Zotero installed and this turned out to be a pain at the time. Is this possible with more recent Zotero versions? Is the sync still cumbersome with a zotero account + self-hosted webdav?
- _aavaa_ 5y ago
  I have a similar setup (Zotero + dropbox). Zotero syncs the entries and any notes, but dropbox takes care of the pdf storage. You can swap out dropbox for your storage of choice. I use zotfile (http://zotfile.com http://zotfile.com) to handle this. Files are all stored in a single folder (which can be in different locations depending on computer) which I point zotfile to. Inside that each paper is put into a folder based on author names. And each pdf is then renamed based on authors, year, and title. All of the above is customizable and automated.
  - kristjansson 5y ago
    I can’t recommend ZotFile enough. It, along with Zotero, have basically solved cross-platform cross-device reading and reference management for me.
  - jcuenod 5y ago
    Another +1 for Zotfile, but Z6 looks like it bakes in some of zotfile's features.
    - ryanwwest 5y ago
      I'm glad it includes some, but perhaps not the feature of storing pdfs in a different place so they can be easily synced via Dropbox? While I'd like to have as few extensions as possible, maybe I'll neat to keep Zotfile around regardless.
- AlanYx 5y ago
  There is a plugin called Zotfile that makes this easier. But in some ways Zotero 6 makes filesystem workflows more complicated, in that PDF annotations don't get stored as actual annotations in the PDFs.
WHA8m 5y ago
I'm with Zotero for about 2 weeks and I'm very much in love with it. I use it mainly to store and categorize downloaded Websites (SingelFile) and PDFs. While a PDF viewer (and every functionality that comes with it) is greatly appreciated, I'd wish for same for html and other formats. That'd be overkill :) One thing that I really miss and actual slows my process, is a proper tag-system. Something like Anki has: being able to make tag hierarchies by higher-tag::lower-tag. I'm a heavy tag-user and the overall experience with tags in Zotero is very average. But maybe I'm using this application for stuff that's not intended for. Overall great project and surely something I'll donate a few bucks to the next time I'm on that spree. You guys doing gods work. Love it!
- kkfx 5y ago
  I suggest to store them on de-duplicated filesystem or manually run fdupes and co to hardlink any duplicate in your Zotero lib because most modern websites are full of big js and zotero copy them countless of time, if you have a non marginal set of mirrored pages you probably waste more than 60% of occupied storage just in duplicates...
  - WHA8m 5y ago
    I have to check my folders for that. Since I am using SingleFile for downloading websites, I get single HTML files (as the name of the program says) so there shouldn't be any JS included...
synergy20 5y ago
tried to do pdf annotation on linux, failed to figure out how PDF can be attached/added/opened with zotero.
- copperx 5y ago
  That feature has been already implemented, and works well on Linux. What specific feature were you trying to code?
jimmygrapes 5y ago
I cannot tell from the changelog for this or the previous version whether Zotero has expanded its metadata and formatting capabilities to better support legal citations, so I guess I will stick to the Jurism[0] fork for now. If anybody knows of a better way to make this work in Zotero directly, I'm all ears. [0]: https://juris-m.github.io/ https://juris-m.github.io/
- Quanttek 5y ago
  It'd be so fantastic if the Zotero team could consider integrating their changes. I know that many probably won't necessarily need its advanced futures, but I see no risk of confusion as it's easy to use and mostly hidden in the "case" category.
- zwayhowder 5y ago
  I have an extensive academic citation collection in multiple languages, Juris M is way better for my needs. I love the fact that open source software allows this but sometimes I really wish they'd just incorporate the two.
SubiculumCode 5y ago
Consider supporting Zotero through a subscription for their online storage.
rockmemozart 5y ago
The only thing holding me back from using Zotero is that, afaik, you need to use a Zotero account to reliably sync metadata between devices (the Zotero Data Server isn't supported). I wish it was easier to self-host; there's no reason for me to interact with their servers. It's always a disappointment to find otherwise great open source projects that have key components that deny privacy.
- _hzw 5y ago
  Zotero supports WebDAV and I was using it with box.com without any troubles for years. What lured me to switch to Zotero's sync and cloud storage in the end, though, is the group library function.
- jancsika 5y ago
  Can you export/import the data to/from devices?
- sva_ 5y ago
  Hint: You can sync the library for free by making an account. You need the "Zotero Storage" only if you want to sync the files as well. However, you can simply sync the folder ~/Zotero/storage using SyncThing. You could also use WebDAV, but SyncThing is just so much easier (set up & forget). The IDs/Metadata is consistent among syncs. :) Of course, that doesn't resolve the privacy concerns, but personally idc about that. edit: It seems like you might be able to sync everything by just putting ~/Zotero/ into something like SyncThing, avoiding the Zotero servers. But you'd probably have to be careful only opening the app after syncing has been completed. I haven't tested this though.
  - epiecs 5y ago
    If you have a synology nas you can also easily install the webdav server and use that :)
  - d110af5ccf 5y ago
    This is completely missing the point of GP. You can't (unless something has changed) sync metadata without using their servers. webdav is for the data, not the metadata. If you don't personally care about privacy, fine, but that's irrelevant here. Replicating the local Zotero folder across devices won't properly sync the metadata in the face of concurrent changes. If I didn't care about privacy and freedom I would have just used a proprietary product to begin with. It's an incredibly disappointing situation to have dragged on like this for so many years. Edit: Looks like nothing has changed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774935
hs86 5y ago
How good is Zotero as a bookmark manager similar to Pinboard.in or Raindrop.io? Both have a paid feature that stores a permanent copy of a site, but these are stored only on their servers, and Pinboard's archive download feature never worked for me.
- btrettel 5y ago
  I've used Zotero for over a decade to save webpages. It works fine in my experience, though I'd prefer if Zotero saved all the assets in a single file.
  - copperx 5y ago
    Isn't it easier to just store a link to archive.org?
    - btrettel 5y ago
      I don't think so. Saving a webpage to Zotero involves pressing one button in your browser.
  - btrettel 5y ago
    Looks like Zotero used to not save in a single file but now does.
- cxr 5y ago
  Zotero uses SingleFile. (Side note, this is, as far as I know, a destructive process—you can't recover the original bits. It would be interesting if Zotero switched to SingleFileZ and there were a sidecar file embedded in the ZIP container that would let you reverse the transformations to get the originals back out—or just store them directly.) Zotero's snapshots work well enough on most pages you'd care to throw at it in an academic context. Your mileage may vary if you're using it as a general bookmarks manager, owing to the amount of client-side scripting-driven chicanery on the Web today. Notable example that I've found that Zotero didn't handle well at one point: Medium (although the data was there―the saved copy just wouldn't render correctly in-browser when opened; this doesn't appear to be an issue anymore for new snapshots, at least for now). For most stuff that I want to have a durable URL for but that I feel doesn't merit being in my Zotero library, I just use ordinary browser bookmarks and make sure that the Wayback Machine and/or archive.is has a copy. HN is also fond of Wallabag and ArchiveBox: - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Wallabag&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=archivebox&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
999900000999 5y ago
Any OCR support? I literally pay 20$ a month to fill out PDFs
- copperx 5y ago
  There is no $20 Zotero plan for PDF filling. Are you talking about the $20/year plan?
  - 999900000999 5y ago
    I'm talking about Adobe PDF reader. It's the only way to not mess up PDF files when you edit them. Unfortunately you can't just buy it,you need to subscribe to Creative Cloud
- computer23 5y ago
  Checkout the ocrmypdf project: https://ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html https://ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
  - 999900000999 5y ago
    Thank you for sharing this awesome project! I'm probably stuck using Adobe for now, just because for anything really important you can't rely on anything aside from the official Adobe PDF editor to not screw things up. Up. But I absolutely love your project, I can imagine this would work great for academics. You can automate much of your research between machine learning and directly reading PDFs. Many older publications don't have searchable text at all, and searchable text is a lifesaver when you're doing research.
  - jcuenod 5y ago
    +1
- ska 5y ago
  Do you mean for searchability? There is an indexing tool built in, IIRC built from xpdf tooling.
worg 5y ago
Does anyone have some good learning resources for Zotero?
- copperx 5y ago
  I agree that the source isn't easy to read. A guide with the architectural decisions would be welcome.
MisterBiggs 5y ago
After messing with the desktop version for a few minutes the note editor is weird. It doesn't modify the original pdf or the copy of the pdf it makes, the only way to get the highlights is to export it as a pdf. I expected something similar to Okular where edits would happen to the original file and update on ctrl-s. Other than that the editor is very well done!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
pdevr 5y ago
Looks good, from whatever I have seen and read. I am going to give this a try. A question to those who have used Zotero: Can I opt to store everything on the local device and have zero data transferred to the server? Is there any kind of control over what is stored locally and what is sent to the servers?
- dragonstyle 5y ago
  My recollection is that it is all local by default. If you don't specifically connect to their web service for syncing data, none of the data is stored outside your local device.
- hwbehrens 5y ago
  By default, you can use Zotero without logging in, which will cause it to keep everything locally. It's not obvious how you might go about partially syncing to the cloud, however. In practice, though you shouldn't store the SQLite in a cloud sync service, setting up a symbolic link for the backing PDFs in e.g. Dropbox works quite well and gives you more control over your data syncing. Then, you only need to rely on their cloud for the paper titles and metadata.
mikepurvis 5y ago
If I still was doing firmware dev, I could imagine this being amazing for dealing with datasheets, especially when shuffling between multiple parts all with their own descriptions of intended functionality, errata, and so-on.
bachmeier 5y ago
This looks really nice. Zotero has never stuck with me for some reason but I last used it a few years ago. I'll try again. One problem with this type of service is that there's usually a huge jump from unpaid to paid, but the jump to the lowest paid tier of Zotero lets you pay $20/year for 2 GB of storage. I can handle that. I have more difficulty with the $15/month and $90/year and such paid tiers. Even at $20/year, that comes to $100 after five years for what is largely a donation to support development.
- folli 5y ago
  >...comes to $100 ... for what is largely a donation to support development. That's not that bad for a useful product, is it?
  - bachmeier 5y ago
    No, but I'm saying it's enough. The $90/year service comes to $450 over five years, and that's definitely too much.
- ska 5y ago
  One probably non-obvious thing is that the $100/yr ish unlimited storage tier includes everything you do as a user including shared libraries. So if you have a group of people working together in a group library, one shared library subscription covers all of them. It doesn't take many people to make this worthwhile. And as you say, it's a good way to support a great project. I do it even when I'm not really using the software.
  - bachmeier 5y ago
    > I do it even when I'm not really using the software. I'll drop a one-time donation of $10 or $18 or something largely independent of my use - or even if I don't use it at all. I don't treat it as a purchase, though I can understand that others do.
- greenicon 5y ago
  You can use just the metadata sync by them and sync the actual files with e.g. webdav or syncthing or whatever. That way it's free.
heurisko 5y ago
I used Zotero for its bibtex output. It worked really well.
behnamoh 5y ago
Duplicate
bluenose69 5y ago
I've been using this in beta for quite a while. The PDF reader is really very good, and I love the fact that my highlights and notes are not added to the actual PDF file. (I don't want to mess up the original PDF file, because I like to keep those files in pristine form so that e.g. I can share them with students.) Some people here are asking about paying for storage for the PDFs. My solution to this is to store my PDFs using Dropbox, and to use links in Zotero. That way, even if I give up on Zotero, I still have the files. And I already pay for Dropbox, and just don't want one more bill to pay. And, woohoo, an iOS app! That's very sweet.
- lhoff 5y ago
  Zotero also offers out it the box WebDAV Support for file sync. I use that to sync files using my Nextcloud. Once it is set up, everything works behind the scenes. https://www.zotero.org/support/sync https://www.zotero.org/support/sync
- ska 5y ago
  If you sync your library to at least one device, you'll still have all the files anyway if you stop paying - you just won't be able to sync them anymore. The metadata will all still by synced. The dropbox/onedrive/etc. approach works, but honestly I find it easier to share files from a group library (they don't need a paid account) and keeps structure etc. there also....
- jcuenod 5y ago
  My solution to your dropbox trick has been: https://jcuenod.github.io/bibletech/2020/06/14/zotero-github-backups/ https://jcuenod.github.io/bibletech/2020/06/14/zotero-github...
- azxd123 5y ago
  And also, Zotero is not that expensive. And I'll be happy to support such an awesome project.
  - copperx 5y ago
    Isn't Mendeley free? That might explain why Zotero isn't that well known.
ulnarkressty 5y ago
Anybody have any tips on self-hosted Zotero? Org doesn't like the metadata syncing. Other option would be Mendeley Enterprise which is supposedly more secure but not a great experience overall.
- sva_ 5y ago
  Not self hosted, but see my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30714926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30714926 Then you may use the Better BibTeX plugin to get your library into Org.
unixhero 5y ago
Anybody use this for business or consulting? I finished my thesis a long time ago.
- ska 5y ago
  I've used it for a bunch of things in multiple companies, and as a consultant. On the other hand, my post-academic career has been still pretty reasearch-y at times, so I read papers. But I've used it to organize/track datasheets, whitepapers, resumes, consulting inputs, etc.
prepend 5y ago
I love zotero, and this isn’t the web product, but I really wish I could share a link to a bibliography to someone. I have to export and send the text. I’d like to be able to share my Foo citation library with a colleague without making my whole account public. Would also be great for systematic reviews.
- ska 5y ago
  Couldn't you do that with a group library?
hoistbypetard 5y ago
Wow. I opened the Linux tarball and had a look around... what a blast from the past. It looks like this is built on XULRunner and friends. I had the impression that platform had slipped into such disrepair that it was no longer practical to ship products based on it. It looks tremendously useful, though. If it had been around when I was in school, I suspect I'd have found it indispensable.
- walleeee 5y ago
  my impression too. the documentation is no longer on MDN... still, Zotero team has built amazing software on top of it. dstillman and team do awesome work.
- cxr 5y ago
  > had the impression that [XULRunner] had slipped into such disrepair that it was no longer practical to ship products based on it It's not! Zotero has a novel build system where instead of using XULRunner, which is no longer available, the build scripts download a release version of Firefox and then replace the browser-specific modules and other assets with Zotero's bundle.
  - copperx 5y ago
    I almost thought you were being serious. I find it hard to detect sarcasm on HN.
    - cxr 5y ago
      It's not sarcasm[1][2]. And as bad as it sounds, it's not worse than most other build systems[3][4] (including Firefox's own build system[5], or anything based on Electron[6]). 1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25458080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25458080> 2. <https://github.com/zotero/zotero-standalone-build/blob/5.0.96.3/fetch_xulrunner.sh https://github.com/zotero/zotero-standalone-build/blob/5.0.9...> 3. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29125925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29125925> 4. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24495646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24495646> 5. <https://merveilles.town/@neauoire/104791486912313598 https://merveilles.town/@neauoire/104791486912313598> 6. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25905152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25905152>
bsmith89 5y ago
I just tested the PDF reader out for about 5 minutes and I can already say it's substantially better for me on MacOS than any other PDF reader besides Preview. No glitching like Acrobat and the annotations features are more inline with what I want than Preview's are. Very excited about this.
- asleepawake 5y ago
  i agree it’s great. some minor ux issues. for example if i select text then click highlight it should highlight the selected text. keyboard shortcuts for annotation would be amazing.
- jumelles 5y ago
  Have you tried Skim?
- copperx 5y ago
  Can it use Preview for a better experience?
thentherewere2 5y ago
As a current Mendeley user, any thoughts on what I should expect if I want to start using Zotero?
- hank_z 5y ago
  At least Zotero will not pull off its apps from App Store for no reason.
Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago
I've been using this for years. Zotero is great. It's not perfect, like you still need add-ons to properly support bibtex for latex users, like myself. It would be alot better if this was a fully integrated part of the base zotero platform. But it works and I like it.
murphyslab 5y ago
The annotation features will definitely help Zotero to keep relevant, but Zotero still desperately needs a better option for saving websites. The ability to save sites, via browser extension, as a single file (MHTML or even HTML-only) has been an open request since 2007. - https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/919/ https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/919/ (2007) - https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/33516/ https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/33516/ (2013) - https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/68378/ https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/68378/ (2017)
- dstillman 5y ago
  Zotero has saved webpage snapshots as single HTML files since November 2020. We're using SingleFile under the hood. (Disclosure: Zotero dev)
  - murphyslab 5y ago
    I'd been watching the changelogs for it intermittently and never caught it. Guessing that this is you: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/85306/available-for-beta-testing-improved-webpage-snapshots https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/85306/available-for-bet... My apologies for the erroneous comment and massive THANKS! for adding that feature.
jrochkind1 5y ago
As someone who writes web apps used by academics... I find it really hard to find documentationon on how to make my web site/app work well with zotero! They seem so used to more-or-less adversarial web development, that when we're like "We want to make this work as well as possible with zotero, like I'm going to spend development time doing that, can you give me some clear docs on my options?" -- I have trouble finding it. Like how can I make sure zotero can properly find an attached PDF, or citation info (including for list pages with multiple things cited) or whatever. Without requiring a custom zotero connector for my (tiny) site, how do I make my site just work? Many of my users definitely use zotero.
- dstillman 5y ago
  https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/exposing_metadata https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/exposing_metadata (Disclosure: Zotero dev)
  - ntnsndr 5y ago
    Thank you for your amazing work!
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    thank you! I maybe have seen this doc page before... I'm afraid I don't find it totally clear! Do you have any advice for the simplest way to do this from these docs, if starting from scratch? Or what most people do? If you were writing a new website yourself, just an ordinary, say, Rails app, that was not based on library formats like MARC... which method would you use to expose to zotero? COinS is pretty limited and crufty, and doens't allow you fo fully express all the fields that might be in a Zotero citation/CSL, only a few basic ones. UnAPI... most of the formats listed for UnAPI, the list tells you not to use that format unless you have to! It seems to recommend MODS, but MODS is pretty confusing if you don't already have data in it. Dublin Core is not expressive enough to cover everything in a citation. I just want to specify every in a zotero citation, you know? Is there a way to provide data in CSL? I don't think so? `<meta>` tags "using the Google/Highwire key-value system" sounds prommising -- but I'm having trouble finding a list of valid keys at the documentation linked to! Those Google docs feel like they're sending me on another goose chase. I feel like I have a choice of over-simplified (DC) or baroque/archaic/hard-to-use metadata systems (MARC/MODS), and in either case having to kind of guess how it will be mapped to Zotero citation/CSL. I wish there was a way I could provide the cite in CSL! Also... I know zotero sometimes can handle a list of citations on a page, but the page you link to has no guidance for that. If other website devs have no problem providing good metadata to zotero using these docs... I feel like there's some kind of secret code here everyone else knows that I haven't been able to crack!
Tenoke 5y ago
I recently found my mendeley app doesn't work anymore (they've discontinued it) so I decided to try Zotero. To my surprise they have 3 Android apps.. none of which work and a bookmarklet which also doesn't work. Has anyone found a way to easily save papers on Android?
- fcheslack 5y ago
  You can save urls or identifiers to your library from https://www.zotero.org/save https://www.zotero.org/save or using the magic wand icon in your web library. We just stopped linking to the bookmarklet on the download page. Unfortunately browsers no longer support them well if at all. There is an open job post for an Android developer, but none of the existing Android apps are first party. (Disclosure: Zotero dev)
- mbeex 5y ago
  I'm using "Zoo for Zotero". Works for me as a more or less r/o synchronizer. My data are webdav-accessible hosted.
  - Tenoke 5y ago
    I keep getting an error that it can't reach some API when trying to log in with that one but if it works for you maybe it's a temporary issue.
layer8 5y ago
I see there’s an iOS app in beta. Will that require using Zotero Storage, or will there be integration with Files, or directly with other storage providers (Dropbox etc.)?
ricksunny 5y ago
I hoped they've fixed Google Docs stability (deactivating GDocs' Work Offline is supposed to help with this, we'll see..) as well as reducing the time for a bibliography update when the number of citations is over 100 - it's currently taking 20+ seconds (happening in the background as I write)
- ricksunny 5y ago
  And even still encountering the dreaded "these citations have become unlinked from Zotero" - this is the equivalent of the blue-screen-of-death for OS's . . . maybe Zotero should focus on improving this stability rather than new feature build-out and I would be come a paying customer/member?
titlefixer 5y ago
tedyoung 5y ago
OMG, I've been waiting for an iOS app for Zotero for so long. Yay!
punnerud 5y ago
Zotero is hiring (16 days ago here on HN): https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dstillman https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dstillman
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
smitty1e 5y ago
Zotero, ZotDroid and a tablet are the way to manage the research.
ashton314 5y ago
I’ve been using the better of this for, gosh, must be about two years now. It has been so much fun to use. I read papers and annotate them on my iPad, and it syncs up to my laptop without any problems. I recently considered turning on WebDAV to sync my growing collection of documents, but Zotero has been so useful to my workflow, that I decided to buy some storage from them. I am more than happy to give them a few bucks to keep working on this awesome product. It has significantly simplified my research workflow, and it is so valuable to me for that.
- copperx 5y ago
  What is the better product that you're using?
  - orlp 5y ago
    I believe the author intended to say that they've been using this tool "for the better part of 2 years", meaning roughly 1-2 years, not that they were using something better than it.
  - ashton314 5y ago
    Whoops, yeah, mean to say "I've been using Zotero for the better part of two years now." A better Zotero there is not. :) Sheesh… must have been late or something—don't know why I typed that.
tra3 5y ago
Is anyone aware of something like Zotero that also supports ePubs and has mobile support?
dang 5y ago
Related: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774097 - Jan 2022 (201 comments) Zotero: Personal Research Assistant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22694891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22694891 - March 2020 (206 comments) Zotero: An open-source tool to help collect, organize, cite, and share research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606929 - July 2018 (163 comments) GMU sued for Zotero - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=319975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=319975 - Sept 2008 (3 comments)
buzz27 5y ago
I’ve been using zotero since 2010 … it’s amazing to see it’s still developing. Dying to try the ios app but I never received an invite,but when I request one it says it was sent. If anyone would like to sell me one let me know.
vaonerra 5y ago
That is a great new release! I have been using Mendeley because it is easier to take notes while reading a paper, but note-taking lacks rich functionality. The cherry in the pie would be a Zotero version for the Remarkable2 :)
wanderingmind 5y ago
As good as zotero is, it reminds me of the horrors of grad school and how countless livelihoods of really smart and intelligent are destroyed every year in the name of science and research, who don't have any employable skills to find a decent job.
- copperx 5y ago
  Is knowing the ins and outs of Mendeley or EndNote better for employability?
ei8ths 5y ago
saved me in college.
DreamFlasher 5y ago
Still missing feature: reading position save and sync
fumblemore 5y ago
Does Zotero have an article suggestion feature (or discoverability) yet? It is the main reason I am still using Mendeley, I receive suggestions on articles related to the ones in my library. Zotero would make my work easier and faster, but right now Mendeley is making it better.
zoomablemind 5y ago
I wonder if Zotero has any support for using refs and bibliography table in text-only docs, like LaTeX or Markdown etc? I know that with LibreOffice and Word it's done using a plugin, but not sure how this could be done with text-only formats.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

768 points by Schiphol 5y ago

I love zotero. Amazing software, indispensable. Want an easy way to integrate with pandoc and Zim-Wiki, I'm sure there's a way but I've not found it yet. Either way this software is massively underrated. EDIT What's with the official iOS app and no Android?

criddell 5y ago
> no Android? iOS is probably their most important platform. If there are enough users, I'd guess Android and Mobian apps will be forthcoming.
- copperx 5y ago
  There might not be a need -- Apple dominates in academia.
  - account-5 5y ago
    Really? In what way? That's a shame.
BostonEnginerd 5y ago
You can use the BetterBibtex plugin to export the references to a bib or json file which can be ingested by Pandoc. There's an option to have it re-export the file every time you make a change to the library. Citations work pretty well. You can customize the output with different CSL files [1]. [1] https://citationstyles.org/ https://citationstyles.org/

patrick451 5y ago

I tried both zotero and mendelay as a grad student. They both had pretty poor bibtex support, which made them more annoying than worth while. I ended up much happier with helm-bibtex for emacs. If you're already writing papers in latex with emacs (which is _really_ nice), it's well worth a look.

noodlesUK 5y ago

Zotero is one of those pieces of open source software that has really improved my life. I first discovered it as a teenager and it revolutionised writing papers and managing sources. Sadly I don’t find myself using it that much in my job. I always got a kick out of introducing it to my friends in the humanities and blowing their minds. I have no idea how anyone writes papers without zotero or another similar tool. Keep up the good work.

Forgeties79 5y ago
Honestly I haven’t thought about it since undergrad (history major), I didn’t realize it was still kicking. I might have to fire it back up!
- asdff 5y ago
  You can even use it as a general knowledge repository since you can save anything on zotero pretty much, not just journal articles.
  - jrochkind1 5y ago
    Mostly just PDFs? Or are there good ways to save non-PDF content?
    - jarvist 5y ago
      The web plugin actually falls back to 'web page with snapshot' if it can't detect a journal paper, which in many ways is better than trying to drag around big PDF binaries.
      - jrochkind1 5y ago
        Thanks! I've used zotero only minimally, mostly to support users of my software who use zotero, rather than using it myself for my own purposes. Is the "web plugin" something built into zotero, or an extra plugin to install? Calling it "plugin" makes it sound like something extra to install, but not finding it easily googling. Help me out?

jszymborski 5y ago

Truly amazing! I wonder if the iOS app in development will have all these note-taking features and work on iPad. If so, Zotero completely blows all of the competition out of the water at a price you can't really beat.

epiecs 5y ago
It does. It even has webdav sync for the past few months. Just subscribe to their testflight app and you can test the beta right now :)
smcnally 5y ago
There’s a release available in the store[0]. It’s been working well. [0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zotero/id1513554812 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zotero/id1513554812

Freak_NL 5y ago

Not just for scholarly reference management: Zotero is a great tool to keep track of the books you have if your personal library exceeds one or two Billies in volume. For books printed after 1970 the ISBN alone is enough to have it fetch the most relevant metadata for any book published anywhere from online catalogues. I find Zotero particularly useful when going to a book-fair; it is easy to export a list of titles and authors of books you own so you can easily reference it to see which books from a particular author or series you already have.

exhilaration 5y ago
one or two Billies in volume Possibly the most universal of all units of measurements. For the uninitiated: https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/billy-bookcase-white-00263850/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/billy-bookcase-white-00263850/
- cholmon 5y ago
  I've never heard "billy" used like this before now, thanks for the clarification.
  - exhilaration 5y ago
    It transcends nation, culture, and language. In the future, we will measure the distance between the stars in billies.
    - david_draco 5y ago
      and insects in millibillies
      - SantalBlush 5y ago
        and mountains in hillbillies
- copperx 5y ago

aDfbrtVt 5y ago

The notes functionality along with the new iOS beta is amazing. Makes marking up papers on an iPad very convenient. I would encourage every who uses Zotero to sign up for a paid storage plan to help support development.

oofbey 5y ago

Anybody using this know if it works well for iPad + pencil for scribbling notes on published research papers?

aDfbrtVt 5y ago
The Apple Pencil support is still pretty rough, but it's been getting better every update version. I've been using it for the last couple of months.
mbreese 5y ago
I haven’t used their new iOS app, but it’s a welcome addition. In the past you had to sync your Zotero library with another app for PDF annotation that was synced (papership). It was never something I’d call robust or seamless and the papership app has felt like abandonware. I’m looking forward to trying the new app today.
xattt 5y ago
The iOS app doesn’t come up as the first result in the App Store. Not sure if it’s because Zotero isn’t popular enough yet. Regardless, here is the direct link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zotero/id1513554812 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zotero/id1513554812

tomrod 5y ago

Easily one of my favorite software solutions. I've tried EndNote. It's awful. Zotero is awesome!

liketochill 5y ago

I’m still using qiqqa for my open source pdf search engine but the qiqqa team has moved on. Qiqqa has been a secret weapon for me in pulling up relevant paragraphs from research papers, ebooks, and standards that I have previously saved but not fully read.

jcuenod 5y ago
I made my own (specifically for my Zotero pdf library): https://github.com/search?q=user%3Ajcuenod+pdf https://github.com/search?q=user%3Ajcuenod+pdf https://jcuenod.github.io/bibletech/2021/07/26/full-text-search-for-pdfs/ https://jcuenod.github.io/bibletech/2021/07/26/full-text-sea...

jabl 5y ago

Is it still based on the XUL platform?

hoistbypetard 5y ago
The Linux tarball still looks like XULRunner to me.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

mijoharas 5y ago

Is anyone else getting horrible stuttering when scrolling that page? (I happen to be on mobile with a bad connection right now, but it's so bad it makes the page almost unreadable)

WHA8m 5y ago
I've been visiting said website on my iOS and hadn't had any issues. Maybe re-check your side on some problem

sam537 5y ago

This just made my day.

jart 5y ago

I love the name. As soon as I saw this link at the top of HN, the Totoro theme started playing in my head. https://youtu.be/p1KVuFStqEM https://youtu.be/p1KVuFStqEM

copperx 5y ago
I didn't know Zotero was a character in the movie! I'll have to rewatch it.

TheCabin 5y ago

I used Zotero quite a bit in the past, the thing that ultimately drove me away is that when synchronizing you couldn't easily access the PDFs just via the filesystem. I use a nextcloud and also wanted to access PDFs from devices without Zotero installed and this turned out to be a pain at the time. Is this possible with more recent Zotero versions? Is the sync still cumbersome with a zotero account + self-hosted webdav?

_aavaa_ 5y ago
I have a similar setup (Zotero + dropbox). Zotero syncs the entries and any notes, but dropbox takes care of the pdf storage. You can swap out dropbox for your storage of choice. I use zotfile (http://zotfile.com http://zotfile.com) to handle this. Files are all stored in a single folder (which can be in different locations depending on computer) which I point zotfile to. Inside that each paper is put into a folder based on author names. And each pdf is then renamed based on authors, year, and title. All of the above is customizable and automated.
- kristjansson 5y ago
  I can’t recommend ZotFile enough. It, along with Zotero, have basically solved cross-platform cross-device reading and reference management for me.
- jcuenod 5y ago
  Another +1 for Zotfile, but Z6 looks like it bakes in some of zotfile's features.
  - ryanwwest 5y ago
    I'm glad it includes some, but perhaps not the feature of storing pdfs in a different place so they can be easily synced via Dropbox? While I'd like to have as few extensions as possible, maybe I'll neat to keep Zotfile around regardless.
AlanYx 5y ago
There is a plugin called Zotfile that makes this easier. But in some ways Zotero 6 makes filesystem workflows more complicated, in that PDF annotations don't get stored as actual annotations in the PDFs.

WHA8m 5y ago

I'm with Zotero for about 2 weeks and I'm very much in love with it. I use it mainly to store and categorize downloaded Websites (SingelFile) and PDFs. While a PDF viewer (and every functionality that comes with it) is greatly appreciated, I'd wish for same for html and other formats. That'd be overkill :) One thing that I really miss and actual slows my process, is a proper tag-system. Something like Anki has: being able to make tag hierarchies by higher-tag::lower-tag. I'm a heavy tag-user and the overall experience with tags in Zotero is very average. But maybe I'm using this application for stuff that's not intended for. Overall great project and surely something I'll donate a few bucks to the next time I'm on that spree. You guys doing gods work. Love it!

kkfx 5y ago
I suggest to store them on de-duplicated filesystem or manually run fdupes and co to hardlink any duplicate in your Zotero lib because most modern websites are full of big js and zotero copy them countless of time, if you have a non marginal set of mirrored pages you probably waste more than 60% of occupied storage just in duplicates...
- WHA8m 5y ago
  I have to check my folders for that. Since I am using SingleFile for downloading websites, I get single HTML files (as the name of the program says) so there shouldn't be any JS included...

synergy20 5y ago

tried to do pdf annotation on linux, failed to figure out how PDF can be attached/added/opened with zotero.

copperx 5y ago
That feature has been already implemented, and works well on Linux. What specific feature were you trying to code?

jimmygrapes 5y ago

I cannot tell from the changelog for this or the previous version whether Zotero has expanded its metadata and formatting capabilities to better support legal citations, so I guess I will stick to the Jurism[0] fork for now. If anybody knows of a better way to make this work in Zotero directly, I'm all ears. [0]: https://juris-m.github.io/ https://juris-m.github.io/

Quanttek 5y ago
It'd be so fantastic if the Zotero team could consider integrating their changes. I know that many probably won't necessarily need its advanced futures, but I see no risk of confusion as it's easy to use and mostly hidden in the "case" category.
zwayhowder 5y ago
I have an extensive academic citation collection in multiple languages, Juris M is way better for my needs. I love the fact that open source software allows this but sometimes I really wish they'd just incorporate the two.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

Consider supporting Zotero through a subscription for their online storage.

rockmemozart 5y ago

The only thing holding me back from using Zotero is that, afaik, you need to use a Zotero account to reliably sync metadata between devices (the Zotero Data Server isn't supported). I wish it was easier to self-host; there's no reason for me to interact with their servers. It's always a disappointment to find otherwise great open source projects that have key components that deny privacy.

_hzw 5y ago
Zotero supports WebDAV and I was using it with box.com without any troubles for years. What lured me to switch to Zotero's sync and cloud storage in the end, though, is the group library function.
jancsika 5y ago
Can you export/import the data to/from devices?
sva_ 5y ago
Hint: You can sync the library for free by making an account. You need the "Zotero Storage" only if you want to sync the files as well. However, you can simply sync the folder ~/Zotero/storage using SyncThing. You could also use WebDAV, but SyncThing is just so much easier (set up & forget). The IDs/Metadata is consistent among syncs. :) Of course, that doesn't resolve the privacy concerns, but personally idc about that. edit: It seems like you might be able to sync everything by just putting ~/Zotero/ into something like SyncThing, avoiding the Zotero servers. But you'd probably have to be careful only opening the app after syncing has been completed. I haven't tested this though.
- epiecs 5y ago
  If you have a synology nas you can also easily install the webdav server and use that :)
- d110af5ccf 5y ago
  This is completely missing the point of GP. You can't (unless something has changed) sync metadata without using their servers. webdav is for the data, not the metadata. If you don't personally care about privacy, fine, but that's irrelevant here. Replicating the local Zotero folder across devices won't properly sync the metadata in the face of concurrent changes. If I didn't care about privacy and freedom I would have just used a proprietary product to begin with. It's an incredibly disappointing situation to have dragged on like this for so many years. Edit: Looks like nothing has changed. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774935

hs86 5y ago

How good is Zotero as a bookmark manager similar to Pinboard.in or Raindrop.io? Both have a paid feature that stores a permanent copy of a site, but these are stored only on their servers, and Pinboard's archive download feature never worked for me.

btrettel 5y ago
I've used Zotero for over a decade to save webpages. It works fine in my experience, though I'd prefer if Zotero saved all the assets in a single file.
- copperx 5y ago
  Isn't it easier to just store a link to archive.org?
  - btrettel 5y ago
    I don't think so. Saving a webpage to Zotero involves pressing one button in your browser.
- btrettel 5y ago
  Looks like Zotero used to not save in a single file but now does.
cxr 5y ago
Zotero uses SingleFile. (Side note, this is, as far as I know, a destructive process—you can't recover the original bits. It would be interesting if Zotero switched to SingleFileZ and there were a sidecar file embedded in the ZIP container that would let you reverse the transformations to get the originals back out—or just store them directly.) Zotero's snapshots work well enough on most pages you'd care to throw at it in an academic context. Your mileage may vary if you're using it as a general bookmarks manager, owing to the amount of client-side scripting-driven chicanery on the Web today. Notable example that I've found that Zotero didn't handle well at one point: Medium (although the data was there―the saved copy just wouldn't render correctly in-browser when opened; this doesn't appear to be an issue anymore for new snapshots, at least for now). For most stuff that I want to have a durable URL for but that I feel doesn't merit being in my Zotero library, I just use ordinary browser bookmarks and make sure that the Wayback Machine and/or archive.is has a copy. HN is also fond of Wallabag and ArchiveBox: - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Wallabag&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=archivebox&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

999900000999 5y ago

Any OCR support? I literally pay 20$ a month to fill out PDFs

copperx 5y ago
There is no $20 Zotero plan for PDF filling. Are you talking about the $20/year plan?
- 999900000999 5y ago
  I'm talking about Adobe PDF reader. It's the only way to not mess up PDF files when you edit them. Unfortunately you can't just buy it,you need to subscribe to Creative Cloud
computer23 5y ago
Checkout the ocrmypdf project: https://ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html https://ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
- 999900000999 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing this awesome project! I'm probably stuck using Adobe for now, just because for anything really important you can't rely on anything aside from the official Adobe PDF editor to not screw things up. Up. But I absolutely love your project, I can imagine this would work great for academics. You can automate much of your research between machine learning and directly reading PDFs. Many older publications don't have searchable text at all, and searchable text is a lifesaver when you're doing research.
- jcuenod 5y ago
  +1
ska 5y ago
Do you mean for searchability? There is an indexing tool built in, IIRC built from xpdf tooling.

worg 5y ago

Does anyone have some good learning resources for Zotero?

copperx 5y ago
I agree that the source isn't easy to read. A guide with the architectural decisions would be welcome.

MisterBiggs 5y ago

After messing with the desktop version for a few minutes the note editor is weird. It doesn't modify the original pdf or the copy of the pdf it makes, the only way to get the highlights is to export it as a pdf. I expected something similar to Okular where edits would happen to the original file and update on ctrl-s. Other than that the editor is very well done!

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

pdevr 5y ago

Looks good, from whatever I have seen and read. I am going to give this a try. A question to those who have used Zotero: Can I opt to store everything on the local device and have zero data transferred to the server? Is there any kind of control over what is stored locally and what is sent to the servers?

dragonstyle 5y ago
My recollection is that it is all local by default. If you don't specifically connect to their web service for syncing data, none of the data is stored outside your local device.
hwbehrens 5y ago
By default, you can use Zotero without logging in, which will cause it to keep everything locally. It's not obvious how you might go about partially syncing to the cloud, however. In practice, though you shouldn't store the SQLite in a cloud sync service, setting up a symbolic link for the backing PDFs in e.g. Dropbox works quite well and gives you more control over your data syncing. Then, you only need to rely on their cloud for the paper titles and metadata.

mikepurvis 5y ago

If I still was doing firmware dev, I could imagine this being amazing for dealing with datasheets, especially when shuffling between multiple parts all with their own descriptions of intended functionality, errata, and so-on.

bachmeier 5y ago

This looks really nice. Zotero has never stuck with me for some reason but I last used it a few years ago. I'll try again. One problem with this type of service is that there's usually a huge jump from unpaid to paid, but the jump to the lowest paid tier of Zotero lets you pay $20/year for 2 GB of storage. I can handle that. I have more difficulty with the $15/month and $90/year and such paid tiers. Even at $20/year, that comes to $100 after five years for what is largely a donation to support development.

folli 5y ago
>...comes to $100 ... for what is largely a donation to support development. That's not that bad for a useful product, is it?
- bachmeier 5y ago
  No, but I'm saying it's enough. The $90/year service comes to $450 over five years, and that's definitely too much.
ska 5y ago
One probably non-obvious thing is that the $100/yr ish unlimited storage tier includes everything you do as a user including shared libraries. So if you have a group of people working together in a group library, one shared library subscription covers all of them. It doesn't take many people to make this worthwhile. And as you say, it's a good way to support a great project. I do it even when I'm not really using the software.
- bachmeier 5y ago
  > I do it even when I'm not really using the software. I'll drop a one-time donation of $10 or $18 or something largely independent of my use - or even if I don't use it at all. I don't treat it as a purchase, though I can understand that others do.
greenicon 5y ago
You can use just the metadata sync by them and sync the actual files with e.g. webdav or syncthing or whatever. That way it's free.

heurisko 5y ago

I used Zotero for its bibtex output. It worked really well.

behnamoh 5y ago

Duplicate

bluenose69 5y ago

I've been using this in beta for quite a while. The PDF reader is really very good, and I love the fact that my highlights and notes are not added to the actual PDF file. (I don't want to mess up the original PDF file, because I like to keep those files in pristine form so that e.g. I can share them with students.) Some people here are asking about paying for storage for the PDFs. My solution to this is to store my PDFs using Dropbox, and to use links in Zotero. That way, even if I give up on Zotero, I still have the files. And I already pay for Dropbox, and just don't want one more bill to pay. And, woohoo, an iOS app! That's very sweet.

lhoff 5y ago
Zotero also offers out it the box WebDAV Support for file sync. I use that to sync files using my Nextcloud. Once it is set up, everything works behind the scenes. https://www.zotero.org/support/sync https://www.zotero.org/support/sync
ska 5y ago
If you sync your library to at least one device, you'll still have all the files anyway if you stop paying - you just won't be able to sync them anymore. The metadata will all still by synced. The dropbox/onedrive/etc. approach works, but honestly I find it easier to share files from a group library (they don't need a paid account) and keeps structure etc. there also....
jcuenod 5y ago
My solution to your dropbox trick has been: https://jcuenod.github.io/bibletech/2020/06/14/zotero-github-backups/ https://jcuenod.github.io/bibletech/2020/06/14/zotero-github...
azxd123 5y ago
And also, Zotero is not that expensive. And I'll be happy to support such an awesome project.
- copperx 5y ago
  Isn't Mendeley free? That might explain why Zotero isn't that well known.

ulnarkressty 5y ago

Anybody have any tips on self-hosted Zotero? Org doesn't like the metadata syncing. Other option would be Mendeley Enterprise which is supposedly more secure but not a great experience overall.

sva_ 5y ago
Not self hosted, but see my comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30714926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30714926 Then you may use the Better BibTeX plugin to get your library into Org.

unixhero 5y ago

Anybody use this for business or consulting? I finished my thesis a long time ago.

ska 5y ago
I've used it for a bunch of things in multiple companies, and as a consultant. On the other hand, my post-academic career has been still pretty reasearch-y at times, so I read papers. But I've used it to organize/track datasheets, whitepapers, resumes, consulting inputs, etc.

prepend 5y ago

I love zotero, and this isn’t the web product, but I really wish I could share a link to a bibliography to someone. I have to export and send the text. I’d like to be able to share my Foo citation library with a colleague without making my whole account public. Would also be great for systematic reviews.

ska 5y ago
Couldn't you do that with a group library?

hoistbypetard 5y ago

Wow. I opened the Linux tarball and had a look around... what a blast from the past. It looks like this is built on XULRunner and friends. I had the impression that platform had slipped into such disrepair that it was no longer practical to ship products based on it. It looks tremendously useful, though. If it had been around when I was in school, I suspect I'd have found it indispensable.

walleeee 5y ago
my impression too. the documentation is no longer on MDN... still, Zotero team has built amazing software on top of it. dstillman and team do awesome work.
cxr 5y ago
> had the impression that [XULRunner] had slipped into such disrepair that it was no longer practical to ship products based on it It's not! Zotero has a novel build system where instead of using XULRunner, which is no longer available, the build scripts download a release version of Firefox and then replace the browser-specific modules and other assets with Zotero's bundle.
- copperx 5y ago
  I almost thought you were being serious. I find it hard to detect sarcasm on HN.
  - cxr 5y ago
    It's not sarcasm[1][2]. And as bad as it sounds, it's not worse than most other build systems[3][4] (including Firefox's own build system[5], or anything based on Electron[6]). 1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25458080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25458080> 2. <https://github.com/zotero/zotero-standalone-build/blob/5.0.96.3/fetch_xulrunner.sh https://github.com/zotero/zotero-standalone-build/blob/5.0.9...> 3. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29125925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29125925> 4. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24495646 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24495646> 5. <https://merveilles.town/@neauoire/104791486912313598 https://merveilles.town/@neauoire/104791486912313598> 6. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25905152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25905152>

bsmith89 5y ago

I just tested the PDF reader out for about 5 minutes and I can already say it's substantially better for me on MacOS than any other PDF reader besides Preview. No glitching like Acrobat and the annotations features are more inline with what I want than Preview's are. Very excited about this.

asleepawake 5y ago
i agree it’s great. some minor ux issues. for example if i select text then click highlight it should highlight the selected text. keyboard shortcuts for annotation would be amazing.
jumelles 5y ago
Have you tried Skim?
copperx 5y ago
Can it use Preview for a better experience?

thentherewere2 5y ago

As a current Mendeley user, any thoughts on what I should expect if I want to start using Zotero?

hank_z 5y ago
At least Zotero will not pull off its apps from App Store for no reason.

Eddy_Viscosity2 5y ago

I've been using this for years. Zotero is great. It's not perfect, like you still need add-ons to properly support bibtex for latex users, like myself. It would be alot better if this was a fully integrated part of the base zotero platform. But it works and I like it.

murphyslab 5y ago

The annotation features will definitely help Zotero to keep relevant, but Zotero still desperately needs a better option for saving websites. The ability to save sites, via browser extension, as a single file (MHTML or even HTML-only) has been an open request since 2007. - https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/919/ https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/919/ (2007) - https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/33516/ https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/33516/ (2013) - https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/68378/ https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/68378/ (2017)

dstillman 5y ago
Zotero has saved webpage snapshots as single HTML files since November 2020. We're using SingleFile under the hood. (Disclosure: Zotero dev)
- murphyslab 5y ago
  I'd been watching the changelogs for it intermittently and never caught it. Guessing that this is you: https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/85306/available-for-beta-testing-improved-webpage-snapshots https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/85306/available-for-bet... My apologies for the erroneous comment and massive THANKS! for adding that feature.

jrochkind1 5y ago

As someone who writes web apps used by academics... I find it really hard to find documentationon on how to make my web site/app work well with zotero! They seem so used to more-or-less adversarial web development, that when we're like "We want to make this work as well as possible with zotero, like I'm going to spend development time doing that, can you give me some clear docs on my options?" -- I have trouble finding it. Like how can I make sure zotero can properly find an attached PDF, or citation info (including for list pages with multiple things cited) or whatever. Without requiring a custom zotero connector for my (tiny) site, how do I make my site just work? Many of my users definitely use zotero.

dstillman 5y ago
https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/exposing_metadata https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/exposing_metadata (Disclosure: Zotero dev)
- ntnsndr 5y ago
  Thank you for your amazing work!
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  thank you! I maybe have seen this doc page before... I'm afraid I don't find it totally clear! Do you have any advice for the simplest way to do this from these docs, if starting from scratch? Or what most people do? If you were writing a new website yourself, just an ordinary, say, Rails app, that was not based on library formats like MARC... which method would you use to expose to zotero? COinS is pretty limited and crufty, and doens't allow you fo fully express all the fields that might be in a Zotero citation/CSL, only a few basic ones. UnAPI... most of the formats listed for UnAPI, the list tells you not to use that format unless you have to! It seems to recommend MODS, but MODS is pretty confusing if you don't already have data in it. Dublin Core is not expressive enough to cover everything in a citation. I just want to specify every in a zotero citation, you know? Is there a way to provide data in CSL? I don't think so? `<meta>` tags "using the Google/Highwire key-value system" sounds prommising -- but I'm having trouble finding a list of valid keys at the documentation linked to! Those Google docs feel like they're sending me on another goose chase. I feel like I have a choice of over-simplified (DC) or baroque/archaic/hard-to-use metadata systems (MARC/MODS), and in either case having to kind of guess how it will be mapped to Zotero citation/CSL. I wish there was a way I could provide the cite in CSL! Also... I know zotero sometimes can handle a list of citations on a page, but the page you link to has no guidance for that. If other website devs have no problem providing good metadata to zotero using these docs... I feel like there's some kind of secret code here everyone else knows that I haven't been able to crack!

Tenoke 5y ago

I recently found my mendeley app doesn't work anymore (they've discontinued it) so I decided to try Zotero. To my surprise they have 3 Android apps.. none of which work and a bookmarklet which also doesn't work. Has anyone found a way to easily save papers on Android?

fcheslack 5y ago
You can save urls or identifiers to your library from https://www.zotero.org/save https://www.zotero.org/save or using the magic wand icon in your web library. We just stopped linking to the bookmarklet on the download page. Unfortunately browsers no longer support them well if at all. There is an open job post for an Android developer, but none of the existing Android apps are first party. (Disclosure: Zotero dev)
mbeex 5y ago
I'm using "Zoo for Zotero". Works for me as a more or less r/o synchronizer. My data are webdav-accessible hosted.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  I keep getting an error that it can't reach some API when trying to log in with that one but if it works for you maybe it's a temporary issue.

layer8 5y ago

I see there’s an iOS app in beta. Will that require using Zotero Storage, or will there be integration with Files, or directly with other storage providers (Dropbox etc.)?

ricksunny 5y ago

I hoped they've fixed Google Docs stability (deactivating GDocs' Work Offline is supposed to help with this, we'll see..) as well as reducing the time for a bibliography update when the number of citations is over 100 - it's currently taking 20+ seconds (happening in the background as I write)

ricksunny 5y ago
And even still encountering the dreaded "these citations have become unlinked from Zotero" - this is the equivalent of the blue-screen-of-death for OS's . . . maybe Zotero should focus on improving this stability rather than new feature build-out and I would be come a paying customer/member?

titlefixer 5y ago

tedyoung 5y ago

OMG, I've been waiting for an iOS app for Zotero for so long. Yay!

punnerud 5y ago

Zotero is hiring (16 days ago here on HN): https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dstillman https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=dstillman

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smitty1e 5y ago

Zotero, ZotDroid and a tablet are the way to manage the research.

ashton314 5y ago

I’ve been using the better of this for, gosh, must be about two years now. It has been so much fun to use. I read papers and annotate them on my iPad, and it syncs up to my laptop without any problems. I recently considered turning on WebDAV to sync my growing collection of documents, but Zotero has been so useful to my workflow, that I decided to buy some storage from them. I am more than happy to give them a few bucks to keep working on this awesome product. It has significantly simplified my research workflow, and it is so valuable to me for that.

copperx 5y ago
What is the better product that you're using?
- orlp 5y ago
  I believe the author intended to say that they've been using this tool "for the better part of 2 years", meaning roughly 1-2 years, not that they were using something better than it.
- ashton314 5y ago
  Whoops, yeah, mean to say "I've been using Zotero for the better part of two years now." A better Zotero there is not. :) Sheesh… must have been late or something—don't know why I typed that.

tra3 5y ago

Is anyone aware of something like Zotero that also supports ePubs and has mobile support?

dang 5y ago

Related: Zotero: Free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite, and share research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29774097 - Jan 2022 (201 comments) Zotero: Personal Research Assistant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22694891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22694891 - March 2020 (206 comments) Zotero: An open-source tool to help collect, organize, cite, and share research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606929 - July 2018 (163 comments) GMU sued for Zotero - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=319975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=319975 - Sept 2008 (3 comments)

buzz27 5y ago

I’ve been using zotero since 2010 … it’s amazing to see it’s still developing. Dying to try the ios app but I never received an invite,but when I request one it says it was sent. If anyone would like to sell me one let me know.

vaonerra 5y ago

That is a great new release! I have been using Mendeley because it is easier to take notes while reading a paper, but note-taking lacks rich functionality. The cherry in the pie would be a Zotero version for the Remarkable2 :)

wanderingmind 5y ago

As good as zotero is, it reminds me of the horrors of grad school and how countless livelihoods of really smart and intelligent are destroyed every year in the name of science and research, who don't have any employable skills to find a decent job.

copperx 5y ago
Is knowing the ins and outs of Mendeley or EndNote better for employability?

ei8ths 5y ago

saved me in college.

DreamFlasher 5y ago

Still missing feature: reading position save and sync

fumblemore 5y ago

Does Zotero have an article suggestion feature (or discoverability) yet? It is the main reason I am still using Mendeley, I receive suggestions on articles related to the ones in my library. Zotero would make my work easier and faster, but right now Mendeley is making it better.

zoomablemind 5y ago

I wonder if Zotero has any support for using refs and bibliography table in text-only docs, like LaTeX or Markdown etc? I know that with LibreOffice and Word it's done using a plugin, but not sure how this could be done with text-only formats.

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