lit-tag: An app for adding custom tags and notes to a citation database
Abstract
To facilitate the review, evaluation and analysis of scientific literature, the lit-tag R Shiny application provides a convenient interface for users to generate a citation database with custom, user-defined tags and notes. Lit-tag is not subject-specific and is useful for any field of research. Starting with a table of citations exported from a Zotero library and a user-generated Excel file describing a set of tags and notes fields, lit-tag provides tools for assigning tags and notes to papers ("lit-tag-builder" module) and for exporting, graphing, and generating reports from the resulting database ("lit-tag-viewer" module). The app fills a need not met by the limited tagging tools available in bibliographic software and does not require database programming skills.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.19238,
title = {lit-tag: An app for adding custom tags and notes to a citation database},
author = {Paul McElhany and Kalina Grabb and Maddison Wood},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.19238},
year = {2026}
}
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submitted to Plos ONE