zotero + emacs + latex = awesome

As a PhD student, I have to reference a lot of stuff, which I do with Zotero. It struck me a while ago that it would be nice if this integrated with my LaTeX editor of choice, and so I spent a morning doing just that. Now, I can add references straight from Firefox, and immediately add a BibTeX citation to them in Emacs with C-c [.

1. Install Zotero and set it up.
2. Install the fantastic AutoZotBib Zotero extension. Take care: it looks like a Firefox extension, but you install it from Zotero’s add-on menu not Firefox’s.
3. Configure AutoZotBib to dump your Zotero library to a .bib file somewhere.

4. Enable the RefTeX minor mode (which you should already have as part of Emacs). If using biber, you also have to tell RefTeX that \addbibresource gives the path to the bibliography.

   (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'reftex-mode)
   (setq reftex-plug-into-AUCTeX t)
   (setq reftex-bibliography-commands '("bibliography" "nobibliography" "addbibresource"))
   

That’s it – if you add a reference to Zotero, it’ll get dumped automatically to your BibTeX database by AutoZotBib, which RefTeX picks up and searches.