For researchers
The digital field notebook for researchers
In one sentence
nTilia is a digital field notebook that works offline: you note records and interviews on site, transcribe them on the device, cite your Zotero references, then publish the note with an abstract, ORCID co-authors and a Zenodo DOI.
What field research demands
- Taking notes without a network, in a format that will outlive the software.
- Keeping a campaign’s method, records and interviews together.
- Protecting participants’ identities and the location of sensitive sites.
- Making a field note citable, not just archived.
How nTilia answers
One Mission per campaign
5W, interview or lab-notebook skeletons, with date, place and GPS prefilled. GPS can be masked on publication.
Open Markdown
Your notes stay in Markdown: Mission ZIP export (notes, audio, metadata), .md import.
Citations while writing
[@citekey] from a local Better CSL JSON or BibTeX file: nothing is sent to the cloud.
Citable publishing
Abstract and co-authors with ORCID and affiliation, a Cite block (APA, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS, JATS), tags read by Google Scholar and Zotero.
One-click Zenodo DOI
From Pro: the published article goes to Zenodo, CERN’s archive, as a preprint PDF and Markdown source. The DOI comes back in the Cite block.
What nTilia doesn’t do
nTilia is not a thesis-writing tool: for a long manuscript with a precise citation style and LaTeX export, an editor like Zettlr is a better fit. Both speak Markdown: capture with nTilia, write with Zettlr.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get a DOI for a field note?
In nTilia, from Pro: publish the article under a Creative Commons license, then deposit it on Zenodo from the editor. Zenodo mints the DOI and it comes back in the Cite block.
Does nTilia work with Zotero?
Yes: you cite while writing with [@citekey] from a local file exported from Zotero, and your published articles are added to Zotero in one click thanks to their metadata.
Does my research data go to the cloud?
Device-only notes never leave the phone, and transcription happens on the device. Everything else, once synced, is private but not end-to-end encrypted: that is what lets you publish it in the journal, then deposit it on Zenodo.
Free · No credit card · Works offline