That is an odd looking path. On Mac that would expand to something like /Users/Dropbox/_biblio/org-ref/bibnotes.org
and on linux /home/Dropbox/_biblio/org-ref/bibnotes.org usually you should not have permission for that, and neither make sense to me. Does (file-exists-p org-ref-bibliography-notes) return true? or alternatively does (find-file org-ref-bibliography-notes) actually open a writable file? I would think this is what you want (unless you have some unusual setup and permissions): (setq org-ref-bibliography-notes "~/Dropbox/_biblio/org-ref/bibnotes.org" org-ref-default-bibliography '("~/Dropbox/_biblio/refs.bib")) i.e. no .. in the path. Andreas Kiermeier writes: > Hi John, > > I've set it at follows (based on your setup) in my init.el file: > > (setq org-ref-bibliography-notes "~/../Dropbox/_biblio/org-ref/bibnotes.org" > org-ref-default-bibliography '("~/../Dropbox/_biblio/refs.bib")) > > So, non-nil. > > Andreas > > On 25 December 2015 at 00:45, John Kitchin <jkitc...@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote: > >> >> On Thu, Dec 24, 2015 at 1:04 AM, Andreas Kiermeier < >> andreas.kierme...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> org-ref-open-bibtex-notes() >> >> >> That looks like a different error that occurs in >> org-ref-open-bibtex-notes(). >> Up to that point everything looks normal. >> >> What do you have your org-ref-bibliography-notes variable set to? The >> default value is nil which would cause that error. >> >> >> >> John >> >> ----------------------------------- >> Professor John Kitchin >> Doherty Hall A207F >> Department of Chemical Engineering >> Carnegie Mellon University >> Pittsburgh, PA 15213 >> 412-268-7803 >> @johnkitchin >> http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu >> >> -- Professor John Kitchin Doherty Hall A207F Department of Chemical Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 412-268-7803 @johnkitchin http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu