Is there a plugin for using zotero in Notion?

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  • Thanks @dvanoni for developing this! I have installed and followed all the instructions on github, using one of your template DBs... but no Magic.

    I installed the Notero Preferences tool within Zotero and filled in all the relevant info. In Notero, I copied your DB and then shared it with my Zotero integration. Is there a third step I need to do so that they talk to each other? Thanks!
  • This looks fascinating, and I will be keen to try it out when I get a moment. Is there any chance it could be made to work in both directions, i.e., also write to Zotero from Notion?
  • edited November 8, 2021
    Do I separately have to install the zotero-generator-plugin?
  • @LGresearch thanks for the feedback! Someone on GitHub also brought it to my attention that I haven't done a great job of explaining exactly how to use the plugin, so updating the README is on my list of things to do. :)

    The final step to sync an item (or items) into Notion should be to drag the item(s) from the Zotero library list into the desired collection in the left sidebar in Zotero. As long as the name of that collection is specified in the "Notero Preferences" window, then you should see either a progress indicator or an error message appear when you drag the item(s) into the collection. Are you not seeing anything happen when you drag items into the collection?

    There's no need to install generator-zotero-plugin. It's actually not a plugin itself but rather a tool for generating new plugins.

    @gpatten good question! Two-way sync would be neat, but it's unfortunately beyond the scope of the plugin. Getting updates from Notion into Zotero would require setting up a hosted service that subscribes to webhooks from Notion and then uses the Zotero API to update items in Zotero. Notion has yet to release official webhook support, but there are some third-party tools that can be used for this. In theory this is technically possible, but it would be a separate project from the plugin and something I wouldn't be able to take on anytime soon. Perhaps someone else in the forum would be willing to give it a shot!
  • ah-ha! I figured it out. I had my resources in a group library and had to move them into a private library. Now it is working! Thank you. However, I want to add a field to the database template that you provided. Is there a way I can have the 'tags' or 'extra' field from Zotero, also display in the Notion database?
  • @LGresearch nice work figuring that out! I haven't tested with items in a group library yet, so I didn't realize that was an issue.

    As for syncing additional fields, there's an open issue on GitHub for syncing tags: https://github.com/dvanoni/notero/issues/7. It's on my todo list. :)

    I'm not a heavy user of Zotero myself, so could you give me an example of something you'd have in an "extra" field and how you go about adding that? Thanks!
  • Yes! For other users, don't go from a group library. :-)

    Regarding the "extra" field sync... The Zotero library I'm syncing to Notion is research for a book with chapters. The "library" is all the resources in the book and in Zotero, I have "folders" for each of the chapters. When I sync the entire library to Notion, I'm losing the "folders" for each chapter, so in Notion I don't know which resource is being used in which chapter. There are around 200 chapters, so I need a sort mechanism.

    My thought was to put the "Folder name" in the "extra" field, so that I can sort my notion DB by chapter still.

    I'd love suggestions from the community on how to accomplish this! Thanks for your help already!
  • @dvanoni Thank you so much for creating this!

    Unfortunately, I receive an error message when I try to add a new reference:

    "Failed to save item(s) to Notion.
    TypeError: style.getCiteProc is not a function"

    Is there anything additional I need to do to make it work?

    Thank you!
  • @fouad_ahsayni thanks for reporting this! Another user is running into this same error. We've been discussing it on GitHub, and I'm trying to figure out what's causing it. You can follow along and chime in here: https://github.com/dvanoni/notero/issues/12
  • @dvanoni Thank you! I will have a look.
  • @fou_ad, the user that reported the issue on GitHub was able to find a workaround. I believe the plugin should work if you install the APA style into Zotero. http://www.zotero.org/styles/apa

    I also now understand what's causing the issue, so I'm hoping to get a fix in place soon!
  • @dvanoni Now it works, thank you so much!
  • Any progress here?
  • @holmanc, what are you asking about specifically?

    If you're asking about the bug requiring you to have the APA style installed, you can follow along with https://github.com/dvanoni/notero/issues/12, and I'll update that as soon as a proper fix is in place that doesn't require manually installing the APA style.

    Let me know if there's something else you're curious about!
  • This is excellent. Thank you so much for the effort that went into creating it.
  • Thank you so much @dvanoni ! Exactly what I was looking for! However, I can`t download the .xpi file from GitHub. None of the versions. I receive an error message saying the add on can`t be downloaded because it seems to be damaged. Is there any problem with the file? Or is that any of my preferences preventing me from downloading the file? Thanks!
  • You are downloading it with Firefox, and Firefox takes the default action for installing xpi files, which is to install it in Firefox, which doesn't know about zotero xpis, and unhelpfully reports them damaged rather than incompatible with Firefox.

    Right-click the download link, save-as, then open zotero, for to tools, addons, gear menu, install from file.
  • Thanks for chiming in, @emilianoeheyns! I've just updated the README with a note about this.
  • hey, @dvanoni I just made a video to demonstrate how to integrate Zotero and Notion following your text-based instruction.
    https://youtu.be/4Z_5tskdNsY?t=1438
    This video will not only show the results but also demonstrate the step-by-step instruction.
  • I may be missing something about the Notero plugin so asking here. @dvanoni I was wondering if there is any way of linking different Zotero folders to different Notion databases?
  • @mpinzonc there currently isn't a way to sync to different databases. We explored this idea a bit in https://github.com/dvanoni/notero/issues/6 but decided that using a single database would simplify the implementation and be more in line with how Notion encourages organizing data—i.e. creating multiple filtered views of a single database.

    Admittedly, it's still not possible to easily create filtered database views based on Zotero collections because support for this is yet to be implemented in https://github.com/dvanoni/notero/issues/30. As a workaround for now, it should be possible to achieve something similar with tags, though it does require more manual effort.
  • Thank you so much @dvanoni! I like the tag option as a workaround, it actually makes a lot of sense. Similar to what others commented, I was looking for it to differentiate between papers/topics.
  • hey @dvanoni gread plugin. is it possible to sync notes from zotero to notion? i have a lot of notes in zotero and i want them to be synced to notion.
  • Links like zotero:// don't work in Notion. Is there any way to fix this?
  • @purdeaykut, I'm working on the ability to sync notes. You can stay updated on the progress here: https://github.com/dvanoni/notero/issues/4

    @vadbars, unfortunately, Notion only supports http:// URLs. There's some discussion of a workaround here: https://github.com/dvanoni/notero/issues/78
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