Your field notes deserve a DOI

There is something nobody quite dares to tell researchers: most of what they write does not exist.

Not in terms of quality — in bibliographic terms. The three-week field notebook from the Sahel, the protocol that took four months to stabilise, the briefing sent to the funder, the negative results that would have saved another team a year: none of it has an identifier. It cannot be cited. It cannot be found in five years. It sleeps in a Drive, a Word file, a yellow notebook, and it disappears with the hard drive or the contract.

Grey literature, it is called. Grey because nobody knows how to name it.

nTilia does not solve peer review, and does not claim to. It solves the layer underneath: making what you already write citable.

What a DOI is, and why Zenodo

A DOI — Digital Object Identifier — is a permanent identifier attached to a document. 10.5281/zenodo.1234567 will point to the same file in twenty years, even if the site that hosted it has changed address, owner or software. It is what allows a bibliography to survive time, and reference managers to know what they are talking about.

Zenodo is the open repository operated by CERN in Geneva, under the European OpenAIRE programme. It is free, built to last, and mints a DOI for every deposit through DataCite. Anyone may register; no institutional affiliation is required. Everything deposited there is harvested by academic search engines and readable by Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote. No editorial pipeline, no imposed format, no institutional gate: an account, a file, a DOI.

So the problem is not Zenodo. The problem is the chore. Export to PDF, log in, create a deposit, retype the title, the authors, the abstract, the keywords, the licence, upload, publish. Twenty minutes for a four-page note, every time. You do it for the paper of the year. You never do it for the notebook.

One step, inside the editor

In nTilia, the notebook is already written where it needs to be. The note has a title, a subtitle, an abstract declared in the header, co-authors with their ORCID and affiliation, keywords, a licence, sources. It is the same work as a Zenodo deposit — you simply did it while writing.

So the deposit becomes one line in the editor menu: Deposit on Zenodo.

Here is what happens, in order, without leaving the note:

1. nTilia takes the published version of the article — not the draft you are working on — in its source language.
2. It renders a PDF of that version with the journal's layout (the Academic style produces a preprint-like header: title, authors, abstract, DOI, licence).
3. It attaches the Markdown source, exactly as you wrote it. The reader of 2040 gets the raw text, not just a picture of a page.
4. It sends the metadata: title, abstract as description, authors with ORCID and affiliation, keywords, Creative Commons licence, language, journal name, and the article's canonical URL as a related identifier.
5. Zenodo publishes the deposit and returns the DOI.
6. nTilia writes the DOI back into the article — in the frontmatter, in the published version, in the version history — and shows it in the "Cite" block.

A banner follows the operation: Depositing on Zenodo…, then Deposited on Zenodo — DOI 10.5281/zenodo.…. About thirty seconds.

What your readers see

Under the article, the "Cite" block now leads with the DOI, ahead of the URL. The formats are the ones researchers actually use:

• APA and Chicago, to paste into a text.
• BibTeX, for LaTeX.
• RIS, for Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote — one click and the reference lands with DOI, authors, date and abstract.
• JATS, the XML of journals, for those heading back into an editorial pipeline.

Highwire tags in the page header let the Zotero connector recognise the article straight from the browser. And the JSON-LD switches to ScholarlyArticle as soon as the journal is declared a research notebook: search engines understand this is scholarly work, with its authors, abstract, licence and DOI.

What the tool does not do

This needs saying plainly, because confusion would serve nobody.

It is not peer review. A Zenodo DOI says "this document exists, on this date, in this form, by these authors". It says nothing about its validity. That is exactly the status of a preprint or a technical report — and exactly what grey literature has been missing.

It does not replace your institutional repository. Your deposit obligations remain yours. nTilia makes the notebook citable; it does not rewrite your lab's policy.

A deposit requires an open licence. Without a Creative Commons licence chosen in the inspector, the menu refuses: Choose a Creative Commons licence before depositing. Zenodo is an open repository; an "all rights reserved" deposit would make no sense there.

One deposit per article. The DOI returned is the one of the version deposited. Ask again and nTilia reminds you: Already deposited — DOI…. The version frozen in the history keeps its DOI even if you keep correcting the article online.

The token, and where it sleeps

To deposit under your name, nTilia needs a Zenodo personal access token — two scopes are enough: deposit:write and deposit:actions. You paste it once, in Settings → Syndication → Zenodo. nTilia immediately checks with Zenodo that it works, then puts it away.

A personal token holds a lot of power over an account. So it is encrypted at rest, with a key that lives only on the server — never in the database, never in the browser. It is decrypted only at the moment of the deposit, server-side, and is never sent back to the interface — not even to you. A Remove token button erases it; revoking it on Zenodo works too.

An ordinary day

An ecologist comes back from three weeks of surveys. Her notes have been in nTilia since day one: dictated in the evening under the tent, GPS readings attached to photos, a count table typed offline, two footnotes for references. When the network returns, everything syncs.

She rereads. She adds a 180-word abstract in the header — the word counter helps her stay brief. She declares her colleague as co-author, with her ORCID. She picks CC BY 4.0. She publishes.

Then: Actions → Deposit on Zenodo. Thirty seconds. The DOI appears.

That evening, the reference is in the lab's Zotero. Six months later, when the paper goes to review, the field notebook is cited as a primary source — with a DOI that resolves, a PDF, and the Markdown source for anyone who wants to check a count.

It is not much. It is exactly what was missing.

Zenodo deposit is included in the Pro plan. The rest — the offline editor, co-authors, abstract, citation formats — is there for everyone: nTilia.com

Frequently asked questions

What is Zenodo and who runs it?

Zenodo is a free open repository operated by CERN under the European OpenAIRE programme. It mints a permanent DOI for every deposit through DataCite and accepts any kind of research output: articles, preprints, reports, data, software. Anyone may register; no institutional affiliation is required.

What exactly does nTilia deposit on Zenodo?

The published version of the article, as two files: a PDF laid out in the journal's style and the Markdown source. The metadata sent are the title, abstract, authors with ORCID and affiliation, keywords, Creative Commons licence, language, journal name and the article's canonical URL.

Do I have to publish the article before depositing it?

Yes. The deposit covers the published version (public or unlisted), never a draft. That version is frozen with its DOI in the version history.

Which licence is required for a Zenodo deposit?

A Creative Commons licence, chosen in the article inspector (CC BY 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY-NC 4.0…). Without an open licence, nTilia refuses the deposit.

Where does the DOI appear once the deposit is done?

In the "Cite" block under the article, leading every format (APA, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS, JATS), in the page's Highwire metadata for Zotero, in the JSON-LD, and in the frozen version in the history.

How is the Zenodo token protected?

The personal token is verified with Zenodo when entered, then encrypted at rest (AES-256-GCM) with a key that never leaves the server. It is never sent back to the browser and can be removed at any time from the settings, or revoked on Zenodo.

Is a Zenodo deposit equivalent to a peer-reviewed publication?

No. A Zenodo DOI attests to a document's existence, date, form and authors — the status of a preprint or technical report. It replaces neither peer review nor your obligations to deposit in an institutional repository.