Scientific Name Italicizer for Zotero

Scientific Name Italicizer is a Zotero 8 add-on that formats organism names in item titles. It uses a local Catalogue of Life index, works offline after setup, and writes Zotero rich-text markup such as <i>Arabidopsis thaliana</i>.

Features

• Italicizes scientific names in Zotero item titles.
• Supports species, subspecies, varieties, forms, and standalone genus names.
• Handles sentence-case names such as arabidopsis thaliana and converts them to <i>Arabidopsis thaliana</i>.
• Handles abbreviated genus names such as B. cinerea and preserves the abbreviation.
• Skips names already wrapped in <i>...</i>.
• Offers selected-item and current-library commands.
• Shows a preview before every edit.
• Can undo the most recent italicization run in the current Zotero session.
• Saves JSONL change reports for audit/reversal.
• Loads v2 indexes with substantially less startup memory and processing time.
• Uses a local Catalogue of Life ColDP index. No network lookup is performed during Zotero use.

Requirements

• Zotero 8.
• Windows PowerShell for the helper scripts.
• Node.js 18 or newer for building the Catalogue of Life index and running tests.
• An extracted Catalogue of Life ColDP download containing NameUsage.tsv, Name.tsv, Name.txt, or Name.csv.

Install

Download the latest .xpi from the repository releases, then in Zotero:

1. Open Tools -> Add-ons.
2. Choose Install Add-on From File....
3. Select scientific-name-italicizer-<version>.xpi.
4. Restart Zotero.

Build the Catalogue of Life Index

Download a Catalogue of Life ColDP package and extract it. From this project folder, run:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\tools\build-col-index.ps1 `
  -InputPath "C:\path\to\extracted\catalogue-of-life" `
  -OutputPath "C:\path\to\catalogue-of-life-index.json"

The generated JSON file can be large. Keep it outside the git repository unless you intentionally want to archive a specific index.

Indexes created by versions before 0.2.0 remain compatible. Rebuilding is recommended: the v2 format loads faster and derives standalone genera only from accepted Catalogue of Life usages.

Configure Zotero

Open Edit -> Settings -> Scientific Name Italicizer.

• Index JSON: full path to the generated catalogue-of-life-index.json.
• Report folder: optional. Leave blank to save reports next to the index file.

Use

In Zotero, use the add-on commands from the Tools menu:

• Italicize Scientific Names in Selected Items
• Preview/Italicize Scientific Names in Current Library
• Undo Last Italicization Run

Examples:

The transcriptional landscape of arabidopsis thaliana pattern-triggered immunity

becomes:

The transcriptional landscape of <i>Arabidopsis thaliana</i> pattern-triggered immunity

Mechanisms of induced resistance against B. cinerea

becomes:

Mechanisms of induced resistance against <i>B. cinerea</i>

Repression of the auxin response pathway increases arabidopsis susceptibility to necrotrophic fungi

becomes:

Repression of the auxin response pathway increases <i>Arabidopsis</i> susceptibility to necrotrophic fungi

Development

Run tests:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\tools\run-tests.ps1

Package the add-on:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\tools\package.ps1

The packaged .xpi is written to dist/.

Documentation

• User Manual
• Developer Guide
• Release Guide
• Changelog

Privacy

The add-on does not send title data or Catalogue of Life matches to any external service. Matching happens locally from the configured JSON index.

License

MIT