Wishlist : find full text PDF *link*

charpent
A relatively new addition to Zotero is the "Find full text PDF" facility, which proves very useful (even if it ignores, for obvious reasons, the largest source of PDFs of scientific papers... ;-).

Problem : I can't afford to store on the Zotero server the ca. 14 000 papers I have in my various collections and shared collections. Storing an URI is *much* cheaper in volume.

My current workaround (attach the paper, grab its URI, attach that URI and trash the paper) is a bit too much of a chore to be acceptable...

Hence my question : is there a way to parameter this utility to have it add a *link* to a full text PDF *without storing the paper itself* ? If not, would it be a large work to add this option ?
  • bwiernik
    edited January 8, 2019
    This basically already exists in Zotero. You can click the URL or DOI labels for the items to follow those links. Zotero also uses these fields for the Find Available PDF function. I would generally recommend using these fields, rather than links to URIs, as they will also show up in citations as needed. If a journal article or conference paper doesn't have a DOI, then you can use the DOI Manager plugin to automatically retrieve it. https://github.com/bwiernik/zotero-shortdoi/releases
  • charpent
    I had a glimpse of hope when I saw this :
    > Added import option to choose between storing and linking files
    in the changelog for 5.0.60

    But I have been unable to find this option. Perusing the advanced config options was unhelpful...

    @bwiernik : I often (but not always) want to store links not in existing URL or DOI fields (hints : private repertories, ResearchGate, Scholar, and other raven droppings...).
  • adamsmith
    You're the only person who has ever requested this, so the answer is probably no.

    The new feature in 5.0.61 is for allowing local links to files instead of storing files in Zotero when importing, e.g. from an RIS file, so that's only very tangentially related to your request.
  • bwiernik
    I would also honestly say that any of those sources would be fine to store in URL field and include in citations. If the PDF is there, it’s there.
  • adamsmith
    I'd somewhat disagree with that, especially for papers that have been published in journals. Obviously you can't cite the Scihub URL, but also for things like researchgate, that wouldn't be the right thing to cite for a published journal article.
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