RIS Export

I'm trying to bring the RIS translator up to date and get it to maintain data integrity upon export/import

Running into a few issues that I would like some input on:

(The following chart may be useful for this discussion: https://github.com/aurimasv/translators/wiki/RIS-Tag-Map)

1) Not all item types have a 1:1 RIS type mapping. Listed are the item types and the RIS TY term that they are exported as. On import, the itemType would default to the bold entry.

letter:"PCOMM",
interview:"PCOMM",

email:"ICOMM",
instantMessage:"ICOMM",
forumPost:"ICOMM",

film:"MPCT",
tvBroadcast:"MPCT",

audioRecording:"SOUND",
radioBroadcast:"SOUND",
podcast:"SOUND",

presentation:"SLIDE"
(This might not be appropriate)

document:"GEN"
(imported as journalArticle, since it has more fields)

My thoughts on this is that we can use something like what ProCite does on RIS export. Immediately following the TY entry, we can include an N1 field with something like "Item Type: interview". These sort of fields will be supported in the new RIS translator and would allow to faithfully reconstitute proper item types. Naturally, this is not part of the official spec, but I don't think it does any harm. Even if this is imported as a note by other software, it would be descriptive enough where it may be helpful.

2) Some Zotero fields don't seem to have a corresponding RIS field. Here is a list of things I could not map. Some suggestions are given in parentheses based on the typical value for these RIS fields:

archive
archiveLocation
extra
libraryCatalog
rights

websiteType (M3) //blogPost, webpage
postType (M3) //forumPost
letterType (M3) //letter
presentationType (M3)

artworkMedium (M3, but that may conflict with RIS Type of Work. Are these the same?)
interviewMedium (M3, technically RIS Type for PCOMM) //interview

audioFileType

company (PB) //computerProgram
programmingLanguage (would it be ok to use LA for this?)

docketNumber (is this equivalent to callNumber? can we use CN?)
country (is this what RIS Designated States [C3] refers to?) //patent
filingDate (C1 or M2, both unassigned for patent)

forumTitle (T2, but that is designated as Series Title for ELEC, T3 is unassigned)
websiteTitle (same as above)

journalAbbreviation (J2, this is RIS Alternate Title)

//tv/radio broadcast
programTitle (T2/T3 for Series Title? These differ for audiovisual material and film/broadcast)
episodeNumber (M1) //also podcast
network (PB)

studio (PB) //videoRecording

meetingName (T2?) //presentation


We can either find fields to assign these to, or go ProCite route and create N1 fields with descriptive labels. Probably assigning them to existing fields will increase chances of them (accidentally) ending up in the right place when other software imports.

Misc. questions:

Can manuscript have a page range? I know Zotero only supports number of pages, which makes sense, but is there a use case for a page range for manuscript?

There are some annoying "errors" in RIS spec, like Y2 is Date Accessed for almost all item types, except for:
Statute, where it is Date Enacted (but in fact Date Enacted is already DA)
Web Page, where Date Accessed is M1 and Y2 is not assigned

For some reason Book Section's "Number of Volumes" is assigned to IS instead of NV, like the rest of items.

Inconsistencies for seriesTitle, where it's T3 for some types and T2 for others for no apparent reason.

Editor and Series Editor are for some reason flipped for Book.

Should I just "fix" these in Zotero translator, or stick to the spec? I think date accessed and number of volumes would be ok to fix, but seriesTitle, editor and seriesEditor may cause some problems with other software.

There's a whole other mess with creator types, which I will ask for help with later.
  • Thanks for trying to figure this out. Honestly, though, RIS is an abomination and should just go away. It's certainly not worth expending effort to try to achieve lossless RIS transfer with other Zotero clients, since no one should be using RIS to transfer data between Zotero clients, and we don't want other software to start expecting custom note-based fields from Zotero either when they should just be adding support for better formats.

    Not dropping data obviously feels like the right thing to do, but when it just results in mostly useless data that doesn't follow any spec and that either a user would have to deal with by hand for thousands of items or another developer would be tempted to try to use, I'm not sure it's really in anyone's benefit.
  • Yeah, I agree. My main goal is to implement the support for importing ProCite RIS files, but I sort of went on a tangent trying to improve export as well. I'll just add field export so it makes sense and will not include any qualifying notes.
  • I already modified the RIS translator for myself, as I experienced that some fields in the RIS files I got were not or incorrectly imported, and also on export of a "bookSection" an empty "publicationTitle" would overwrite the "bookTitle". Other modifications were necessary to import RIS files from Endnote and export RIS to Endnote. Using Endnote myself for some projects while also using Zotero for others (depending with whom I have to cooperate), I found that RIS is much better supported by Endnote as the "Endnote" (Refer/BibIX) export/import (sigh).
    I'd like to send you my modified version so that you can have a look at it and (hopefully) include the modifications in your version.
  • You can post your version of the translator on https://gist.github.com/ http://pastebin.com/ or some other public location. The RIS modifications got placed on the back burner for a while, but now that you reminded me, I'll try to finish it up this week.
  • OK, the modified RIS_wh.js is on https://gist.github.com/2923106
    You find my comments by searching the file for //WH:
  • Thanks for marking your changes. That makes it a lot easier.
  • edited July 4, 2012
    Hi,
    I modified RIS.js once again and added type specific import and export of document type (M3), see
    https://gist.github.com/2972868#file_ris_wh.js

    The differences between the RIS.js currently distributed and my modified version are shown in the document
    http://www.filefactory.com/file/yyu22y099od/n/RIS_js_File_Comparison_pdf
    which was created using the cost-free comparison tool DiffMerge from
    http://www.sourcegear.com/diffmerge/downloads.php
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