Zoteus

Citation Pipeline

Import references by DOI/ISBN/arXiv/URL, resolve CSL styles, and render bibliographies with citeproc-js in any style.

The citation pipeline adds an account-free-where-possible import-and-cite workflow: four tools.

zotero_import — add by identifier or URL

Resolves bibliographic metadata and optionally saves it to your library.

  • by_identifier — a DOI, ISBN, PMID, arXiv id, or ADS bibcode.
  • by_url — scrape a web page (may return multiple choices to pick from).
  • save_to_library: true (optional collection_key) persists the resolved items (needs a cloud key); otherwise the metadata is returned without saving.

Requires a reachable Zotero translation-server. If none is running, the tool returns setup instructions instead of failing:

docker run -d -p 1969:1969 zotero/translation-server
# then (optional) set ZOTEUS_TRANSLATION_SERVER_URL if not on the default port

zotero_styles — resolve CSL styles

  • resolve maps a human name ("APA 7th", "IEEE", "Vancouver", "Chicago", "MLA", "Nature", …) to a valid CSL id and confirms it can be fetched.
  • list returns the built-in common aliases. Any id from the CSL styles repository works too. Dependent styles are resolved to their independent parent automatically.

zotero_format_bibliography — citeproc, any style, no library needed

Formats a bibliography with citeproc-js over either items (arbitrary CSL-JSON, e.g. from zotero_import) or item_keys (library items, exported to CSL-JSON first). Pick style (name or id, default apa), locale (default en-US), and format (html/text/rtf). Styles and locales are fetched from the CSL CDN and cached.

zotero_bibliography — server-rendered (library items)

Asks Zotero to render a bibliography for library item_keys in a CSL style (format=bib). Item-only and capped at 150 items. For arbitrary items or styles, use zotero_format_bibliography.

Which bibliography tool?

  • Items in your library, quick render → zotero_bibliography.
  • Arbitrary CSL-JSON, items not in the library, or full control of output format → zotero_format_bibliography.

Configuration

All environment variables for Zoteus — core settings, OAuth, CIMD, ops/production, optional dependencies, and library backends.

Hybrid Semantic Search

BM25 keyword scoring fused with vector similarity (Reciprocal Rank Fusion) for natural-language "papers about X" queries, with a privacy-first local embeddings default.

On this page

zotero_import — add by identifier or URLzotero_styles — resolve CSL styleszotero_format_bibliography — citeproc, any style, no library neededzotero_bibliography — server-rendered (library items)Which bibliography tool?