Hi,

After being in the Citation Wilderness for a long time, a friend recently suggested that I look at Connotea. I was very exited by what I saw, and through Connotea also found Zotero and CiteULike. As an Electronic Engineering PhD student, a quick summary of my impressions are:

Zotero: By far the best at getting actual bibliographical information, responsive pleasant user experience, most active developer community.

Connotea: Best community features, weakest at obtaining bibliographical information (in my field anyway). Has almost no users in my field.

CiteULike: Better at obtaining biobliographical info than Connotea, worse at community features/tagging. More but not many users in my field.

Ideally I'd like to use Zotero to build my database, and then have the ability to sync it with Connotea for the community features. From reading the forums it seems that some kind of online support is being planned for Zotero, but it's not yet sure if it will be by supporting an external site, of by having a Zotero specific online site.

If the Zotero online experience is as good as the local experience I'm all for it, but I'd vote very strongly for supporting existing community sites first. Partly because it's less risky and quicker, and partly to make use of their existing communities! Connotea seems ideal for this because of its Web API.

So, I'd like to know:

What is the prevailing opinion amongst Zotero developers about how to support online databases, and how far up the priority list is this feature ? What is the expected timeframe for such support?

Thanks
Neilen