Technical Notes

I use Zotero for managing my digital library of scientific papers. Sometimes I want to link back to papers in my Zotero library from other applications, but there's no built-in way to do this.

Fortunately, Zotero is incredibly extensible and has a solid community of users who have developed various add-ins. Based on some plug-ins linked to in this forum thread, I created a Translator plug-in to get the output I wanted.

Here's how it works:

1) Select one or more papers in Zotero:

2) Press command-shift-c (on the Mac; probably ctrl-shift-c on Windows) to a "Quick Copy", or drag-and-drop the selected items onto another application.

3) You should see output like this:

zotero://select/items/0_HGFPVI65 - Sickle cell trait is not associated with endemic Burkitt lymphoma: An ethnicity and malaria endemicity-matched case-control study suggests factors controlling EBV may serve as a predictive biomarker for this pediatric cancer: Sickle cell trait and EBV loads in endemic Burkitt lymphoma - International Journal of Cancer (Mulama et al. 2014)

zotero://select/items/0_Q8GZQSJT - Rates and determinants of seasonal influenza vaccination in pregnancy and association with neonatal outcomes - Canadian Medical Association Journal (Legge et al. 2014)

zotero://select/items/0_HKRG6JXP - Capture–Recapture Method for Estimating Annual Incidence of Imported Dengue, France, 2007–2010 - Emerging infectious diseases (La Ruche et al. 2013)

zotero://select/items/0_9QST5VPW - Lifetime pesticide use and telomere shortening among male pesticide applicators in the agricultural health study - Environmental health perspectives (Hou et al. 2013)

The "zotero://" links will take you directly to the corresponding item in Zotero. 

Installation instructions

To install, grab the code from this gist and create a new file in the "translators" folder in your Zotero library folder called "modified-zotselect-link.js". Then go to your Zotero preferences, open the "Export" tab, and select "Modified ZotSelect Link" from the "Default Output Format" dropdown under "Quick Copy".