Upgrade StorageFeature Request: Copy-and-Paste Citation Parsing Tool for Complex Footnotes
Hi Zotero team,
First off, thank you for building such a powerful tool—I rely on Zotero daily in my academic work. I wanted to suggest a feature that would significantly improve workflows for researchers dealing with complex citation structures.
I often cite sources within sources—e.g., archival material quoted in monographs, classical texts cited in modern commentaries, or 18th-century translations referenced in recent editions. This results in long, nested footnotes that don’t easily fit Zotero’s current metadata model.
When working with material like this, the process is frustrating:
* I manually write out the full footnote in Word
* Then try to reverse-engineer the metadata into Zotero fields, often splitting a single citation into multiple Zotero entries
* And finally tweak it again during the writing process to make sure it conforms to style guides like Chicago
It’s slow, error-prone, and undermines the time-saving strength of Zotero.
Feature Request
I’d love a tool that allows me to paste a full formatted citation (Chicago, MLA, etc.), and have Zotero:
1. Parse it automatically
2. Present a suggested metadata form based on the contents
3. Let me confirm or edit before saving to the library
Even if imperfect, it would give me a useful starting point. This would be similar in spirit to how Zotero parses DOIs, ISBNs, or embedded metadata—but applied to freeform, citation-style text.
**Examples of what I’d like to paste:**
Judith Zinsser, “The Taming of the Classical Philosopher: Émilie Du Châtelet and the Rewriting of French Physics,” in *Feminism and the Body*, ed. Londa Schiebinger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 302–327.
Isaac Newton, *The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy*, trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, with Julia Budenz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
Bernard Mandeville, “A Search into the Nature of Society,” in *The Fable of the Bees*, ed. F. B. Kaye (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988), 75–130.
Voltaire, *Letters on England*, transcribed from the 1894 Cassell & Co. edition by David Price, Project Gutenberg, last modified April 22, 2005, [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2445/2445-h/2445-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2445/2445-h/2445-h.htm).
These are footnotes I’ve had to construct manually—many with multiple layers (e.g., modern editors, historical translators, online repositories). Having a paste-and-parse tool would drastically reduce friction in these cases.
Possible Implementation
I imagine this could integrate with existing citation parsers (e.g., Citation.js) or use a bit of NLP to map phrases like “edited by,” “trans.,” “in,” or “retrieved from” to metadata fields. Even a beta version would be a huge help.
Is anything like this on the roadmap? Or are there plugins that already experiment with this?
Thanks again for continuing to make Zotero better—it's an essential tool in my academic life.
Best,
S
First off, thank you for building such a powerful tool—I rely on Zotero daily in my academic work. I wanted to suggest a feature that would significantly improve workflows for researchers dealing with complex citation structures.
I often cite sources within sources—e.g., archival material quoted in monographs, classical texts cited in modern commentaries, or 18th-century translations referenced in recent editions. This results in long, nested footnotes that don’t easily fit Zotero’s current metadata model.
When working with material like this, the process is frustrating:
* I manually write out the full footnote in Word
* Then try to reverse-engineer the metadata into Zotero fields, often splitting a single citation into multiple Zotero entries
* And finally tweak it again during the writing process to make sure it conforms to style guides like Chicago
It’s slow, error-prone, and undermines the time-saving strength of Zotero.
Feature Request
I’d love a tool that allows me to paste a full formatted citation (Chicago, MLA, etc.), and have Zotero:
1. Parse it automatically
2. Present a suggested metadata form based on the contents
3. Let me confirm or edit before saving to the library
Even if imperfect, it would give me a useful starting point. This would be similar in spirit to how Zotero parses DOIs, ISBNs, or embedded metadata—but applied to freeform, citation-style text.
**Examples of what I’d like to paste:**
Judith Zinsser, “The Taming of the Classical Philosopher: Émilie Du Châtelet and the Rewriting of French Physics,” in *Feminism and the Body*, ed. Londa Schiebinger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 302–327.
Isaac Newton, *The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy*, trans. I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman, with Julia Budenz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
Bernard Mandeville, “A Search into the Nature of Society,” in *The Fable of the Bees*, ed. F. B. Kaye (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988), 75–130.
Voltaire, *Letters on England*, transcribed from the 1894 Cassell & Co. edition by David Price, Project Gutenberg, last modified April 22, 2005, [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2445/2445-h/2445-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2445/2445-h/2445-h.htm).
These are footnotes I’ve had to construct manually—many with multiple layers (e.g., modern editors, historical translators, online repositories). Having a paste-and-parse tool would drastically reduce friction in these cases.
Possible Implementation
I imagine this could integrate with existing citation parsers (e.g., Citation.js) or use a bit of NLP to map phrases like “edited by,” “trans.,” “in,” or “retrieved from” to metadata fields. Even a beta version would be a huge help.
Is anything like this on the roadmap? Or are there plugins that already experiment with this?
Thanks again for continuing to make Zotero better—it's an essential tool in my academic life.
Best,
S
That said, I still think there’s real value in a native Zotero feature that accepts pasted citation text and parses it within the app—especially for users without the technical confidence or time to juggle external tools and formats.
Even something basic—like a Zotero “paste citation → parse to best-match metadata” tool using existing style files or citation parser libraries—would go a long way. It wouldn't have to be perfect, just a starting point.
I totally understand if this isn’t high on the roadmap, but I hope it can stay on the radar. I know many researchers with similar needs who would find this transformative.
Thanks again,