What information does Zotero uses to search for PDFs? How does it work?

helenfulbright
Hi Forum,

I am doing a research paper comparing programs that can find and attach full-text PDFs.

I would be interested to know the information that Zotero uses to search for full-texts please. Does anybody know how it is designed?

I am aware that articles with a DOI or URL can aid retrieval of full-text items but also that even without this data, Zotero can still find full-text PDFs.

Which data (or lack of data) aids or hinders successful retrieval of full-text PDFs please?

Thanks in advance for your time and help.

Helen Fulbright
  • adamsmith
    The full server-side code isn't online anymore because it uses non-accessible APIs -- you can look at the data that Zotero sends using the debug output if you're interested in technical details.

    Zotero principally uses either DOI or ISBN to look up data but also uses title extracted from the PDF for lookup in CrossRef. In addition, it generates basic metadata based on that same data using an internal database based on -- I believe but am not certain -- Zotero libraries.
    You can check which of the three options -- DOI, ISBN, Zotero is used in the "Library Catalog" field of the generated entry.
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