Notero

A Zotero plugin for syncing items into Notion

Concept by @arhoff 👩🏻‍🔬 | Built with ❤️ by @dvanoni

Why Use Notero?

• Allows you to integrate your reference manager, task list, reading notes, analytical tables, and drafts in one location.
• The name of database entries is the in-text citation, which allows you to easily link to references when writing in Notion.
• Create custom views to filter and sort large reference lists by project, tag, author, etc.
• Backlinks make it easy to locate any of the notes and drafts that mention a reference.
• Link references to entries in other databases, such as projects, tasks, manuscripts in your publication pipeline, publishing outlets, etc.

How Notero Works

The Notero plugin watches for Zotero items being added to or modified within any collections that you specify in the Notero preferences. Whenever an item is added or modified, Notero does a few things:

• Save a page with the Zotero item's properties (title, authors, etc.) into the Notion database specified in Notero preferences.
• Add a notion tag to the Zotero item.
• Add an attachment to the Zotero item that links to the page in Notion.

In addition to providing a convenient way to open a Notion page from Zotero, the link attachment also serves as a reference for Notero so that it can update existing pages instead of creating duplicate pages for a given Zotero item.

Syncing Items

By default, Notero will sync items in your monitored collections whenever they are modified. You can disable this functionality by unchecking the Sync when items are modified option in Notero preferences.

If you disable Sync when items are modified and would like to trigger a re-sync of an item, you can remove the item from the monitored collection and add it back in.

⚠️ Note: To prevent the "sync on modify" functionality from saving to Notion multiple times, Notero does not notify Zotero when the tag and link attachment are added to an item. This means they may not appear in Zotero immediately, and you may need to navigate to a different item and back to make them appear.

Installation and Setup

The latest release of the plugin is available on GitHub. See the changelog for release notes.

Detailed setup instructions are below.

Configure Notion

1. Obtain a Notion internal integration token from https://www.notion.com/my-integrations.

   • See Notion developer docs for detailed instructions.

2. Create the database that you would like to sync Zotero items into.

   • See examples below that you can duplicate into your Notion workspace.

3. Share the database with the integration you created in step 1.

   • See Notion developer docs for detailed instructions.

4. Take note of the database ID.

   • From the Notion developer docs, here's a quick procedure to find the database ID:

     Open the database as a full page in Notion. Use the Share menu to Copy link. Now paste the link in your text editor so you can take a closer look. The URL uses the following format:

     https://www.notion.so/{workspace_name}/{database_id}?v={view_id}
     

     Find the part that corresponds to {database_id} in the URL you pasted. It is a 36 character long string. This value is your database ID.

5. Configure the database properties as desired. See the database properties section below for more details.

Notion Database Properties

Notero can sync data for the properties listed below. The only property required by Notero is one with the Title property type. The other properties are optional, so you can use only the ones that suit your needs.

The Title property can be named something other than Name as long as it does not conflict with any of the other property names. The name and type of the other properties must be configured exactly as specified here.

Property Name	Property Type	Required
Name	Title	Yes
Abstract	Text	No
Authors	Text	No
DOI	URL	No
Editors	Text	No
File Path	Text	No
Full Citation	Text	No
In-Text Citation	Text	No
Item Type	Select	No
Tags	Multi-select	No
Title	Text	No
URL	URL	No
Year	Number	No
Zotero URI	URL	No

Install and Configure Notero Plugin

1. Download the latest version of the .xpi file.
   • Note for Firefox users: You'll need to right-click the .xpi file link and choose Save Link As... in order to properly download the file.
2. Open the Zotero Add-ons Manager via the Tools → Add-ons menu item.
3. Install the .xpi file by either:
   • dragging and dropping it into the Add-ons Manager window or
   • selecting it using the Install Add-on From File... option in the gear menu in the top-right corner of the window
4. Restart Zotero to activate the plugin.
5. Open the Notero preferences from the Tools → Notero Preferences... menu item, and enter the required preferences.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to sync from Notion back into Zotero

While this would be nice, it's unfortunately beyond the scope of this plugin. Getting updates from Notion into Zotero would require setting up a hosted service that subscribes to webhooks from Notion and then uses the Zotero API to update items in Zotero. Notion has yet to release official webhook support, but there are some third-party tools that can be used for this. In theory, this is technically possible, but it would be a separate project.

How to bulk sync existing items

To sync multiple items that are already in a monitored collection, you can trigger a sync by adding a temporary tag to them. Create a new tag, add it to all the items by selecting them and dragging them onto the tag, then delete the tag.

Video example of syncing multiple items

syncing-multiple-items.mp4

How to fix Notion API errors

Could not find database

If you receive the following error:

APIResponseError: Could not find database with ID: xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx

This most likely means you have not given Notero access to your Notion database. Ensure you follow all the steps from the Configure Notion section. Clicking the Share button in the top-right corner of your database should show the Notero integration as follows:

Example of share settings

Not a property that exists

If you receive the following error:

APIResponseError: property is not a property that exists

This can happen if you previously synced items into one Notion database and then change your Notero preferences to specify a different database. Notero may be trying to update pages in the old database instead of creating pages in the new database, and this error can occur if different properties were configured in the different databases.

To solve this, you should delete the old database in Notion and then permanently delete it from the Trash in Notion.

Example Notion Databases

We provide some example Notion databases that have been configured with all the properties synced by Notero.

Once you've opened one of the examples, click the Duplicate button in the top-right corner of the page to duplicate it into your Notion workspace.

Basic Example

An empty database that contains only the properties synced by Notero. Useful if you want to start from scratch and customize it yourself.

Advanced Example

A database with multiple views and some sample entries. See below for descriptions of how you can use the different views.

Bibliographic Info Table View

• Table view enables easy editing of entries.
• Easily navigate to the original source by clicking on the DOI or URL property.
  • DOIs for books may need to be copy & pasted manually from the Extra field in Zotero.
• Click on the Zotero URI property to view/edit the entry in Zotero or to export the bibliography entry in a different citation style.

Reading Status Board View

• Keep track of promising references you need to locate, books and articles you requested via interlibrary loan, and works that are relevant enough to warrant taking in-depth notes or writing a memo.

Literature Review Table View

• Quickly analyze and compare attributes of literature you are reviewing (e.g., theoretical framework, sample, methods used, key findings, etc.)
• Easily link to other works using the Related References property (e.g., articles in the same special issue, book chapters in the same edited book, studies and commentary that respond to or extend other works).

Books Gallery View

• Add a cover image (e.g., right click → copy image address from Amazon).
• Keep track of which books you own, borrow, and lend to others.
  • Add due dates and reminders for library books and interlibrary loans.

Development

Notero was scaffolded with generator-zotero-plugin and is built with zotero-plugin-webpack.

Local Setup

The steps below should allow you to build and run Notero yourself.

1. To avoid any potential damage to your default Zotero profile, you can create a new profile for development purposes.

2. Configure Zotero to run the plugin directly from source. Because the start script already handles most of the steps, you only need to ensure your Zotero profile directory has a directory named extensions.

   • Note: The start script does not currently support Windows. If developing on Windows, you will need to follow all the configuration steps in the Zotero docs.

3. Create a profile.json file by copying profile.json.example. This file is used by the zotero-start command to determine where to install the extension when running a development build.

   • dir is the absolute path to your Zotero profile directory
   • log is the name of the file that Zotero debug output will be written to
   • name is the name of your Zotero profile (e.g. default)

4. Install dependencies:

   npm ci
   

5. Build the plugin and start Zotero with it installed:

   npm start
   

   The start script runs zotero-start which performs a number of steps:

   1. Executes npm run build to build the plugin into the build/ directory.

   2. Removes the extensions.json file and Notero .xpi file from your Zotero profile directory.

   3. Writes a new .xpi file containing the absolute path to the build/ directory.

   4. Starts Zotero with the profile specified in profile.json and the following command line arguments:

      -purgecaches -jsconsole -ZoteroDebugText
      

   If you would like to see the commands without executing them, you can run:

   npm start -- --dryRun
   

Releasing a New Version

1. Run the version script (not to be confused with npm version) to run standard-version. This will create a new commit with a bumped package version and updated changelog, and then it will create a version tag on the commit.

   npm run version
   

2. Push the new version to GitHub:

   git push --follow-tags
   

3. GitHub Actions will run the release workflow upon any new commit. This workflow will build the .xpi file and then use the zotero-plugin-release command from zotero-plugin-webpack to create a GitHub release with the .xpi file.