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Any consumer app would've had this implemented by now but that's the tradeoff of being FOSS.
I'm pretty sure it says "powered by zotero"
I found Zotero very confusing to use. But maybe I am not the target demographic. I have always just used vim txt files for notes, using cli tools like grep to find what I need.
Generating the citation text in whatever format people like is a time saver.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve been using Zotero since it was in beta in 2007, and have a library with tens of thousands of items. As dstillman says that’s hardly unusual. It works perfectly (it’s just a SQLite db with a mature, well-designed schema after all), and syncs perfectly across five devices.
Funny, we tried probably your solution for imports? urschrei/pyzotero is yours? Failed all the time. To be fair we got a lot of 5xx, so maybe we were just out of luck. Anyway time ran out with that project.
An absolute must have is BetterBibTex (https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/), which adds better Citekey management and, my personal highlight, "export on add" functionality. In short, everything I save into a specific folder in my library gets exported as a .bib file right away. That way I can click a button in my browser and have the citation ready in my LaTeX editor, Word, or Obsidian (https://github.com/hans/obsidian-citation-plugin) within seconds.
The latest beta also adds full Markdown export for Notes. I tend to keep my notes on papers in Zotero, attached to the paper, but export them for filing in Obsidian (which I then feed into MkDocs for our work group's large repo).
Unless you need Apple Pages support, which Apple keeps to itself and only sells for mighty moolah to a select few, Zotero can do anything EndNote can do, is Open Source, and with that won't drive your PI up the wall with yet another expense.
Zotero: Personal Research Assistant - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22694891 - March 2020 (206 comments)
Mendeley encrypts users' database after Zotero provides an importer - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18977461 - Jan 2019 (119 comments)
Zotero: An open-source tool to help collect, organize, cite, and share research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17606929 - July 2018 (163 comments)
EndNote maker's lawsuit over open-source Zotero dismissed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=646121 - June 2009 (6 comments)
GMU sued for Zotero - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=319975 - Sept 2008 (3 comments)
Zotero is, if you're not in the market for a closed source silo like EndNote, the only game left in town. Mendeley went full on Evil, and Papers for Mac is Mac only, closed source, and missing dozens of functionalities that are absolutely a must have in academic writing and research. An absolute must have is BetterBibTex ( https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/ ), which adds better Citekey management and, my perso…
I saw dstillman has commented here. Dan, thanks a lot for your tireless work to make Zotero the best reference manager!
Zotero is, if you're not in the market for a closed source silo like EndNote, the only game left in town. Mendeley went full on Evil, and Papers for Mac is Mac only, closed source, and missing dozens of functionalities that are absolutely a must have in academic writing and research. An absolute must have is BetterBibTex ( https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/ ), which adds better Citekey management and, my perso…
I believe Pages is free for Mac users. I do agree that Zotero is a an awesome product.
However, in light of its monthly subscription pricing, I'll be sticking with Zotero which does everything I need on a desktop computer, and also with Linux support. Zotero being free and open source gives me confidence that my data won't be encrypted in a user-hostile way like Mendeley did to its users after it was acquired by Elsevier.
Most other medical/technical writers I know only use these tools as a “reference library.” It might be useful for someone writing a thesis, but almost all professionals avoid these because they slow things down, break, and require updates that cause issues.
I use API requests to get formatted references direct from PubMed, and use FileLocator Lite to search multiple PDFs in reference folders with RegEx. QPDF is useful for unlocking PDFs. This system has worked quite well for me and I don’t have to worry about my data getting locked into aging or unsupported software platforms.