Category Archives: oa.zotero

Job: UI Designer at Zotero

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Zotero is an open-source project that develops software and web services to help people collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share their research. Our software is recommended by most universities and used by millions of students, scholars, scientists, and researchers worldwide.

We’re looking for an experienced UI designer to work on all user-facing aspects of the Zotero ecosystem. You’ll spearhead a major redesign of Zotero’s desktop apps and website and help launch a new mobile app. We’re looking for someone with UI, UX, and HTML/CSS skills — your job will be to design interfaces that are as easy to use as they are beautiful and then to dive into the code to help implement those designs together with Zotero’s developers.

Zotero is a powerful tool used by a wide range of people, to collect, organize, and share everything from scientific articles with hundreds of authors to historical documents to recipes, and one of your challenges will be to design interfaces that can accommodate this diverse range of uses and make Zotero’s advanced functionality accessible to new users. As part of a small team, you’ll have a great deal of autonomy and the freedom to experiment. Most importantly, you’ll participate in a vibrant global open-source community with amazing community developers and passionate users, working on a product you can feel proud of that’s making a difference in people’s lives.

We’re an international, remote-only team. We meet up occasionally around the world (falafel is often involved), but you’ll primarily be working remotely, communicating with Zotero developers and users via chat rooms, forums, and GitHub. We have a collaborative but often-asynchronous workflow, and you’ll be fully in control of your own schedule.

What We’re Looking For

A strong background in visual design
UI/UX design experience on consumer-facing software and/or websites, with a portfolio of work
Solid understanding of modern HTML/CSS
Awareness of accessibility issues and techniques
Strong opinions about how software should work, with the empathy to understand how it’s used in the real world
Strong English communication skills — we discuss and debate nearly everything we do, so it’s critical that you can (and want to!) take part in that

Bonus Points

Basic coding experience with JavaScript, React, version control, etc. — this is in no way a requirement, but the more you’re able to make changes directly in the codebase, the easier the process becomes
A love of free and open-source software

This is a full-time position, but we may be open to a part-time role for the right person.

 

How to configure Zotero to retrieve Publication’s PDF from Sci-Hub automatically | by Simon | Medium

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“Let’s configure Zotero so when a publications is not publicly available we use sci-hub to download it anyway automatically. To do that, we are going to add a custom PDF resolver. Don’t worry, it’s actually pretty simple and certainly illegal in most country (but we will use a secure connection, so nobody can know what you download from sci-hub)….”

Code citation was made possible by research software engineers in Germany and the Netherlands | eScience Center

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Did you ever have to cite your work when writing an essay for school? Or are you a researcher who can attest to the importance of being cited in research papers? Or perhaps you are a journalist who wants to cite your source to support your story? If you can relate to any of these scenarios, then we can all agree that giving credit where credit is due is important. Well, did you know that up until recently, it was very difficult for software developers to receive credit for their code or for others to cite their work? Thanks to a group of research software engineers in Germany and right here at the Netherlands eScience Center, code citation is now possible! How did they make this happen? For the story behind the scenes, read on.

Dr. Trevor Owens Wins 2021 Core/OCLC Kilgour Research Award | News and Press Center

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“Dr. Trevor Owens has been selected as the recipient of the 2021 Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology, sponsored by OCLC and Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures. He is the Head of Digital Content Management at The Library of Congress.

The Kilgour Award honors research relevant to the development of information technologies, especially work which shows promise of having a positive and substantive impact on any aspect(s) of the publication, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information, or the processes by which information and data are manipulated and managed. It recognizes a body of work probably spanning years, if not the majority of a career. The winner receives $2,000, and a citation.

Owens is being recognized for his work on the Zotero project, a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded study on the potential for text mining and data visualization tools for historical scholarship, the Viewshare collection visualization platform, and how he is reimagining the Library of Congress as a platform for the acquisition, preservation, and dissemination of digital materials of all types. He has also written several essential titles, including Designing Online Communities: How Designers, Developers, Community Managers, and Software Structure Discourse and Knowledge Production on the Web and The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation: An Introduction, as well as dozens of journal articles, book chapters, conference proceedings, keynote presentations, and invited lectures. Through his pioneering work and leadership, he has helped change the understanding of information technology and its transformative application to libraries, especially around digital materials and strategies for access to, preservation of, and tools for maximizing use of them….”