Making a strong Zotero-OpenAlex connection

danieleongari
edited June 29, 2026
Dear all,
I'm Daniele, using Zotero for 5+ years, and only recently getting my hands dirty with plugins.

I started my plugin https://github.com/danieleongari/zotero-openalex with the idea of merging in one place several plugins, to make them OpenAlex-centric:

- https://github.com/mtillman14/open-alex-work-id, from which I forked, that allowed to retried OpenAlex Work-ID (i.e., the indexing of the item) from the DOI (I already reached the author to let him know about my plan)

- https://github.com/Exyeus/zotero-citation-visualizer creating citation graphs from OpenAlex data, but with its own independent Work-ID retrieval, which is inefficient if the Work IDs are already mapped [TODO]

- https://github.com/daeh/zotero-citation-tally to retrieve the number of citations and show it in a "Citations" column [DONE]

Is there already an ongoing effort to do something like this?
How can I maximize the chances to see this effort generating momentum and seeing this repository hosted in the official GitHub zotero organization account?

Zotero and OpenAlex are two great nonprofit gifts for us, scientific community, and I would be glad to see them work seamlessly. Let me know if you would be interested in helping this development.

Thanks for your advice!
  • danieleongari
    edited 13 days ago
    Advertised also on reddit, today: https://www.reddit.com/r/zotero/s/W0mggWtgsb
  • danieleongari
    Also discussed in https://medium.com/@daniele.ongari/two-open-maps-of-research-finally-connected-zotero-meets-openalex-98148461e84b
  • tim820
    I note the prominent warning on the github front page ...
    "READ CAREFULLY: The plugin will OVERWRITE the existing URL metadata of your items with the OpenAlex Work URL. The rational is to use the DOI link as one-click link to the original source and URL as link to the OpenAlex Work page."

    That is also discussed at the Reddit and Medium links. But the justification that the DOI field makes the existing contents of a URL field redundant does not apply in all cases. It doesn't for me.

  • adamsmith
    Yeah, the URL field should go to an item's full text or be empty. Links to catalogs like PubMed or OpenAlex, when desired, should go into attached links
  • danieleongari
    edited 6 days ago
    Thanks for your feedback.
    I'm absolutely open for change, for example including a "Go To OpenAlex page" in a right-click menu field.

    @tim820 can you please elaborate further on why, when the DOI is present (otherwise I can not even process the item to connect it to OpenAlex), you need the URL which should be exactly the same as the DOI redirection? In which case are you there is a mismatch of the two that makes it annoying for you having the OpenAlex link in the URL? Are we speaking about Journal Articles and Preprints or other kind of items?

    @adamsmit what is "attached links"? If there is such a field I was not aware of, I agree that it would be no-brainer to use it for the OpenAlex link.
  • tim820
    edited 6 days ago
    In my case, I wish to record the URL where I got the PDF from, in cases where that is not the same as the DOI-link URL (or when no DOI exists). So my URL field, when filled, rarely leads to the same URL as the DOI, if that exists. It's not the most common scenario - if there is a DOI then the URL field is most often blank - but it's still an important one for me. So I need to preserve the URL field.

    A post today in the reddit thread lists similar scenarios.

    Re attached URL links, that would be File\Add Attachment\Attach Web Link (also available via right-click menu). It's how Zotero automatically stores links to Researchgate, Pubmed, Amazon book pages, etc., which appear under an item in the main library view.

  • danieleongari
    @tim820 Thanks! Yes, makes sense, and also the comment on Reddit was very informative. I will implement an alternative not to annoy any potential user with this.
  • danieleongari
    Dear @adamsmit and @tim820,
    I took action on your comments and now changed the default behaviour of the plugin not to overwrite anything without the user explicit choice of doing so.

    https://github.com/danieleongari/zotero-openalex/releases/tag/v9.7.0

    Please doublecheck yourself if this is your desired behavior and do not hesitate to open an issue for any problem/comment/suggestion.
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