With Citation Suite you can cite sources from your Zotero library in Pandoc format, view the bibliography in the sidebar, preview formatted citations in the note with citation styles, automate footnote creation, and much more.

Features

1. Citing sources through Zotero

Once you pick a source in the familiar citation window, it is inserted into the note in Pandoc format ([@doe2020, p. 33]) automatically, and several sources are gathered into a group separated by ;. Zotero notes can be picked in the same window too, and their text is inserted into the note as Markdown. Keys can also be inserted without opening the window at all, thanks to autocomplete suggestions from your Zotero library after typing @ in the note editor.

2. Formatted citation preview

In the plugin settings you can choose a citation style from your Zotero library to format the preview of citations in your notes. The citation itself stays in Pandoc format — this is only how it looks, and it has no effect on how the note is exported. Hovering over a citation shows the source's bibliography entry, and the look of citations is finely adjustable: their color, the underline style, bold and italic. The preview is built with the context of the whole note in mind: repeated citations are written in their short form, the numbering matches the bibliography, and keys Zotero does not have are underlined with a wavy line.

3. Preview of the note's bibliography

A tab in the right sidebar lists every source cited in the note — formatted in the citation style chosen for the preview, following its sorting, numbering and indentation. Above the bibliography is the number of sources, a search of the list and a way to copy the bibliography. Right-clicking an entry opens a context menu that lets you open your note about the source or its PDF, reveal the source in Zotero, copy a single entry or find every mention of the source in the note.

4. Citing from a file in the vault, and mobile support

Sources can come not only from Zotero, but also from a .bib or CSL JSON file kept in the vault. The shared file is chosen in the plugin settings, from the list of files found in the vault, and each individual note can have a file of its own, set in its bibliography property. Citation styles can be kept in the vault as well: .csl files appear in the list of styles, in a group of their own under Zotero's. Thanks to this the plugin supports mobile devices, and on the desktop it can be used even without Zotero.

5. Automatic footnotes

Optionally, every citation can be placed into a footnote automatically, and where the body of the footnote goes is up to you — after the current paragraph, at the end of the current section or at the end of the note. Footnote numbers are written in arabic or roman numerals, text of your own can be added before and after the number, and all of these settings can be applied either globally or to individual notes. The "Insert footnote without a citation" command creates an empty footnote with the chosen settings without opening the citation window, and the "Renumber footnotes in order" command renumbers every footnote in the note in order and sorts them correctly.

Installation

Option 1: Obsidian plugin store

1. In Obsidian settings open the tab "Community plugins" and click "Browse" button.

2. In the search bar type Citation Suite, click on the result, then "Install" and "Enable" buttons.

Alternatively, you can install the plugin by following the link to the community website: https://community.obsidian.md/plugins/citation-suite

Option 2: BRAT plugin

If you want to test beta-versions of the plugin or use previous versions, you can do that with BRAT plugin:

1. Install BRAT plugin from the official Obsidian plugin store.

2. In the BRAT settings, find the "Beta plugin list" section and click on the "Add beta plugin" button.

3. In the window that appears, paste the link to the Citation Suite plugin repository: https://github.com/pan4ratte/obsidian-citation-suite

4. Under "Select a version" choose the desired version and click the "Add plugin" button. The plugin will be automatically installed and will be ready to use.

User guide

1. Requirements

For citing and previewing through Zotero:

1. Install Zotero: https://www.zotero.org/download/.

2. Install the Better BibTeX extension in Zotero — it gives sources their citation keys: https://retorque.re/zotero-better-bibtex/installation/.

3. Check that Settings → Advanced → Allow other applications on this computer to communicate with Zotero is on in Zotero. It is on by default.

The panel at the top of the plugin settings shows Zotero's status and whether the plugin is ready to work.

For citing and previewing without Zotero, with files kept in the vault:

The plugin works on mobile devices, where Zotero cannot be had, by using bibliographies and citation styles kept in the vault. The same holds on the desktop, so Zotero is not required there either.

1. Files of the right kind are found in the vault on their own. So, to cite and preview your literature, put your .bib, CSL JSON or .csl files anywhere in the vault.

2. In the plugin settings, choose one of the bibliography files found. If a note fills in its bibliography property, the file named there takes priority. The citation window will then be the plugin's own dialog — with a similar interface and much the same working — rather than Zotero's.

3. In the plugin settings, the style files found in the vault are shown at the end of the list of available citation styles. Choose one of them to have the citation preview work without reaching for the files in Zotero's library.

2. Commands

By default Obsidian assigns no hotkeys to the commands. To set them, go to Settings → Hotkeys → Citation Suite.

3. How citations are written

Citations are inserted in Pandoc format, so when you export with pandoc --citeproc, Quarto or my Pandoc GUI plugin, they are formatted in your citation style.

Locator labels are written in the note's language, because that is how Pandoc reads them: with lang: ru-RU in the note's properties you get [@doe2020, с. 33], and without lang — [@doe2020, p. 33].

The preview and the "Bibliography" tab recognise only citations in square brackets. Keep this in mind if you turn off Put citations in square brackets.

You can also insert a key without opening Zotero's citation window: type @ and the start of a key, a title, an author's surname or a year. Inside square brackets only the key is inserted, so you can type a citation of several sources in one go. Sources from your Zotero library appear from the third character on.

4. Bibliography

The "Bibliography" tab in the right sidebar shows every source cited in the open note, formatted according to the chosen style. If you closed the tab, you can bring it back with the Show bibliography command.

The "Copy bibliography" button copies the list with its formatting, as Zotero does: a word processor pastes it with italics, indents and numbering, if the style has them.

Right-clicking an entry opens a context menu. Two of its items need explaining:

• Open literature note opens a note named @key or key, or one with the key in its citekey, citationKey or citation-key property. The item appears only when such a note exists. Hold Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) to open the note in a new tab.

• Open PDF opens the source's PDF in Zotero, along with your annotations.

5. Citation preview

Choose a style from your Zotero library in the plugin settings — it formats the citations in your notes and the bibliography. In the note itself citations stay in Pandoc format, so the export is not affected.

Citations are formatted with the note's context in mind, just as they will look after export: a repeated citation is shortened or written as "Ibid." and the like, numbered styles number sources in order of first citation, and so on.

Keys Zotero does not have are underlined with a wavy line, even with no preview style chosen.

Style and language from the note's properties

If the note's properties set csl (or citation-style) or lang, the preview and the bibliography are formatted the way Pandoc will format them on export:

• csl is the style file. It is looked for next to the note, in the vault's root and in the csl folder of Pandoc's data directory (on Windows, %APPDATA%\pandoc\csl). The .csl extension can be left out. A style URL such as https://www.zotero.org/styles/apa is taken from Zotero's styles.

• lang is the language, and it wins over the style's own language. Russian, English, German and French are supported.

The style and language in use are shown above the bibliography.

6. Automating footnotes

Turn on Automatically put citations in footnotes, and citations go into footnotes: the [^1] anchor appears at the cursor, and [^1]: [@doe2020, p. 33] in the footnote text. The same section of the settings controls where the footnote text goes, how footnotes are numbered and where the cursor moves.

You can also set footnote settings for a single note — with the "Footnote settings for the current note" command or from the note's context menu. Other notes keep using the general settings. A note keeps its settings when it is renamed or moved.

7. Troubleshooting

The citation window opens behind Obsidian?

In Zotero, open Settings → Advanced → Config Editor and set extensions.zotero.integration.keepAddCitationDialogRaised to true. This setting has no effect on macOS.

The citation window opens off-centre?

The window remembers where you left it: drag it once to where you want it, and it will open there from then on. To reset the position completely, quit Zotero and delete the chrome://zotero/content/integration/citationDialog.xhtml key from xulstore.json in the Zotero profile (on Windows, %APPDATA%\Zotero\Zotero\Profiles\).

"Zotero is not answering" error?

Make sure Zotero is running, Better BibTeX is installed in it and the local server is on (see "Requirements"). If you use the Zotero beta, Zotero port must be set to the matching port, not 23119.

The citation preview does not work?

Check that a preview style is chosen in the settings, the citation is in square brackets, and Zotero is running. If Zotero has no such key — say, it has a typo — the citation is not formatted and the key is underlined with a wavy line.

A key is underlined with a wavy line, but the source is in Zotero?

If you added the source or changed its key after opening the note, press "Refresh bibliography" in the sidebar.

About the Author

My name is Mark Ingrem and I am a Religious Studies scholar. Apart from my main area of study (Protestant Political Theology in Russia), I teach a university course called "Information Technologies in Scientific Research", which is based on my own unique program. This plugin helps me in my research and I use it in my teaching, along with the other plugins I develop, which you can find on my GitHub profile.

Hello to every student who came across this page!

Third-party licenses

• citeproc-js — © Frank Bennett, licensed under CPAL-1.0 or AGPL-3.0, at your option.

• CSL locale files (ru-RU, en-US, en-GB, de-DE, fr-FR) from the citation-style-language/locales repository — licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.