Articledrop

Save web articles and scholarly papers into Obsidian as research notes — metadata, readable full text, a ready-made citation, tags, topics/projects and reading status — and browse them all in one index.

웹 아티클과 학술 논문을 Obsidian 자료 노트로 저장합니다. 논문은 OpenAlex·Crossref·arXiv·KCI에서 검색해 바로 넣을 수 있습니다. 메타데이터, 본문(선택), 인용문, 태그, 주제/프로젝트, 읽기 상태를 함께 기록하고 목록에서 한눈에 볼 수 있습니다.

Features

• Four ways to add an article
  • Save article from URL — paste a URL into a modal.
  • Save article from clipboard URL — uses the URL already on your clipboard.
  • Save all links in current note — collect every link in a note (an "inbox" or reading list) in one go; already-saved links are detected and unchecked.
  • Mobile / other apps — open obsidian://articledrop?url=<encoded URL> from an iOS Shortcut, Android share action or a desktop bookmarklet. Optionally, a new note that contains only a URL (e.g. created by the mobile share sheet) is turned into an article note.
• Full text or metadata only — choose every time, or set a default. Full text is extracted with Mozilla Readability and converted to Markdown. Metadata-only notes can be upgraded later with Re-fetch content of current article.
• Good metadata — title, author, site, publish date, description, cover image, language and canonical URL from Open Graph, JSON-LD, Highwire citation_* tags and more.
• Korean sites work — EUC-KR / CP949 pages are decoded correctly, Naver Blog posts are followed through their frame, and Korean date formats are understood.
• Citations — Korean footnote style, Chicago, SBL, APA 7 or MLA 9, stored in frontmatter and in the note. Copy citation of current article puts it on the clipboard.
• Organize — tags, topics/projects (with autocomplete from what you have used before) and a reading status (읽을 것 → 읽는 중 → 읽음 → 활용함 by default, customizable). Change reading status of current article switches it.
• Index — Create or open article index creates a Bases file (.base) with an "All" table, one view per status and a cards view. Requires Obsidian 1.9+ with Bases enabled.
• Duplicate detection — saving a URL you already have opens the existing note (tracking parameters like utm_* are ignored).
• Template — the note body is a template with {{placeholders}} and conditional sections.

Works with Obsidian Web Clipper

Clip a page with the Obsidian Web Clipper browser extension as usual. When the new note appears in the Clipper's folder (Clippings by default), Articledrop organizes it:

• the clipped text stays as the article body (the Clipper reads the page in your real browser, so it also works for pages that need a login or render with JavaScript);
• the Clipper's properties (source, author, published, created, description, tags) become Articledrop properties, with missing details (site, image, canonical URL) filled from the page;
• citation, status, rating, My notes and Key quotes are added, and the note moves into your Articledrop folder;
• if the page is a journal article with a DOI, it becomes a paper note with full scholarly metadata, keeping the clipped text.

Settings → When a clip arrives: Ask (default — a small window for tags, project, status, rating and folder), Organize automatically, or Do nothing. Only notes created in the last two minutes while Obsidian is in front are picked up, so clips that arrive later by sync are left alone. Organize Web Clipper notes tidies every clip already in the folder, and Organize current note as an article works on any note with a source or url property.

One folder, told apart by tags

Articles and papers are saved in the same folder (자료 / Sources by default). Web articles get the article tag and papers the paper tag (both configurable), and every note also has type: article or type: paper, which the index uses for its Articles and Papers views.

Every save window has a Folder field: type a keyword and matching folders in your vault are listed (folder-name matches first). Leave it as is for the default folder, or type a new name to create a folder.

Scholarly papers

• Search scholarly papers (graduation-cap ribbon icon) — search by title or keywords and pick a result to save it. Sources:
  • OpenAlex (default) — all disciplines, abstracts, citation counts and open-access PDF links. No key needed for light use (about 100 searches a day); a free key from openalex.org/settings/api raises the limit.
  • Crossref — the DOI registry; good for exact titles.
  • arXiv — preprints.
  • KCI (한국학술지인용색인) — Korean journals. Needs a free API key from open.kci.go.kr.
  • Typing a DOI or arXiv ID in the search box looks it up directly.
• Save paper by DOI or arXiv ID — paste 10.xxxx/…, a doi.org link, arXiv:2101.00001 or an arxiv.org link.
• Automatic — saving a doi.org / arxiv.org URL, or a journal article page that declares its DOI, creates a paper note instead of a web-article note. Save all links in current note also picks up bare DOIs and arXiv: ids.
• Merged metadata — Crossref supplies authoritative bibliographic data; OpenAlex adds the abstract, keywords, citation count and open-access PDF.
• Open-access PDFs — optionally downloaded into your vault (자료/PDF by default) and linked from the note's pdf property. Download open-access PDF for current paper adds one later.
• Citations and BibTeX — journal-article citations in Korean, Chicago, APA 7 or MLA 9; a citekey; Copy BibTeX of current paper.

Paper notes use type: paper and properties such as authors, year, journal, volume, issue, pages, doi, arxiv, pdf, keywords, cited_by, citekey. The index has separate Articles and Papers views.

You can also open the search from outside Obsidian: obsidian://articledrop?paper=<query>.

Reading and writing with your sources

• Reading status and rating — every article and paper has a status and an optional 1–5 rating, set when saving or later with Change reading status / Rate current article or paper. Both appear as columns in the index.
• Memo and quote window — Add memo to a source and Add quote to a source open a small window and append a dated entry under My notes / Key quotes of the source note (with page or location for quotes). Select text first — in the saved article body or anywhere else — and Add quote is prefilled with it. If you run them outside a source note, you pick the source from a list.
• Insert citation — pick a saved source and Articledrop inserts, at the cursor, a footnote [^1] whose text is the citation plus a link back to the source note (default), or the citation text, a link, or both.
• Insert bibliography — collects every saved source this note links to (including those footnote links) and inserts a sorted Bibliography list.
• Citations are rebuilt from the note's properties in the style currently selected, so changing the style updates what you insert next.
• Citation styles — Korean footnote style, Chicago, SBL (2nd ed.), APA 7, MLA 9. SBL uses Journal 125.2 (2006): 287–303 for journal articles.

Note format

---
title: …
author: …
site: …
url: https://…
published: 2026-10-21
saved: 2026-10-22
description: …
image: https://…
type: article
status: 읽을 것
project: [디도서 설교]
tags: [article, 설교-자료]
citation: 김기자, “…”, 예시일보, 2026. 10. 21., https://… (접속일: 2026. 10. 22.).
---

> [!abstract] 예시일보 · 김기자 · 2026-10-21
> …
> [원문 보기](https://…)

## 인용
…
## 내 메모
## 핵심 인용
## 본문

Template placeholders

{{title}} {{url}} {{site}} {{author}} {{published}} {{saved}} {{description}} {{image}} {{citation}} {{content}} {{tags}} {{project}} {{status}}

• {{#key}}…{{/key}} — shown only when the value exists
• {{^key}}…{{/key}} — shown only when the value is empty

The article body is wrapped in <!-- articledrop:content --> markers (invisible in reading view) so Re-fetch content can replace it without touching your own notes.

Saving from your phone

iOS (Shortcuts): create a shortcut that Receives URLs from the Share Sheet → URL Encode the input → Open URL obsidian://articledrop?url= + encoded text. Then share any page to that shortcut.

Android: share the page to Obsidian and turn on Convert shared links in settings; the new note becomes an article note after you tap Save. Or use an app like HTTP Shortcuts to open the obsidian://articledrop link.

Desktop bookmarklet:

javascript:location.href='obsidian://articledrop?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)

Limitations

• Pages that need a login, are behind a paywall, or render entirely with JavaScript may only yield metadata.
• Images in the article body are linked, not downloaded.
• Paywalled papers get metadata and abstract only; PDFs are downloaded only when a legal open-access copy exists.
• KCI response parsing follows the published API guide; please report records that come through incomplete.

Network use

Articledrop contacts the web pages whose URLs you give it, and — for papers — the scholarly APIs you search: api.openalex.org, api.crossref.org, export.arxiv.org and open.kci.go.kr (only if you add a KCI key), plus the open-access PDF hosts they point to. Your optional contact email and API keys are sent only to those services. There is no telemetry.

Development

npm install
npm run dev     # watch build
npm run build   # type-check + production build
npm test        # extraction / citation / template tests (jsdom)

Copy main.js, manifest.json and styles.css into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/articledrop/.

License

MIT