🚀 Speed Up Academic Writing–How I Use Zotero Shortcuts to Copy Citekeys Fast
During the final year of my PhD, I submitted 8+ manuscripts—while finishing my dissertation. One key reason? I built a fully local academic writing workflow using three tools:
- LaTeX in VS Code for writing
- Zotero with Better BibTeX for citations
- Obsidian for managing all my notes
Together, this became my “second brain.” (I’ve explained the full system in the following three playlist.
One small Zotero trick made a big difference in speed and ease: copying citekeys using a shortcut.
⚡ How to Enable Quick Copy for Citekeys in Zotero
If you’re using Zotero with Better BibTeX (BBT), here’s how to quickly copy citation keys in LaTeX format.
- Go to
Zotero > Settings > Export - Set “Default Output Format” to:
Better BibTeX Citation Key Quick Copy - Make sure Better BibTeX is installed.
Now, select any reference in your Zotero library and press:
Ctrl + Shift + C
It will copy the citekey like this:
\cite{josephMetaheuristicAlgorithmsPID2022}
Just paste it into your LaTeX file. That’s it!
đź‘‹ About Me
Hi, I’m Shuvangkar Das, a power systems researcher with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University. I work at the intersection of power electronics, DER, IBR, and AI — building greener, smarter, and more stable grids. Currently, I’m a Research Engineer at EPRI (though everything I share here reflects my personal experience, not my employer’s views).
Over the years, I’ve worked on real-world projects involving large scale EMT simulation and firmware development for grid-forming and grid following inverter and reinforcement learning (RL). I also publish technical content and share hands-on insights with the goal of making complex ideas accessible to engineers and researchers.
đź“ş Subscribe to my YouTube channel, where I share tutorials, code walk-throughs, and research productivity tips.
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