[Feature Request] "Add Related' inside a pdf like an annotation

hu-itanu
Could not find this discussed anywhere, but realize that it would be a great benefit to be able to mark bibliographic items in footnotes or bilbio lists in papers and books as existing in my library. Ideally, I would find it extremely useful and efficient to be able to mark bibliographic entries in a paper that I have in my Zotero library so that I could open them from the link in the paper. Something like a 'Related' link but in the paper itself where the biblio reference is.

This would 1) allow for quick opening of related texts and adding related texts while reading, and 2) provide a quick visual of what resources are in the library and what is lacking, if connected to a visual marker like a highlight or sticky note icon.

Any plans for something along these lines?

Thanks
  • FHeimburger
    edited October 8, 2022
    I have long thought it would be interesting to for Zotero to link up with the work which was done in France as part of the BILBO project on the automatic annotation of bibliographical references https://bilbo.hypotheses.org/about
    They have a new version out https://lab.hypotheses.org/2434 and it feels like it should be possible to harness their tool to detect references in pdfs in Zotero and link them up with bibliographical items
  • hu-itanu
    Yes, that would be fantastic.
  • jaeheelee
    I had the same idea today and found that it has already been suggested. It will be nice to see this feature implemented as it will save unnecessary web searching and generating duplicates in the Zotero library.
  • tim820
    edited 18 days ago
    The zotero reference plugin does something rather like that.
    https://github.com/MuiseDestiny/zotero-reference

    The Chinese instructions are readily translated by Google Chrome's right-click translation. But you discover how it works mostly by using it. It's very powerful and well worth the effort. It will parse a paper's reference list, showing you what references you already have in your library (by DOI match), and it will take you to that item in your library. For items you don't have but want to download, it will take you to the URL (by DOI).

    Since the update for Zotero v7 the plugin's settings dialog in Zotero are currently only in Chinese, but a translation is here:
    https://github.com/MuiseDestiny/zotero-reference/issues/305
  • jaeheelee
    Thanks for sharing the plugin, tim820! It does almost what I wanted. My wish (and I think it was that of OP's as well) was that the feature is integrated inside a PDF document, so that the workflow is smoother, i.e., you find a citation in the PDF, click on it to go to the reference in the PDF, and then click the reference to see the corresponding item in the Zotero library or find the paper on the web. With the suggested plugin we need to move the mouse to the right panel and search the references, which interrupts the workflow a bit. But at least, it is a good starting point.
  • jaeheelee
    Oh, I just noticed that with the plugin enabled, hovering the mouse over the citation in the PDF first opens a popup showing the full reference, and then hovering over the popup opens a second popup from the plugin that has a link to the item in the library. This does not work very reliably, but it does what I wanted.
  • tim820
    I have not used the v7-compatible version of the reference plugin enough yet to know if it interacts with Zotero's new Smart Reference Popups for hot links (when embedded in the PDF). It's possible that some of what you are seeing is the Zotero popup.
    https://www.zotero.org/blog/zotero-7/
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