Automagically downloading PDFs from Sci-Hub with Zotero / configure Zotero to use Sci-Hub
Without a doubt, Zotero is the best citation management available right now. It maintains webpages (and pretty much any other resource you can think of) in addition to papers and books, is free, allows one-click importing through browser plugins, works offline, outputs to BibTex, and automatically downloads PDFs for whatever you add. Even when you have Athens or other institutional credentials to legally view them, sometimes those annoying PDFs are still locked behind paywalls and impossible to obtain. It even searches Unpaywall for you.
Sci-Hub can help you in this situation, but in an unlawful way. The papers on Alexandra Elbakyan's website are accessible if not for a paywall or registration-only website. It has its prominent critics, and obviously I'm not in favor of academic theft, but if Sci-Hub and Zotero could work together, it would offer a very helpful workaround for downloading PDFs with a single click that you have legitimate access to, without the hassle of having to remember your login information, look for it, find it, download it, then attach it to the reference manager.
Well, you’re in luck. Simply:
- Open the Preferences
- Move to the Advanced tab, and click “Config Editor” at the bottom.
- Accept the “you may break this warning”
- Use the search box to find
extensions.zotero.findPDFs.resolvers
- Right-click/double click and replace
[]
with: