I've been using Zotero 7 beta for months. It's absolutely exceptional. It has all the features I need. It just works. It syncs all my data across my devices seamlessly. It ingests and parses and renames all my PDFs and paper URLs perfectly. I I can easily cite papers in Word and Google Docs and markdown with pandoc. I can annotate PDF highlights and do full text search. Zotero is a huge time saver and I couldn't live without it.
I had been trying to use it from time to time for the past 15 years and it was never good enough for me. The UI was also too dated for my taste. Zotero 7 finally nails it. Congrats and huge thanks to the developers!
Have they made it easy to install and run your own Zotero server?
If I remember correctly, Zotero server has good API the client don't have. But you get the impression that they don't want anyone to have their own Zotero server.
This is generally true on the server side. But, thankfully they allow you to store your files on a WebDAV server. I’ve been doing that since Zotero first started and I’ve got items that were added back in 2006.
I know, not perfect for everyone, but it avoids paying for a monthly storage bill.
WebDAV support is nice to save money, but from a privacy perspective it’s a huge bummer that the sync servers get all your citation metadata. A better self-hosting story¹ is one path to resolving this. End-to-end encryption² similar to e.g. Firefox Sync is another. Zotero has a security overview³ that shows they clearly care about good practices, but it’s still bothersome to have to trust the server when many other applications have proven E2EE works great even for non-technical users⁴.
Unfortunately from the main Zotero dev’s responses, it seems clear that they have no incentive to implement either and probably never will (look, the same comment from 2½ years ago⁵) without some shift in circumstances (massive increase in funding, new regulatory requirements). Even if a community member implemented the entirety of either solution, dstillman can just (rightly, tbh) claim it will increase their maintenance burden when they are trying to support paying customers.
Question: would Zotero be good as a kind of "digital library"? Like nextcloud but for books. I often buy PDFs and books but they just end up on a file share, way less useful than my actual bookshelf. I mean as an alternative to something like calibre (which I don't particularly like). Also, is zotero open source?
Yes. I recommend Zotero as an alternative to Calibre frequently, and while reading your comment I was going to make a comparison before I even got to the part that mentions Calibre by name.
I started out using using Zotero during lockdowns after having known about it for years. The landing page and Wikipedia article never really sold me on it before—"A reference manager? Why do I want that?" Now I use it for collecting everything that isn't a good fit for the native bookmarks manager in Firefox (which is a lot more than what Chrome's bookmarks manager is good for, but still). Having started using it, it's great for other stuff like archiving Web pages and good enough to create/manage lists of books.
I still think it would be a great idea of Citadel were able to work as a Zotero add-on/distribution that was specifically designed with e-books in mind.
Zotero is open source (unlike most alternatives in this space like Mendeley, Papers, etc.). It is also less locked-down in that it offers a plug-in system with many useful third-party plugins.
I have used Zotero as a digital library for years and it works great for that. Especially since the iPad companion app is pretty good for reading and annotating, while I prefer collecting and organizing on the computer.
My main issues has been that the interface has been an eye sore on MacOS, and that it can be quite slow when searching large data bases. But I’m really excited that this update seems to fix both interface and performance.
Zotero and, previously, the UI updates to MonoDevelop (Xamarin Studio) are both proof that in order to get the best UI for all platforms, you should work on making it look decent-to-good (if not perfectly suited) for Mac OS and then just use the same look for Windows and Linux. You won't be able to completely avoid it seeming at least somewhat out of place on the latter two, but it also won't look bad.
I want to love and use Zotero. I really do. But it doesn’t support citation to legal authorities in the standard way that American lawyers (well, litigators and judges) use them.
But guess which profession uses citations probably more times per day than any other: attorneys!
> we’ve replaced the horizontal tabs (Info, Tags, Notes, etc.) with collapsible vertical sections and a side navigation bar for quick access to specific sections
I haven't used Zotero 7 yet, but this is great. I love this. Ditto here:
> At the top of the item pane, a new customizable header lets you choose what info to show[...] even a bibliography entry in your chosen citation style[...]you can choose to keep the Info section closed when you’re not editing metadata and still see the title and other important info
Clearly a lot of thought was put into the ergonomics of everyday use.
My favorite feature is the ability to search collections (ie type collection name on the left and filter collections matching that). I installed the beta just for this (because I have too many nested collections after decades of building up and is getting a bit out of hand…)
I had been trying to use it from time to time for the past 15 years and it was never good enough for me. The UI was also too dated for my taste. Zotero 7 finally nails it. Congrats and huge thanks to the developers!