Add text annotations to references in Bibliography.

Current opinion journals ask you to annotate some of the references as of special * and outstanding ** interest and add a short description for these references in bibliography as such:

30. Wong FS, Karttunen J, Dumont C, Wen L, Visintin I, Pilip IM, Shastri N, Pamer EG, Janeway CA Jr: Identification of an MHC class I-restricted autoantigen in type 1 diabetes by screening an organ-specific cDNA library. Nat Med 1999, 5:1026-1031.
Using class I tetramers, the authors demonstrate that insulin-specific CD8+ T cells account for a large proportion of infiltrated T cells in the islets of prediabetic NOD mice. This is the first study to use peptide multimers to decipher the mechanism of autoimmunity.

How do I do this in Zotero? I can add them just as text to the bibliography - but thus will be lost when it refreshes. The only way I can think about is unlink the citations and insert bibliography as text? But obviously I won't be able to go back and edt my references. Are there any other solutions?

Many thanks in advance!
  • It's generally possible to do this with a tweaked citation style and the extra field, but it's tedious and requires adding the information to the items in ZOtero directly.

    I'd indeed do this on a copy of the bibliography, but note that you don't need to unlink citations: you can just create the bibliography in a copy of the document, unlink citations there, and then copy that version into your (otherwise still linked) document. Only thing you need to be careful with is that the numbers remain aligned.

    I think you might be able to edit manually in "Edit Bibliography" mode, but I'd stay away from that for numeric styles: it can cause a mess with references.
  • edited April 2, 2024
    You can indeed search the Zotero styles repository for 'annot' - for the several existing modifications of standard styles that would include the descriptions for an annotated bibliography if added in the Extra field. Perhaps it is worth creating a modified style for the particular journal(s) involved ? There are other modified styles that include the abstract, so some people have added descriptive annotations there. Both approaches are workarounds rather than elegant solutions.
    https://www.zotero.org/styles?q=annot
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