A technical guide to setting up Notero (Zotero + Notion plugin) (2024)

For those who want more detailed instructions on how to set up Notero (a plugin that connects your Zotero reference manager to your Notion workspace), this article is for you!

I already have a general article about this topic and why it’s a great paper organization method: . Please check this out first if you haven’t. In my original article, I also linked some resources from Maya Gosztyla who shared her workflow on Twitter back in April 2022.

The original GitHub guide for setting up Notero can be found here. My article will walk through this guide step by step with screenshots and some minor additions for people who are less tech savvy (like me).

For people who want a video explanation of how to set everything up, Holly Jane has a great one that you can access here.

Step 1: Download Zotero (if needed)

If you don’t already have Zotero, you can download it here. It’s totally free. Make sure to create an account, so your desktop Zotero will sync your papers and notes to the online cloud storage. This will allow you to use Zotero on ALL your devices.

See Also

Linking to Zotero items via zotero://select

Step 2: Download Notion (if needed)

To download Notion for your desktop, click here. Create an account. You can get a Personal Pro account for free if you use a .edu email (I highly recommend this). If you aren’t a student/educator, you can still use the free version, but you will have a limit to the number of photos you can upload to your workspace.

Step 3: Configure your Notion database (the hardest part IMO)

Once your Notion account is up and running, you need to make it so that Zotero can communicate with your Notion. To do this, Notion has this thing called “Integrations.” To set this up, you can go to My Integrations.

If you haven’t set up Notero before or used any other integrations, this page will be empty. Now, click “New Integration” to make an internal integration (internal just means that it won’t be public for everyone to see).

You can name your integration whatever you want. I just called mine “Notero” since that is what I am using it for. Then, you need to select a Notion workspace, so that your integration will be linked to the correct Notion account. For most people, you will only have one Notion account, so this step will be easy.

Once your integration is approved, you will see an internal integration token when you click on the integration. Click “show”, copy the token, and put it somewhere safe for later.

Next, you will create a Notion database for your Zotero to sync into. This is where all of your papers in Zotero will be stored for notes! I highly recommend using Maya Gosztyla’s template. It is WAY better than the basic and advanced options on the Github website.

Once you open this template up, you can click “Duplicate” in the upper righthand corner. This will duplicate the template to your Notion workspace (if you’re not logged in, it will prompt you to login first)! Once it’s duplicated, you can make any edits and adjustments that you want.

Now, we need to share the integration with this new database we just made. This means that when Zotero syncs with Notion, it will input information about the paper you downloaded directly into the database! Yay!

To do this, navigate to your Notion workspace and select the database you just created. In the upper lefthand corner, you will see a button that says “Share.” Click this!

Then, you will see an option to “Add emails, people, integrations…” Once you click that, you will see the Integration that you just made pop up! Make sure to allow the Integration to edit your database.

You will also need to copy the database link by clicking the “Share to web” option. It will look something like this:

Click “Copy web link” and save it with the Integration Token that we already saved. Take special note of your “Database ID.” It is the random letters and numbers BEFORE the question mark.

Step 4: Download the Notero Plugin

For this, I actually think the Github instructions are pretty good! You can download the latest version of the .xpi file of Notero here.

You will see a page with this information:

You can simply click “notero-0.3.5.xpi” and it will start the download process immediately. Easy! If this doesn’t work, clear your cache and try again. You can also right click the file and save it manually by clicking “Save File As…” I recommend using Google Chrome if you are having issues with your browser.

Now, open your Zotero and navigate to Tools → Add-ons.

You’ll be able to drop the Notero xpi file into this page, so it looks like this:

Now, you need to RESTART Zotero for this plugin to work.

Once you’ve restarted, go to Tools → Notero Preferences. Here, you will need to input the Integration Token and Database ID that we took note of in Step 3! You will also need to enable “Sync preferences” for your Zotero folders that you want to sync into Notion.

And… YOU’RE DONE! That’s it!

Now, when you put a paper into the Zotero folder, it will upload directly to your Notion database.

This process can be very confusing at first, but I hope this article helps!

Please comment with any questions.

Anna Everett earned her B.S. in Neuroscience in 2022. She is a researcher, mental health educator, and advocate for women and other marginalized groups. She writes about life, productivity, the brain, human behavior, & health.
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