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.