Zotero and Zettelkasten

Hello, just curious if Zotero can be used in a similar way like Obsidian for Zettelkasten where you can view your research (notes) in the Graph view.

Zotero already has
- note taking and great searchability which would support fleeting and permanent notes
- can relate notes

It would be great if there was Graph view. I know there's timeline for references, but I don't think it's the same.


I haven't really used Obsidian. Does anyone have any experience with it or using Zotero for Zettelkasten?
  • There are two plugins that support importing notes and annotations from Zotero to Obsidian. You can also import citekeys very easily and have links that going back to Zotero where the actual file is stored. For Zettelkasten you can use Obsidian with or without ID's. It's pretty straightforward and there are lots of guides to set up and Zotero to Obsidian workflow and using Zettelkasten method in Obsidian. Since linking is essential to Zettelkasten method, Obsidian is kind of tailord to it. If you are willing to commit to creating such a workflow, please let me know. Since you might not I am not bothering to recommend resources to do so.
  • Hi, I am willing to implement a workflow for viewing my Zotero collections citation network as a graph in Obsidian, and would appreciate getting recommendation of resources to do so.

    Yes there are a ton on guides how to integrate Obsidian with Zotero, but I just have not yet found one that would explain the part of showing "automatically" the reference relations between the papers in the Graph view :)

    I migrated to Obsidian only a few weeks ago, and have tested a few different methods with integrating the Zotero objects with Obsidian notes via citekeys, and that part works like breeze.

    The next step for me is making the citation network to be visible at the graph view as a network between the related items: in my case, just a simple non-directed graph showing the citations between the papers.

    I am currently using the Obsidian plugin "Reference map", which is brilliant and simple to use: https://github.com/anoopkcn/obsidian-reference-map

    Anyhow currently there is not yet documentation about presenting the references in the graph with the plugin. I guess I would figure out how to do it eventually, but tips would be highly appreciated - for using this plugin or something else. Thanks in advance!

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