Setting up proxies in Zotero Connector for non-open-access PDFs

I just started to use Zotero yesterday and am amazed by the ease of importing metadata and PDFs from the web via the Zotero Connector.

However, when working off-campus, for non-open-access articles, I had to log in via my institute (University of Edinburgh) on the database (e.g. ScienceDirect), before the Connector could download the PDF along with the metadata. I wonder whether there is an easy way to set this up in the Connector, so that when it could not find an open-access PDF, it will try to log in using my institute credentials, and download the PDF afterwards?

I read the documentation and it seems that I should set an proxy for this in the Connector, but the instructions are not detailed for me to follow. I also searched the forum but did not seem to find a directly relevant case. Could someone please provide some walk-through for this?

Many thanks in advance.
  • edited February 24, 2020
    If you have the Zotero Connector installed and your university has a fairly standard proxy setup (the default EZProxy setup is what the Connector supports best) then the Connector should pick up your proxy automatically upon going to an url like
    www.sciencedirect.com.university.proxy.co.uk
    and having you be redirected to the login page of the proxy. If that does not work, you can add a proxy manually in the Connector preferences page. The proxy schema will most likely have to look something like
    %h.university.proxy.co.uk/%p
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