Zotero is an open-source project that develops software to help people collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share their research. Our software is recommended by most universities and used by millions of students, scholars, scientists, and researchers worldwide.
We're looking for a JavaScript developer to work on Zotero "translators" — the pieces of code that let people save high-quality metadata and files to their Zotero libraries from across the web with a single click. If you like web scraping, APIs, data formats, and exploring sites in the browser devtools, this would be up your alley. As a core Zotero developer, you'll also have the ability to work across Zotero's vast ecosystem and help shape the future of the project.
This is an open-ended contract role that can scale up and down in hours based on availability and workload.
That's a bit different. This is about the XUL box model specifically.
What Zotero 7 will continue to support for plugins is full access to the Mozilla platform internals, unlike WebExtensions, but Zotero 7 is based on Firefox 102 ESR and will be updated to 115 ESR later, so platform changes like this do apply. The reason all plugins have to be updated for Zotero 7 is the massive architectural changes in Firefox over the last few years, most notably removal of XUL overlays. This change might require some minor additional updates, but it's probably not a big deal.
Zotero is an open-source project that develops software to help people collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share their research. Our software is recommended by most universities and used by millions of students, scholars, scientists, and researchers worldwide.
We're growing the core team and hiring for the following roles:
- Accessibility Developer (part-time)
- Backend/Cloud Developer (web services and AWS ops, US only)
- Full-Stack Developer
- Full-Stack Developer, Developer Community (lead the Zotero plugin ecosystem)
- iOS Developer
- JavaScript Developer (web scraping, APIs, and metadata — part-time)
- UI Designer
- Zotero Expert (part-time)
At Zotero, you'll be part of a small, all-remote team producing free and open-source software along with a passionate global community, and you'll make a huge difference in people's ability to manage their research effectively.
Zotero is an open-source project that develops software to help people collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share their research. Our software is recommended by most universities and used by millions of students, scholars, scientists, and researchers worldwide.
We're currently hiring for the following roles:
- Backend/Cloud Developer (backend and AWS cloud ops, US only)
- Full-Stack Developer (remote, anywhere)
- UI Designer (remote, anywhere)
At Zotero, you'll be part of a small, all-remote team producing free and open-source software along with a passionate global community, and you'll make a huge difference in people's ability to manage their research effectively.
Zotero is an open-source project that develops software to help people collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share their research. Our software is recommended by most universities and used by millions of students, scholars, scientists, and researchers worldwide.
We're currently hiring for the following roles:
- Accessibility Specialist (part-time)
- Android Developer (to build the first official Zotero Android app)
- Backend/Cloud Developer (backend and AWS cloud ops, US only)
- Full-Stack Developer
- UI Designer
At Zotero, you'll be part of a small, all-remote team producing free and open-source software along with a passionate global community, and you'll make a huge difference in people's ability to manage their research effectively.
Zotero is an open-source project that develops software to help people collect, organize, cite, and share their research. Our software is recommended by most universities and used by millions of students, scholars, scientists, and researchers worldwide.
We're currently hiring for the following roles:
- Accessibility Specialist (part-time)
- Android Developer (to build the first official Zotero Android app)
- Backend/Cloud Developer (backend and AWS cloud ops, US only)
- Full-Stack Developer
- UI Designer
At Zotero, you'll be part of a small, all-remote team producing free and open-source software along with a passionate global community, and you'll make a huge difference in people's ability to manage their research effectively.
Also: thank you for building a tool that actually works. I used it first in 2010, then switched to EndNote for better web integration, but I’m back to Zotero now that there’s a Safari add on. The PDF functionality in 5.0 has made apps like Notability and Goodnotes for the seemingly trivial task of managing and marking up highlights completely redundant.
It’s one of those OSS applications that genuinely works well and can be approachable to everyday people without feeling like a half-baked product.
Zotero is an open-source project that develops software to help people collect, organize, cite, and share their research. Our software is recommended by most universities and used by millions of students, scholars, scientists, and researchers worldwide.
We're currently hiring for the following roles:
- Accessibility Specialist (part-time)
- Android Developer (to build the first official Zotero Android app)
- Backend/Cloud Developer (backend and AWS cloud ops, US only)
- Full-Stack Developer
- UI Designer
At Zotero, you'll be part of a small, all-remote team producing free and open-source software along with a passionate global community, and you'll make a huge difference in people's ability to manage their research effectively.
thank you! I maybe have seen this doc page before... I'm afraid I don't find it totally clear!
Do you have any advice for the simplest way to do this from these docs, if starting from scratch? Or what most people do? If you were writing a new website yourself, just an ordinary, say, Rails app, that was not based on library formats like MARC... which method would you use to expose to zotero?
COinS is pretty limited and crufty, and doens't allow you fo fully express all the fields that might be in a Zotero citation/CSL, only a few basic ones. UnAPI... most of the formats listed for UnAPI, the list tells you not to use that format unless you have to! It seems to recommend MODS, but MODS is pretty confusing if you don't already have data in it.
Dublin Core is not expressive enough to cover everything in a citation.
I just want to specify every in a zotero citation, you know? Is there a way to provide data in CSL? I don't think so?
`<meta>` tags "using the Google/Highwire key-value system" sounds prommising -- but I'm having trouble finding a list of valid keys at the documentation linked to! Those Google docs feel like they're sending me on another goose chase.
I feel like I have a choice of over-simplified (DC) or baroque/archaic/hard-to-use metadata systems (MARC/MODS), and in either case having to kind of guess how it will be mapped to Zotero citation/CSL.
I wish there was a way I could provide the cite in CSL!
Also... I know zotero sometimes can handle a list of citations on a page, but the page you link to has no guidance for that.
If other website devs have no problem providing good metadata to zotero using these docs... I feel like there's some kind of secret code here everyone else knows that I haven't been able to crack!
> `<meta>` tags "using the Google/Highwire key-value system" sounds prommising -- but I'm having trouble finding a list of valid keys at the documentation linked to!
They're in the Indexing section of the linked Google page, just formatted in a particularly unreadable manner:
> I wish there was a way I could provide the cite in CSL!
We're planning to support `<link>` elements to any supported format — basically a modern replacement for unAPI, which went defunct before CSL could be listed as an option — but CSL wouldn't let you specify a PDF anyway. And most sites want the search engine indexing they get from embedded metadata.
Thanks, your feedback is super helpful! Answering some things I haven't managed to figure out confidently on my own beofre now. Sounds like Google/highwire might be the simplest at this point. Still curious if you have any other recommendations!
Actually, one thing I'm still unclear on how is to supply a book/monograph citation, since google/highwire isn't focused on that (not sure if it's possible with google/highwire). Or do I have to resort to a different format for that? (One like "coins" that might not let me supply all relevant fields? :( )
> We're planning to support `<link>` elements to any supported format — basically a modern replacement for unAPI, which went defunct before CSL could be listed as an option — but CSL wouldn't let you specify a PDF anyway.
That sounds great! The key is still what formats are available -- somehow there aren't any great ones. I wonder if it would make sense for zotero to actually develop one that lets you simply describe what zotero means, and everything.
But sounds like maybe most people wouldn't want to use that anyway, as you say, they want something that will be used by Google and others. (The lack of a suitable standard used by multiple parties, to me reminds me of my thoughts on living in an era of death of internet standardization).
Maybe embedded google/highwire is the best option -- I wonder if zotero docs page could beneficially highlight this, suggest that if you're coming to this from a clean slate and just want the simplest/easiest thing that will work, the google/highwire meta tags are probably a good one. Perhaps with guidance on finding the actual keys in the Google docs, and even linking to the zotero mappings as you've done here!
And the other part that's still not clear to me is what to do on a `list` page -- I understand zotero sometimes can handle being activated on a page listing several articles/citations, and export them all. But I am not sure how to handle that.
(I suspect there are still other things I'd have to spend time reverse engineering, that aren't clear from the pretty sketchy google docs, once I get to the details.. but only one way to find out, I guess! When I've invested time in this before, I've ended up blocked and unable to figure things out. Is there a zotero discussion forum where I'd have a chance of getting questions like this answered from experts?)
https://github.com/zotero/zotero-android