Is there a way to automatically associate references that exist in an article library

Bebetter

I'm not sure how hard this is.

adamsmith

You mean items you cited in a document? Have a look at https://rintze.zelle.me/ref-extractor/

Bebetter

What I mean is that when a new document is saved in the library, it automatically confirms whether its reference exists in the current library, and if it exists, it will be associated.
In addition, determine whether other documents in the library refer to this new document, and if so, associate it automatically.

adamsmith

Oh -- so Zotero would need to extract & match all references? That's not currently done at all and probably not super likely to happen in the near future.

That said, now that most publishers deposit open citation data with DOIs, it could be done more easily with newer articles/citations, but I think given the amount of complexity involved in configuring what you want such a tool to do, this is better suited for an add-on.

Bebetter

I see.

tim820

The Cita add-on is heading in that direction, but is not quite there yet. The problem is constrained by the difficulties in either (1) auto-extraction/parsing of a paper's reference list (for which there no totally robust solution currently), or alternatively (2) retrieving complete reference list metadata direct from services like Crossref (which Zotero already uses, but to which publishers have not always deposited complete reference list data for each of their papers).
https://github.com/diegodlh/zotero-cita/pull/139
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Zotero/Cita/Documentation#How_can_I_extract_citations_from_a_PDF_attachment?