Easily Import New Papers From Inline Citations

My workflow is currently:

Read a document. While reading, if I come across a citation for a paper I want, go to the bibliography section and find that reference. Then copy that reference into Google. Select the link on the right page from the Google search results. Then click on the Paperpile extension to import it. Then find where I was in reading the original document and go back.

I propose that a lot of this can automated. When I see the inline citation, couldn’t Paperpile automatically link that to the source in the bibliography? Better yet, to avoid losing my place in the document, couldn’t Paperpile allow a “Import Source” functionality hover-over button over the inline citation, so that I could import the source without even leaving my original place in the document? If needed it could do a google search first and display the search results in a popup so that I’d pick the right source. However, most of the stuff I’m dealing with is on Pub Med, so perhaps there could be an option to “Always select X url pattern as the default web site to find a source” or similar.

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Welcome to our forum, @cfero! Thank you for sharing the details of your workflow. This kind of end-to-end description of your use case helps shape future improvements to Paperpile.

We agree that jumping between inline citations, the bibliography, Google, and back to the paper breaks reading flow. Automatically linking inline citations to their references and allowing an in-place import action are good ideas that have already been proposed by other users. I’ve recorded your feedback and +1s for these feature requests for our team to consider.

Great, thanks for adding my vote!

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