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# Add item by identifier

> Add papers or books to My Library from DOIs, ISBNs, PubMed IDs, arXiv IDs or ADS Bibcodes. Input schema, a tools/call example and an example result.

Source: https://cotlet.dev/docs/mcp/zotero/add_item_by_identifier

Docs sections: [Get started](https://cotlet.dev/docs.md) · [REST API](https://cotlet.dev/docs/api.md) · [MCP](https://cotlet.dev/docs/mcp.md) · [SDKs & CLI](https://cotlet.dev/docs/sdks.md) · [Integrations](https://cotlet.dev/docs/integrations.md)

Add papers or books to My Library from DOIs, ISBNs, PubMed IDs, arXiv IDs or ADS Bibcodes.

Zotero MCP tools: https://cotlet.dev/docs/mcp/zotero.md

MCP tool: `zotero_write → add_item_by_identifier`

Access: write.

Looks up each identifier the way Add Item by Identifier does in the Zotero app and adds one item per match, into the collection you name. Identifiers Zotero cannot resolve come back in not_found and add nothing. It writes to your own library only and runs without asking first: nobody else sees the items and you can remove them in Zotero with Move Item(s) to Trash….

## Parameters

| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| `identifiers` | string[] | yes | DOIs, ISBNs, PubMed IDs, arXiv IDs or ADS Bibcodes. |
| `collection_key` | string | no | Put the new items in this collection. |

## tools/call

```json
{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "zotero_write",
    "arguments": {
      "operation": "add_item_by_identifier",
      "arguments": {
        "identifiers": [
          "10.1234/example.2026.001",
          "10.1234/example.2026.002",
          "10.9999/broken.2026.7"
        ],
        "collection_key": "C4T8WZ2N"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

## Example response

```json
{
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "text": "{ ... same JSON as structuredContent ... }"
    }
  ],
  "structuredContent": {
    "requested": 3,
    "created": [
      {
        "item_key": "H6R2VB5D",
        "title": "Sparse attention for long documents",
        "identifier": "10.1234/example.2026.001"
      },
      {
        "item_key": "N9Q4XA7E",
        "title": "A survey of retrieval for question answering",
        "identifier": "10.1234/example.2026.002"
      }
    ],
    "not_found": [
      "10.9999/broken.2026.7"
    ],
    "collection_key": "C4T8WZ2N"
  },
  "isError": false
}
```

Previous: [Export citations](https://cotlet.dev/docs/mcp/zotero/export_citations.md)
Next: [Create collection](https://cotlet.dev/docs/mcp/zotero/create_collection.md)

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