Org-Ref: Managing multiple projects, each with own notes.org files and bibtex-pdfs folders

Question

When using org-ref, the bibliography:ref.bib directive in the notes.org file can be used to direct it to the corresponding ref.bib bibliography. Is there a similar such directive or approach to enable the ref.bib file to "discover" its corresponding notes.org file and bibtex-pdfs folder?

One can set the following within their init.el, or emacs-init.org file:

(setq org-ref-bibliography-notes "~/Dropbox/bibliography/notes.org"
      org-ref-default-bibliography '("~/Dropbox/bibliography/references.bib")
      org-ref-pdf-directory "~/Dropbox/bibliography/bibtex-pdfs/")

However, in the case of multiple projects, each with their own notes.org and ref.bib files, and bibtex-pdfs directories, how can one specify and associated a ref.bib file with a specific notes.org file and bibtex-pdfs folders?

Specifically when working on an article within a project, it's pretty neat to click on a reference that's been inserted with C-c ], and then "Add Notes" to that particular reference 3 RET.

Without the above snippet in my init.el, I get the following error:

org-ref-open-bibtex-notes: Org-ref-bib-bibliography-notes is not set to anything

This error persists even after setting up file local variables:

* File Local Variables
# Local Variables:
# org-ref-bibliography-notes: "~/Dropbox/bibliography/notes.org"
# org-ref-pdf-directory: "~/Dropbox/bibliography/bibtex-pdfs/"
# End:

or:

# -*- org-ref-bibliography-notes: "~/Dropbox/bibliography/notes.org"; -*-
# -*- org-ref-pdf-directory: "~/Dropbox/bibliography/bibtex-pdfs/"; -*-

Answer 1

I think you need to put the local variables in two places, which is the org file and the bib file. The issue is that the notes functions are called while the bibtex buffer is active, so the local variables in the org file do not affect them.

In my org file I put something like

* File Local Variables
# Local Variables:
# org-ref-bibliography-notes: "/Users/jkitchin/tmp/org-ref-issue-368/notes.org"
# org-ref-default-bibliography: ("/Users/jkitchin/tmp/org-ref-issue-368/test.bib")
# bibtex-completion-notes-path: "/Users/jkitchin/tmp/org-ref-issue-368/notes/"
# org-ref-pdf-directory: "/Users/jkitchin/tmp/org-ref-issue-368/bibtex-pdfs/"
# End:

In the bib file I put

# -*- org-ref-bibliography-notes: "/Users/jkitchin/tmp/org-ref-issue-368/notes.org"; bibtex-completion-notes-path: "/Users/jkitchin/tmp/org-ref-issue-368/notes/"; org-ref-pdf-directory: "/Users/jkitchin/tmp/org-ref-issue-368/bibtex-pdfs/"; -*-

at the top in one line. That seems to be the only way to get the right thing to happen since the doi utils append to the end of the file and don't look for local variables.

There might still be a notes issue I am looking into, but this is what should be required to work with project specific variables I think.