Citing another item in an annotation

warwickmm
What's the recommended way of citing another item in an annotation? For example, if i want to add an annotation that says

"See page 3 of [some other paper]"

is there a way to add a link to the referenced paper? Or is the only way to copy/paste the citation?
  • bwiernik
    When you say annotation, do you mean in the PDF viewer?
  • warwickmm
    Yes, this is using the built-in PDF viewer.
  • mhdadk
    Has this been resolved? I'm also interested in something similar. Specifically, in an annotation in the PDF viewer of paper X, I want to write something like: "see [here](link to annotation somewhere in PDF viewer of paper Y) for details." so that when I click on the hyperlink "here", it opens up another tab of the PDF viewer with paper Y open and the annotation in paper Y highlighted in view. To summarize, is there some way to link annotations in two different PDFs in Zotero?
  • warwickmm
    @mhdadk, I have not discovered a way to do this yet.
  • Dave
    I am interested in this feature too.
  • aaalmonte
    As am I. Has this been resolved?
  • Magican
    I'm also looking forward to the feature of cross-references between documents. This is very important at the final stage of collecting information on a particular topic.
  • maxhahn
    This is definitely a necessary feature!
  • m.lana
    agree, cross-references between (or among!) sources is of primary importance
    Maurizio
  • nicolas.lienart
    One way I deal with this is to install Zutilo (see Github here).
    Thanks to this plugin I have enabled "Copy select item links" in Zotero context menu.
    Now when you want to mention a reference you would right click it and copy its link. It looks something like "zotero://select/library/items/ZQUV3SDI"
    I would paste it in the annotation comment basically.

    To open it, I copy the link and paste into my web browser URL. Or even better, if you have Windows PowerToys I would trigger PowerToys Run, then paste the link and go. Maybe you can do the same on MacOS with Spotlight or on Linux with Krunner.

    Opening the link basically opens Zotero at the specific reference location.
  • p.tallon


    Using the Actions and Tags for Zotero plugin, and a user's script on Github, I've found a somewhat workable solution. Massive thanks to both authors.


    First, install the plugin, and then follow the script author's steps to create two custom actions.
    1. The first, 'Add Link', will allow you to add a link from one annotation to another.
    2. The second, 'Goto Link', will allow you to follow these links.


    When you've got that working it's fairly powerful, if a little tedious to do each time. If I want to link some text in paper A to another paper, B, I:
    1. Open up the PDF of paper B, and add an annotation to the title. Then copy the annotation object itself. Left click and Ctrl+C.
    2. Go back to paper A, and add an annotation at the relevant location.
    3. Right click the new annotation and click 'Add Link' (or whatever you've called the action) on the dropdown. This inserts a link to the annotation you copied in B.
    4. I'd then add the title of paper B (or citekey) as a comment to the annotation. There's no indication that the annotation has a link, and I like to know where I'm headed (the author suggests an annotation colour convention too - which you could probably implement on adding the link if you're handy with JS).

    Now, when I right click on the annotation in A, and select 'Goto Link', the PDF of B is opened at the location of its title.

  • AAHDokter
    You can use Better Notes it has this feature.
Sign In or Register to comment.