I understand your logic with the reference list and in fact do something similar myself.
I review medical records to prepare reports in a legal setting so I regularly need to search and reference academic literature but the topics can vary quite a bit; it’s a bit different from being an academic in one focused area.
But the issue I wonder how you resolve is - how do you create your bibliography in acceptable format, i.e. MLA format or whatever you require? Devonthink does not do that.
So I create my reference list in Zotero for each case, I store a link back to the applicable Zotero collection in Devonthink, and I use Zotero to create my bibliography in the desired format.
If you use a different workflow to achieve this, what is it?