Identifyer for Zotero [beta]: convert plain-text citations in documents to live Zotero field code

I created a small program called Identifyer for Zotero to convert plain-text citatons in Word/ODT documents to live Zotero field codes. This is a beta and I am a sociologist, not a programmer, so it is essentially vibe coded. If you try it out, please comment on your experience, in particular if you have any technical issues.

https://github.com/JonasBaath/identifyer-for-zotero

The program essentially creates a copy of the document, strips it of all field codes from Zotero and EndNote (and acceppts all tracked changes), matches citations with your Zotero library, inserts citations with field codes, and allow you to export it. It is open for some ambiguity and asks you to review possible matches when there are several possible candidates in your library. In addition, you can get a txt output of citations without relevant sources. If the document has a bibliography, suggested matches with it are presented as well in the txt file and it also lists any posts in the bibliography that does not match any in line citations.

I have tested it with author-year-pagenr-citations but it is supposed to work with numbered citations as well.

  • Thanks a lot for sharing this tool. I tried it and it worked well for me. Really appreciate your effort — it’s already very helpful, and I’m looking forward to future updates.

    I wanted to suggest two possible improvements:

    (1) a default Zotero library path, so the same path is prefilled every time the program opens
    (2) an option to limit matching to one specific Zotero collection instead of the whole library

    That would make the workflow even smoother. Thanks again for creating this.
  • Thanks for trying it out!

    What OS are you using? No. 1 works on my computer so there must be some bug there. No. 2 is a good suggestion, I'll try to include it in an update in the coming week or so.
  • I'm running it on macOS. I did encounter some citation-related issues (especially text corruption during conversion), and I've reported them in a GitHub issue with detailed examples and files attached.

    The tool is really helpful and has great potential. It already saves a lot of time. Looking forward to the upcoming updates!
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