Command line tool to manage references.
Project description
Zoia
zoia
is a utility to organize your library of academic papers.
Installation
You can install zoia
by running:
pip install zoia
Organization
zoia
uses a simple, flat layout to organize data. Every paper is referenced
by a unique citation key (typically shortened to "citekey"). This would be
the same key that you would reference with citep
or citet
in LaTeX.
Bibliographic data is stored in a file called .metadata.json
.
Each paper also gets its own subdirectory in the root directory. Within each
subdirectory the document (if it exists) is stored as document.pdf
. Any
notes associated with the document are stored as notes.md
. However, zoia
imposes no additional structure on the layout. If you would like to add
additional files for a paper (e.g., supplementary data, code, or text), you are
free to do so.
A sample directory structure might look like this:
my_library
├── einstein05-electrodynamics
│ ├── document.pdf
│ └── notes.md
└── .metadata.json
Citation key style
zoia
's citation key style is based on Harvard
referencing. zoia
generates citekeys by taking the last names of the first three authors on the
paper and joining them by +
, (with a trailing +
if there are more than
three authors), followed by the last two digits of the publication year,
followed by a hyphen, followed by the first word of the title (excluding common
words like "the", "a", "on", etc.).
Examples
Author(s) | Title | Year | Citation key |
---|---|---|---|
Einstein, A. | On the electrodynamics of moving bodies | 1905 | einstein05-electrodynamics |
Einstein, A., and Rosen, N. | The particle problem in the general theory of relativity | 1935 | einstein+rosen35-particle |
Abbott, B. P., et al. | Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger | 2016 | abbott+16-obseravtion |
Collisions
Inevitably you will one day try to add two different papers which have the same
auto-generated citation keys. The default style makes this rare, but does not
guarantee that it will never happen. When it does, zoia
will add the
character b
after the year. For example, suppose a lesser known physicist by
the name of Egbert Einstein had written another, somewhat less revolutionary,
paper in 1905 called "On the electrodynamics of stationary bodies". If you
tried to add it, it would get a citekey of einstein05b-electrodynamics
. If
the citekey with the b
already exists, zoia
will try adding a c
, and then
a d
, etc. all the way up to z
. If that's still not good enough it will
continue with aa
, ab
, etc., though pray that things never come to that.
Note that the first paper will retain its original citekey --- it won't get an
a
added to it. This is because you may have been using that old citekey in
your papers. Changing the citekey would break that link.
Configuration
zoia
follows the XDG standard and stores its configuration data in
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/zoia
if the XDG_CONFIG_HOME
environment variable is set.
If it is not set it uses the standard default of $HOME/.config/zoia
.
Whatever the directory, zoia
keeps its configuration data in file called
config.yaml
.
Usage
Initialization
After you have installed zoia
you can initialize your library by running:
zoia init [directory]
This will tell zoia
that your library is going to be stored in the provided
directory. (Note that this directory must be empty.) If you don't provide a
directory, zoia
will store your library in your current working directory if
it is empty. If it isn't empty, it will try creating a subdirectory named
zoia
and will store your library there (assuming that that subdirectory
doesn't already exist).
Adding a paper
Once you have initialized your library, you can add papers to it using their arXiv ID:
zoia add 1001.0001
It's also fine if you have the prefix arxiv:1001.0001
.
zoia
will add the paper's metadata to the .metadata.json
file and download
the PDF.
In the future zoia
will support adding papers by their DOI, books by their
ISBN, and PDFs directly.
Opening a paper
You can open the PDF of a paper in your library from its citekey by running:
zoia open <citekey>
This will open the PDF using your default PDF viewer. In the future it will be possible to also open the PDF based on the arXiv ID, DOI, or ISBN.
Taking notes on a paper
zoia
keeps your notes for a paper in a Markdown file called notes.md
in
that paper's subdirectory. You can edit that file in your default editor by
running:
zoia note <citekey>
Synchronization
Although zoia
does not natively support synchronization across multiple
devices at the moment, its simple data structure makes it easy to use with
third-party synchronization software. In particular I recommend using
Syncthing for this purpose. By pointing Syncthing at
the directory containing zoia
's library on both devices you can keep your
library synchronized.
About the name
zoia
is named in honor of the librarian Zoia
Horn who spent her life fighting for
intellectual and academic freedom.
Project details
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